HELP!! 454 Loads

instrumentofwar

Alright, it was a fairly good day until the end.

Got loads chrony'ed with my 300WSM, 45-70, and a few with the 454.

A few problems with the 454 reading since the muzzle blast from a 2&1/2" barrel is pretty awesome. One thing that I noticed, however, was that there seemed to be an extremely large amount of un-burnt powder in just about all of my 300gr loads. These were by no means hot loads. I even had several good primer strikes with no discharge. Not sure what was up with that, as when I tried them again they fired right off.

I will say that I'll never start off with a "starting" load from Lyman. This gun can handle some pressure, I am not going to start off max, but I had a bullet stuck in the barrel out of my 300 gr batch!!

Anyway, my main question is wehter I should be worried about all of the unburnt powder, and what may be causing it.

mrbruce

A really good tight crimp helps a lot in complete combustion when working with the 454 Casull.
It could also be a primer problem unless your using the recommended Remington 7 1/2's for it.
You should be using W-296 or H-110 powder in it too with 300 grain bullets and up.........

Gun control is hitting what your aiming at.

instrumentofwar

The 300 loads-
300 gr LFN/GC LBT
IMR4227
CCI 450

I'll have to try a heavier crimp, I'm using the Lee factory Crimp, but it was not set for a HEAVY crimp.

Thanks

bpost

You need to hold the bullet back until the ignition of the powder becomes self sustaining. A short barrel,coupled with slow powder is not an efficent combination. It's like a charcoal fire, if one or two bricks are lit it takes forever to get it all going. If you get a little edge lit on a lot of them it propagates across the whole pile must faster. Same with powder, it has to have dwell time to get lit. If the bullet is already moving and a short barrel is involved then darn few grains get time to burn before the bullet is gone.

lowelc

Maybe a little late but I am new to the forum. I pwesonally use W-296 in my Casull. I do have the 7 1/2" barrel but even with the shorter barrel the 296 is a relatively fast burning powder and should work fine. I have had some problems with CCI primers lately, especially in large rifle loads. I have gone to Federal primers but you do have to REDUCE to load with Federal primerd. Back off about 1 or 1 1/2 graing and try the Federal primers. CCI makes some very good primers which I have used for years, and in the Casull, I even went to the match grade primer to get a very consistent ignition.

Just a thought from my experience

lowelc

P.S.

They have to have a very heavy crimp!! I took mine to the point of almost colapsing the cases and then backed off just a bit.