Cast .45 Rifle Questions

[adamsredlines]

Alrighty kiddos, I acquired a decent lot of reloading stuff a few years ago and in it was some molds for .45 cal rifle stuff and a few sizing dies.
My understanding is rifle .45 is .458.
The molds are .457, .459 and .460 and the sizing dies are .457 and .460
I know the "right answer" is to slug my barrel...but ya dont slug it for factory off the shelf stuff so whats the rule of thumb here?

My thought is .457 would possibly lead the barrel and that maybe the .458 I see is for jacketed stuff, and lead stuff will be a tad bigger so maybe .460?

Lastly, there were a few tubs of bullets that were already cast. Would you send them through the sizer and run it...or do those go to scrap to get melted down?

He had 3 different Lee molds and 3 different Lyman molds in this lot too so there's some variety here.
The only thing I have to shoot this through is a Browning 1886...so I'd rather not mess that thing up.

 

[GUN DOG]

I would size them 460 beautiful rifle
Measure the the pre cast and if there less than 460 throw them back in the pot
Surprised not a 459 sizer

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

 

[Okie4570]

Slug it. There's a reason someone would order a .460 for a .458 imo. What grain bullets are the molds?

 

[adamsredlines]

 

[adamsredlines]

This guy liked .45 stuff, there was also some jacketed Barnes and Hornady 300gr .458.
I looked it up and you can load those into the Lott to something like just over 3100 FPS

 

[Okie4570]

Those are some good ones. What alloy are you going to use? That will determine what velocities you can go up to if that’s a priority, won't matter if you're just wanting to plink and kill paper.

 

[adamsredlines]

Honestly for the ones that are cast, being unknown I'd just load them light to have something to goof around with.
With my '86 I'm not interested in hotrodding anything. I dont even know if I'll ever mold anything, I was more just curious about using the ones that are already molded but there's so much unknown on them I dont know if its a bad idea, or if it'll be fine if I size them and load them light.

From the '86 I prefer to shoot a traditional 405gr load but I always loaded up stuff that was .459 and lubed already.
I bought these specifically for a traditional load.

 

[adamsredlines]

In the same lot with all the other stuff were these. I think they're pretty good looking! Kinda oldschool with a hint of modern.

 

[adamsredlines]

I guess for shits and giggles...I'll tell ya.
A buddy called, his coworker had a family member pass who had reloading stuff. The coworker had zero interest in it, and my buddy is strictly a shotgun guy so I got the call. Ended up being 2 totes worth of stuff (projectiles, powders, primers, dies, molds, etc) and they just wanted it gone so I've just had this stuff stashed away for a while. It was all .458 and .308 stuff so that fit nicely in with what I like and cant beat free!

 

[Okie4570]

Free is always fantastic!