The 450 gettin ready for this year

Its a custom. SSK Barrel, brake and mounts. Tony Gettle stocks. Lots of hand work. Badly beating the 45-70. New powders to try soon. It wil now break the 4000 ft lbs. barrier in a handgun. Really fun to shoot.
Thanks! That is such a cool pistol.
 
So far with RL7 using 300 grain Partitions and 300 Grain Sierras. We pushed it (pressure testing ) all the way to 43,000 PSI. At the top end it gets velocity all out of proportion to its capacity. The new 1200-E is going to beat that.
 
FYI the load I am shooting right now in the .450 uses 56.5 grains of H322 with a 210M primer. It chronographs 2030 fps. No need to go the 2400 FPS on deer.
 
I think a bit of explanation is in order. I was in on the ground floor with the heavy bullet pressure testing when the .450 was in its infancy. Some of you gentlemen probably remember my posts on marlinowners. One limiting factor was overall length in the leveraction. One huge factor was safely going to 43,500 PSI. When I started planning this gun OAL was one of the consideratons. Since I don't have the same limit I can utilize some bullets that were designed for the Ruger #1 45-70 and .458 WIn Mag. It goes from there to a powder column thing. With some of the bullets that are designed to work at OAL too long for the leverguns it opens up as much as 18 grains of capacity. Couple a longer burn time with some powders and the 43,500 ceiling it is pretty easy to see how it works. This was one of the reasons for going to the .450 instead of the .458. The powder column rivals the .458 with powders more in line with burn rates. The .450 burns a higher percentage of its powder than the .458 in 15" barrels. That said the .458 can outperform it but not nearly as much as you would think because even with the closest powders availible the .458 still spits out a lot of unburnt powder in the shorter barrel. This little pistol with RL7 and 1200-R makes power all out of proportion to its size.
 
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