Hello gents,
I just acquired a 500 Wells express; appears to be a rebore on a Ruger 416, great condition.
I have researched the AR archives, but still have a few questions.
I found 3 die sets through midway, but wont be available till august! any quicker way? Also, the website says 500 wells express, JGS version. Whats JGS version? Does anyone have reamer dimensions? I saw RIPs posting on dimensions, but it appears to be in metrics.
ANy help would be appreciated

emron,
Congrats on the acquisition.

Do you mean ".510 Wells Express?" aka: ".510 Wells Belted / .510 Wells Express / .510-.460 Wells"

"JGS version" referring to reloading dies means the dies would match the reamer made by JGS.
That is probably the original version of the .510 Wells Express.
Trust but verify.

You can call/email JGS and ask them to send you the reamer drawing. They do list this reamer there: "510 Wells Exp"
Contact info here:
http://www.jgstools.com/

This is all I have:

From:

http://municion.org/
(click on "Fuego Central/CF" in upper left corner of Home page to find cartridges.)

.510 Wells Express:



.510 Wells Express:

.500 A-Square:

Oops, I lied, I have one more thing, a Dave Kiff reamer drawing, from his book of reamers made by PT&G, a partial listing of reamers he has made:



I do not know of any variations of the .510 Wells Express.
PT&G should be same as JGS version.
Trust but verify.

Very tight throat shown here on the PT&G reamer.
Parallel-sided free-bore is only 0.5100" diameter, and only .1770" long.
Getting the JGS drawing to compare reamers would be interesting.

OP, have you tried CH4D for dies?

http://www.ch4d.com/products/d...l=caliber&filter=510

RIP as usual, you are the man. I am contacting JGS as you suggested. Will let everyone know the result.

Pierre van der Walt covers the Wells extensively in African Dangerous Game Cartridges. Interesting read, especially as the forerunner of the 500 A-Square. Very good book. As I recall, the Wells will fit in a 500 A-Square chamber. If brass/dies etc become a headache, they may be more easily available in the A-Square with a simple? ream job. You may also find that monometal solids are more comfortable with the longer A-Square throat. As I'm in the process of a Ruger conversion to .495 a-Square, please share your experiences here.
I got my dies from CH4D.

Patrick,

Excellent. I forgot about Pierre van der Walt's chapter on the .510 Wells Express. It is fairly extensive and informative, hard to find more than that.
Fred Wells did it in 1958. Pierre says this about Fred Wells and the wildcatting craze of the 1950s:

"... Apparently dissatisfied with the Buhmiller .460/510 design, Fred also opted to focus on the .510" bullet, specially made for him at the time by G&M Company in Fairview, New Mexico."

Thus Pierre attributes the basic form of the cartridge to John Buhmiller, before Fred Wells, and the much later "me-too" wildcats.
I think Pierre got that right.

Interesting that Pierre also specifies the standard proof barrel twist for the .510 Wells Express to be 1:10".
However his load data for the .510 Wells is merely the exact, same table he included for the 500 A-Square.
It is a copy of selected load data for 600-grain bullets from the A-Square manual,
and some unspecified 600-grain bullet loads from "LHS Germany Data Center, October 2010."
Then there is a single handload for unspecified 570-grain bullet.
The latter uses 100 to 110 grains of RL-15 with the 570-grain bullet, with comment "Handload. Not pressure tested."
The 600-grain bullet loads shown from A-Square used 113-118 grains of RL-15, followed by comment "A-Square Any Shot You Want. 1996."
Almost like Pierre copied that token 570-grain bullet load from my .510 JAB loads.

Pierre did state as last sentence before the load table: "Refer to the .500 A-Square for pressure tested reloading data."

Pierre listed case capacity of the .510 Wells Express as 140.5 gr water.
Pierre listed case capacity of the .500 A-Square as 143.0 gr water.

Getting everything "right" in a book the size of Pierre's tome ...
Well, if he did not cut off efforts at some point before perfection and all inclusiveness, we'd still be waiting for the book
and Pierre would not be half done with research ...

The cartridge drawing that Pierre has for the .510 Wells shows a shoulder angle of 35 degrees,
same as he shows for the 500 A-Square.

PTG shows 30 degrees on the .510 Wells Express reamer shoulder.

It will be interesting to know what the JGS reamer shoulder angle is ...

quote:

Patrick Stoll: the Wells will fit in a 500 A-Square chamber. If brass/dies etc become a headache, they may be more easily available in the A-Square with a simple ream job.

This what I did with my 510 Wells, now an A-2.

quote:

Re

It would be very practical to convert to a 500 a2
but I have an original Fred Wells 505 Gibbs, and met him personally many years ago. I wont despoil his design. sentimental, but AHEM!I am a man of the 21st cenntury, and its OK to be sentimental-about guns, that is

CH4D has dies immediately available, ordered
Wish I could learn how to post pics again.WIll post soon.