Range day today. Tested .455 ammo 1915 S&W Hand Ejector which had been arsenal rechambered in 1944 to .45 Colt. Ordinary .455 ammo shoots well in the .45 Colt chambers. Shoots to sights. Normal accuracy. Velocity not significantly different than my 1914 Colt New Service .455 Eley. WW2-era WRA .45. Colt was low and left to sights. Plan is to.use .455" ammo as primary and .45 Colt only as expedient.
73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia
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Is the bullet diameter actually .455" in .455 Eley or are they hollow base and slug up in original ammo?
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Good question! Current Fiocchi .455 MkII in black boxes and smooth sided bullets with black polymer coating has a shallow dished base and is .454 diameter. Older Fiocchi in blue and gray boxes are plain lead with knurled grooves filled with grease and a deep hollow base. Diameter is .451 and bullets are dead-soft. Hornady bullets are .452 and have a conical base cavity like .45 Colt factory conical. Canadian DC44 .455 MkVI FMJs are .452 and have a deep hollow base cavity the same shape as the bullet nose and about 10mm deep.
73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia
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A lot of this is because the original Webley and Webley & Scott had cylinder throats of 0.448" + a couple of thousandths. Of the many Webley Mk2's, Mk4's and Mk6's I measured the cylinders, none were ever over .451". Maybe because the cartridges were so small right in front of the case mouth, but I don't know.
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Tight cylinder throats were to aid complete combustion early smokeless powders. No longer needed today. When my 1914 Webley MkVI had cylinder throats uniformed and enlarged to 0.4555 or .001 over groove diameter it cut group size in half with correct bullets which fit.
73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia
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I recently picked up a bullet mold for my Colt new service that was converted from .455 to .45 Colt. It
casts a 240 gr. hbwc from a 20 to 1 mix. It measures .453 as cast. I hopefully will give these a try this weekend.
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Postwar Kynoch commercial .455 FMJs are .454+, this example dates from 1957.
Deep hollow base like wartime ammo.
73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia
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Velocity data: B-C gap of "Pocket Blaster" is 0.005" with .451 groove diameter Douglas barrel. Colt New Service 5-1/2" .455 Eley is .454 groove with gap 0.007" S&W HE is .455 rechambered to .45 Colt.
.............455""Pocket Blaster" 3-1/2"...455.NS 5-1/2".......S&W HE" rechambered .
CIL 455 Colt...724 fps, 19Sd..................741 fps, 11 Sd......741 fps, 16 Sd ..
Fiocchi MkII.......649, 25.........................685, 27..................656, 19
Hdy MkII............592, 9...........................613, 8..................583, 15....
Cdn DC44........678, 33......................644, 25..............615, 15
WRA .45 Colt 255 grain conical, WW2 era...............829, 15
73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia
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John Carlson
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linoww
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drone
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Bud Hyett
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beltfed
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Lucky1
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RicinYakima
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MP1886
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Aaron
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Premod70
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