In the mid-1920’s, Elmer Keith was experimenting with various
cast bullet designs using experimental moulds that he had commissioned Belding
and Mull to cut for him. In 1928, he refined his ideas and took these new
designs to the Lyman Gun Sight Corporation for them to manufacture as a part of
their Ideal Bullet Mould line (Lyman had just bought Ideal 3 years before in
1925). Thus was born the Ideal 429421 and the concept of what would later become
known as the Keith semi-wadcutter (SWC). A landmark in terms of handgun bullet
design had been firmly cemented in place. The .44 Special Keith SWC was quickly
followed by the 452423 (for the .45 ACP and .45 Auto-Rim), the 454424 (for the
.45 Colt) and the 358429 (for the .38 Special). Each of these bullets was found
to be an excellent all-round bullet for target work, plinking and hunting. Keith
suggested that if additional shock were desired, his designs could be easily
hollow-pointed for rapid expansion and more devastating wound channels. Shortly
thereafter (in the early 1930‘s), Harold Croft and Capt. Frank Frisbie ordered
the first hollow-point version of the 358429 (the HP version was given it's own
number designation of 358439). This bullet design proved to be so successful,
that Elmer went back and had HP versions made for all of his SWC designs. He
ultimately settled on an alloy of 16 parts lead to 1 part tin for these cast
HP’s (BHN = 11), and a muzzle velocity of 1200 fps for the .44 Special and the
.38/44 Heavy Duty, and 1100 fps for the .45 Colt. Another landmark was
established. The Keith HP’s were, and still are, exceptional performers when the
moulded metal hits the meat.
Now let’s fast forward to the early 1960’s -- Elmer had been
lobbying the firearms industry (along with Bill Jordan) for a .40-.41 caliber
duty revolver for law enforcement personnel. The industry responded with the .41
Magnum in 1964, with S&W producing the guns on their N-frame, and Remington
manufacturing the ammunition. Lyman immediately jumped onto the .41 bandwagon ,
advertising their new “.41 Keith SWC”, the Lyman 410459. There was only one
problem -- Elmer Keith didn’t design the Lyman bullet, he didn’t particularly
care for the design, and he didn‘t like his name being used to sell something
that he had played no part in developing. Lyman had made the 410459 more
aerodynamically streamlined by elongating the nose and making the meplat
smaller, and they used a radiused grease groove to insure that bullets would
drop from the moulds easily. Keith didn’t like these features; he liked a large
meplat to create open wound channels and a “square-cut” grease groove to hold
more bullet lube. While he grudgingly admitted that the 410459 was an accurate
bullet design, it was just not right (in his eyes), and it certainly was not a
Keith. He turned to Hensley & Gibbs to capture the concept of the .41 Keith SWC
in metal -- 3 equal width driving bands, a broad meplat, a radiused ogive,
beveled crimp groove, and a square-cut lube groove. The result was the 220 grain
H&G # 258. SAECO soon followed suit with a similar design. In Keith’s eyes, the
.41 Magnum was now properly endowed.
Handgun hunting has come a long, long ways since the .41 Magnum
made its debut in 1964. Various “fashion trends” have come and gone over the
years, whether light bullets driven ultra-fast or hard-cast heavyweights at more
moderate velocities, the aim always seems to be taking some parameter to
extremes, whether muzzle velocity or bullet weight. Each of these approaches has
value to the handgun hunter, but neither is a “Universal Truth”. The concept of
matching the bullet to the game is just as important today as it has always been
(read that sentence again). Just because the SSK .44 320 grain FP has proven
itself capable of cleanly killing elephant and Cape Buffalo, doesn’t mean that
it’s an optimum choice for smaller animals like pronghorn antelope; it’s
designed for maximum penetration through thick skin and heavy bone and leaves a
deep, narrow wound channel. In a 125 lb. antelope, a hard-cast heavyweight just
doesn’t do that much damage before it runs out of antelope to do damage on and
simply exits the far side. The hard-cast heavyweights are better suited to
larger animals (elk and up) where 4+ feet of penetration are needed to go
through the vital organs, inducing hemorrhage throughout the entire length of
the wound channel. For deer/antelope sized game, the hunter only needs 14-15
inches of penetration to make it through the vitals, and so to maximize
hemorrhage it is to the hunter’s advantage to use an expanding bullet to make
this short wound channel as wide as possible. Yes, complete penetration is a
good thing, and an exit wound is always desirable, but it doesn’t take a 300+
grain hard-cast solid to punch through a deer! All that excess bullet weight
comes at the cost of velocity, which is precisely what drives expansion, and
expansion is what makes wound channels wider. After many decades of development,
today’s commercially available JHP’s provide the handgun hunter with useful
controlled expansion at typical magnum revolver velocities. For the record, the
Keith HP’s were providing this level of performance before there were any Magnum
revolvers, and long before the intricacies of joining dissimilar metals into a JHP that would expand reliably without flying apart were understood. When the
.357 and .44 Magnum revolvers made their appearance, the Keith HP’s found
another natural home, the 358439 as a varmint bullet and the 429421 HP for
medium game.
The .41 Magnum would be equally well-served by such a cast HP.
The only problem is, I had looked for a HP mould that would be suitable for the
.41 Magnum and never even found mention of one. So I resolved to make one.
First, a single-cavity Lyman 410459 was located and obtained. A little lathe
work converted this mould to cast HP bullets (this conversion will be covered in
greater detail in a forthcoming book).
The HP cavity was made roughly the same size as those found on
the 358439 and 429421 HP so the expansion properties of this new HP would be
midway between these two bullets, since the wall thickness surrounding the HP
cavity would be intermediate between the two.
The 358439 is an explosive varmint bullet and the 429421 HP
delivers more controlled expansion (of course, both of these properties are
dependant on the alloy the bullet is cast with, and the velocity that the bullet
is delivered with). Thus the 410459 HP was anticipated to provide rapid, but not
explosive expansion at magnum revolver velocities. In other words, excellent
performance for deer and antelope sized game.
The bullets drop from this mould at 208 grains when cast with WW alloy +
2% tin (BHN = 11 on my LBT hardness tester). Tin is very important
to cast HP’s as it helps to attenuate the brittleness induced by the
phase segregation of the roughly 3% antimony carried in the alloy.
Loaded on top of 21.0 grains of W296 and sparked with a CCI 350
primer they deliver 1320 fps from a 6 ½” S&W 657 Classic Hunter.
This is a very flat-shooting and accurate load
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41 Rem Mag &
Lyman 410459 now a HP. |
I had drawn a doe tag in our unit on the Snake River in eastern
Washington, and figured this would provide an excellent opportunity to evaluate
the 410459 HP in the hunting fields. Opening Day leaked into the eastern horizon
gray, colorless and crisp. Slowly the orange hues of sunrise crept into the sky
with the stealth of a bullsnake stalking a terrified mouse. In the pre-dawn
darkness I worked my way into one of my favorite basalt encrusted canyons, to an
outcrop that I have come to know well over the years. As the pre-dawn light
levels rose, I spotted 3 bucks feeding across from me, about a quarter of a mile
down canyon. A couple hundred yards above them were a father/son team, and from
his hand gestures and whispered insights I could tell the father was giving his
12 year-old son his introduction to the art of deer hunting. We have a
three-point minimum here in Washington, and as near as I could tell in the gray
haze of pre-dawn one of these bucks was legal, but the other two were forkhorns.
To tell the truth, I was having as much fun watching the father teach his son as
I was having watching the bucks. About 20 minutes later, a single well-placed
shot from the boy’s rifle folded the distant 3-point in his tracks. Patience,
persistence and precise shot placement, what an outstanding recipe for a young
man’s first buck! Opening Day was off to an excellent start!
As they field dressed the buck and started to pack out the front
quarters, an average sized mulie doe (about 160 lbs.) and her yearling worked
around the nose of the canyon and slipped in quietly below me. I quietly thumbed
the hammer back on the S&W 657 Classic Hunter .41 Magnum, and tracked the doe
with the black on black sights as she trotted from my right to left. About 50
yards in front of me she sensed danger and skidded to a halt in order to
evaluate her new surroundings. The front sight blade settled in behind her
shoulder and the .41 Magnum spoke. She launched herself downhill in that lunge
so typical of a heart-shot animal, then turned to her left and circled tightly
back around to the spot where I shot her and collapsed. She covered no more than
20 yards in her last dash. The 410459 HP entered just behind her left shoulder,
about halfway up. It angled forward and down, exiting low in the point of the
right shoulder. Expansion was positive. The 410459 HP had shredded the forward
third of both lungs and punched through the heart. The bloodshot tissue in the
lungs was approximately 6” in diameter. The exit hole inside the off-side
ribcage was the size of a quarter. The exit wound in the right shoulder was
roughly a .50 caliber hole. In short, the bullet had performed precisely as
hoped, expanding smoothly and punching all the way through. Now it was my turn
to field dress and pack my animal out of those rocky Snake River canyons. As I
was loading the hindquarters into my pack-frame I had a nice chat with the
father across the canyon as he packed up his son's second load. He was
rightfully proud of his son’s performance on his first buck, and I extended my
congratulations, as well as my commendation on his teaching skills. It was a
fine morning indeed!
The 410459 SWC isn’t truly a Keith, and there are several things
about it that Elmer just flat didn’t like. But Elmer very much liked cast HP’s
for hunting deer-sized game, and the 410459 HP lives up to his vision quite
nicely. At 208 grains it carries adequate weight to punch through deer-sized
critters. The long skinny nose makes for an aerodynamic, flat-shooting bullet,
and what the 410459 HP lacks in terms of meplat, it makes up for in terms of
expansion. I wonder what Elmer would say about the 410459 HP?
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