Anyone here done the conversion of a AR 15 type rifle to the 458 SOCOM cartridge?

It appears to just be a conversion requiring modification of the bolt/carrier, different barrel, and not much else.

A complete upper receiver (with barrel) is $865 from the company that created it (www.teppojutsu.com).....which seems overpriced in my view.

The cartridge is the 50AE necked down to .458.

Thanks,
Garrett

Tromix.com has offerings in the Socom, along with sskindustries.com. SSK Industries does a lot more than just the Socom, especially some cartridges made for the AR10 platform. Something else that they offer with more OOMPH might catch your eye. Also, the Alexander Arms .50 Beowulf basic 16" upper is cheaper by almost $200 depending where you look. At one time Cabelas had the 16" upper for the Beowulf for $400 and medium change, they might still have it. Ammunition is not as expensive as the .458 Socom too. Both are made to use the same bolt and bolt face diameter and lower receiver, the Beowulf comes with a slightly modded magazine, but for the record either conversion will need the rails on the magazine slightly modded to feed correctly. Most of the time when you get the upper, they give you at least one magazine that should work. I was going to have my Armalite AR15 converted, I sold it instead for a Dangerous game rifle in 375 Rem ultra mag.

Forgot to mention that the .50 beowulf is a longer cartridge than the 50AE, and the Socom. That means more powder, more velocity, more kinetic energy. All of which you can never have enough of, unless you were looking at the "too much gun" thread in this forum...

The .458 SOCOM uppers can be had for around 700. Can't really compare the base model Beowulf to the base model .458 uppers though, two completely different animals. A better comparison is the Beowulf Precision and the base model .458 uppers. .458 uses the same bolt face as the .308 Win/.30-06, while the Beowulf uses the 7.62X39 boltface. Even if you are buying an upper from Teppo Jutsu, 865 is a fair price. Remember, you are having it custom built to your specs, and he's not getting much of a price break only buying 1 of everything, and paying shipping for all the parts on top of that. If you already have an upper, Marty at Teppo Jutsu can convert it to .458 for much less. The .458 doesn't need the magazines modified either.

My mistake, the bolt face sizes are different as pointed out by Urodoji

Or...you could buy my Tromix 50AE upper that is listed in the Classifieds.

Allow me to add my $0.02. As the developer of the .458 SOCOM cartridge I might have what you could call a unique perspective.

As Urodoji pointed out, the .458 SOCOM is not simply the .50AE necked down. That would be the .440 CorBon, which is actually a .429 caliber cartridge. The .458 SOCOM has its roots in the .50AE cartridge in that it shares the base diameter but that is where all comparison ends. It has the .308 size rim, much smaller than the .50AE, but larger than that of the .50 Beowulf. It is longer than the .50AE, but indeed a hair shorter than the .50Beowulf. With all but the shortest bullets, that difference becomes moot due to intrusion of the bullet into the powder column when seated to magazine length.

The main difference between the .50B and .458S is that the .458 uses a shoulder for headspace control and the .50 uses the case mouth. As far as power is concerned, they are just about evenly matched, and the loads used for the segment on Sighting In with Shooting USA on Outdoor Life Network actually had the .458 SOCOM with 1 ft-lbs more energy than the .50 Beowulf.

As far as price goes, the uppers built by us (me) are single pieces built to the customer specs. As such, the components are bought one at a time, to the exact demands of the customers requirements, which does not allow the lower price you might see for the .50 B. Also, we typically use stainless steel barrels, as well as free floated hand guards. This offers a greater accuracy potential. As Urodoji pointed out, you cannot compare that to the base model Beowulf. Now, the other reason it is a bit more expensive, and seems costly to you, is that there are a few more modifications needed to the upper to make it work with these large cartridges. These small items are larbor intensive if done by hand, or costly if tooling is made to do them, and the cost of that is passed on to the customer. By no means is the margin on these uppers anything phenomenal, it is more a love of guns that keeps this business going, and the day job pays the bills.

The SOCOM requires no modification at all to the magazine or lower. Ammo can be had from CorBon and reloading components from various places. Any of the .458 caliber bullets can be used, and with 5 to 7 reloads on a case, the cost for a reloader goes down to about $0.50 - 0.60 per round.

Teppo Jutsu does more than the .458 SOCOM, however we have been remiss in updating our website. We hope to show off some of our new developments soon, but family life and building .458s has been keeping us ample busy.

Hope that offers some more insight, if you would like more information, please feel free to ask

Marty,

Can the 458 socom handle the 600 grain bullets and still fit in the ar15 mag? I do not think I will buy those expensive bullets, but it would be interesting to try them.

Did the 950 grain cast bullets I sent work at out at all?

Ranb