Lehigh .458x260CF Sabotless in the Rock Pit

[sabotloader]

Finally got some time to get out!!! The University here is about ready to get going and I have all of my maintenance work completed - soooooo - I gathered up some stuff and headed to the Rock Pit. It is really warm and dry here and at this time the Basalt pit is about the safest place to shoot right now.

I have decided during our regular rifle season hear I am going to use this 45 Super DISC and the relatively new Lehigh .458x260 CF Sabotless bullet. I was able to sight the rifle in early this year shooting this bullet, so the mission was to see if it was still zeroed. I was pretty confident it was mainly because the barreled action is mounted in a Knight Kevlar stock and it really does not move at all even after long periods of storage,

This picture shows the new Lehigh bullet. Lehigh lists it as a .458x260 as it was built to fit custom smokeless 45-70 barrels. For most of us using them in a manufactured black powder barrel the 'drive bars' around the bullet will need to be re-sized. The .458 diameter of the drive bars make it very difficult to get through the crown of the ML bore. In my case I resize the barbs to .454.

Shooting this bullet back in the winter I was really amazed at how accurate it was and today it shot lights out in 70* weather. But, really it was not much of a test - I was only shooting 100 yards. But truly was blowing the birds up!

Adding the Kevlar stock to the rifle added a lot of stability and also reduced the weight of the set up. This picture shows the setup and portable shooting bench I use.

This group of pictures attempts to show part of this mornings activities...

In the composite I say I was loading 120 grains of BH by volume - normally I really never load by weight. But in this case I was also doing some experimenting. I have a volume loader that I really prefer and use most of the time when loading either T7 or BH. For my last e trips shooting BH I decided I was going to work on getting the volume measure to throw the correct amount of power to equal 84 grains of BH by weight. As it turns out I have the volume measure set just over the 120 grain indication on the measure. This gives me very close to 84 grains of BH by weight using Lot #8 of BH. The volume - to weight can change with each lot number up to lot #30. From lot #30 and forward the weight is suppose to stay the same.

This table shows the results I am have throwing by volume and then weighed.

Back to the shooting! It was a very successful trip! 1 bullet - 1 Heart!!! The decision has been made... this rifle this bullet for rifle season is going to meet a Whitetail.

If you might be interested this is the Ballistic Calculation for this bullet.

 

[Ol’ Cheebs]

Sabotloader, I’ve been catching up on your posts and you’ve obviously spent a good bit of time with the muzzleloaders, I’ve already got a few great tips from your posts.
About to get my first smokeless in my hands, I am probably going to start with Pittman bullets because that’s what the crew I’m most familiar with is using.
But with these Leihighs? Are you just going one pass through the sizer?

 

[sabotloader]

Sabotloader, I’ve been catching up on your posts and you’ve obviously spent a good bit of time with the muzzleloaders, I’ve already got a few great tips from your posts.
About to get my first smokeless in my hands, I am probably going to start with Pittman bullets because that’s what the crew I’m most familiar with is using.
But with these Leihighs? Are you just going one pass through the sizer?

You know if you are getting a smokeless it may be built on a 45-70 barrel and sizing my not be necessary at all. Al it may take to start the bullet is a stiff pop with a short starter to get it through the crown and then down the barrel with the gun rod.

Yes, one pass. You really are not resizing the whole bullet, just the "drive barbs" around the bullet. The body of the bullet is turned small enough that it will not need resizing. The cup on the bottom of the bullet on ignition will expand out the riflings and capture the gas behind it.

The Pitmans are a lead copper bullet with a very thing layer of copper around the bullet. They do size fairly easily.