Cav1
Well-known member
1989: I celebrate my 21st birthday by buying in pawn shops outside of Fort Knox, KY a real Dirty Harry 6-inch blued Model 29 .44 Magnum revolver and a 1911A1-ish (Colt slide on a Spanish frame) .45 automatic. Oh sure, I might have had a couple of .22 revolvers before that, but they didn't count as real guns. I have had the Smith and the Colt(ish) ever since.
In all that time I didn't shoot the 6-inch S&W Model 29, and later a 4-inch 629, in double action hardly at all. It was all, later including a pistol scope, mulie and whitetail hunting in weapons restricted areas, deliberately aimed single-action shooting. The only time I shot the 4-inch 629 for keeps and on double-action was while fishing in rattlesnake country. I gotta say those CCI .44 Mag shot loads are about like hitting a snake with a .410 shotgun at 6-10 foot range. But when I started hunting the Unlimited Bighorn districts in Montana (just a big blank spot on the map marked "Here there be dragons.") what with all the grizzly bears that infest that country, and their mistaken belief about their real position in the foodchain after 60 years of Federal protection, I figured I should get serious about shooting my double-action Smith .44 revolvers.
I went right to the source, or Force, and consulted the Jedi of the Sixgun: Elmer Keith, Bill Jordan, Ed McGivern. I worked on this for about a half a year. I did thousands of dry-fire drills, with Snap-Caps, often with a dime balanced on the barrel flat. I went through many hundreds of Bill Jordan's short-range wax-wad loads (.44 Special case, primer hole drilled out, with just a large primer and a wad of parrafin wax pressed into the neck). Not to mention a whole lot of live ammo, mostly reloads but some factory bear fodder like the Federal and Buffalo Bore hardcast. I eventually came to the conclusion that I could shoot a double-action revolver accurately (single-action) or fast (double-action), but not both. Every now and again I would turn in an absolutely fabulous fast double-action group, but it took a lot of work and I couldn't do it consistently or at will. I still wonder why US law enforcement clung to the double-action revolver up into the 80's when we had John Moses Browning's masterpiece since 1911. See Stephen Hunter's American Gunfight. I think the real answer lies in that there are so many gun ignorant folks who are just horrified by a 1911 carried cocked and locked, as it should be. That hammer being back just looks so dangerous, never mind the two separate safeties. Anyway, one day after a particularly bad performance with the 4-inch 629, I brought out the old Colt 1911A1 and put nine rounds (8-round Wilson mags) into an excellent group in much less time than I could fire a bad 6-shot group with the Smith.
Well, that got me looking into the .45 Super. Eventually, I bought and did all the modifications to a Remington R-1 1911, including a muzzle brake, and had a great deal of fun getting my Rim Rock 250-grain hardcast RNFP .45 Super loads up to 1,120 fps, as hot as I wanted to go in a 1911. As much as it pains me to admit it, you can go hotter in "Tactical Tupperware", aka the Glock, with .45 Super brass and the Glock's supported barrel.
As much fun as I had with the .45 Super, and I loaded the hell out of it for about a year, the .460 Rowland still piqued my interest. The same bullet at 1,300 fps. Eventually, I broke down and bought a Kimber 6-inch Longslide in .460 Rowland. My timing was worse than usual, i.e. I bought it right after the 2020 election and just as the Great Biden Guns & Ammo Famine began. Rowland was having a hard time finding a Kimber Longslide to convert. Hell, I had my .308" 212-grain Hornday ELD-Xs back-ordered for well over a year to get them. It got considerably harder for Rowland when Kimber (wisely and good for them!) moved their whole pistol works from heavily-regulated and taxed anti-gun New York state to "We love guns! Ya'll come on in!" Alabama. So, it took a bit longer than any of us hoped for me to get my Longslide .460, but I finally did.
I've had it for a couple of months now and I'm happy as a gopher in soft dirt with it, although I do need to get the taller Kimber front sight. I mean, it was meant for a .45 ACP at 830 fps, so even with the rear sight bottomed out I'm about 3 inches high at 25 yards with 250-grain factory ammo. The Rowland factory ammo is advertised as 1,250 fps on the box, but out of that 6-inch Longslide the first ten rounds averaged 1,290 fps. I've been working mainly on Rim Rock 250-grain RNFP loads and some of their 255-grain "Keith" hardcast SWCs with Power Pistol, which works great in the .45 Super as well as the .460 Rowland, and with Accurate #7. The latter is supposed to be a low-flash powder so you don't dazzle yourself with your own muzzle blast if Mr. Griz comes into camp at oh-dark-thirty. Got some really nice groups around 2" at 25 yards with AA#7; now just chasing velocity to see if the groups hold up beyond 1,200 fps. The Rowland and Buffalo .460 bear loads note that they use low-flash powder. The .460 Rowland case is only like 1mm longer than a .45 ACP, just so you can't chamber it in Grandpa's old Postal Guard Colt 1911, but with pistol loads even a few tenths of a grain can make quite a difference. I also got some Hunter's 275-grain hardcast flatpoints I've started to load. There are guys who've loaded 300-grain Beartooth hardcast in the .460 Rowland.
All I can say is I'm pretty happy with the whole set-up so far. After the first range session, I did replace the Kimber's rosewood grips with wrap-around rubber Hogue grips. You are aware you're firing a pistol with considerably more snort to it than a .45 ACP, but the the extra meat and length of the Longslide makes everything work well and you're back on target pretty quick. If you convert a standard 5-inch 1911, a muzzle brake is pretty much mandatory. The Kimber Longslide is actually the same overall length as my .45 Super-modded R-1 with its brake.
Finding a holster for a 6-inch 1911 was problematic. I'm not a leather worker, nor do I play one on television, but I was able to buy some leather scraps from a local saddle-maker and, using a pattern I found on-line, make a modified M1916 style USGI holster with just my Awl for Awl. I wanted it in drop-leg length so it would always be one me, on my belt, at least as long as I have pants on anyway, and not on my pack or web gear when I needed it. I also wanted a full-flap USGI rig. In the mountains, weapon retention is my number one priority, plus open-topped holsters tend to end up full of pine needles and dirt and shit. It wasn't strictly necessary, but Volkommen Enterprises up in Great Falls makes a U.S. military cartouche leather stamp as well as a crossed-saber emblem than an old 19D could not pass up. FWIW, I finally figured out the strap that does around the leg on a drop-leg style holster shoulder be secured at a high level on the back of the holster, as with the M1912/M1916 GI patterns. If it's secured too low, it ends up slipping down below your knee while you're walking, and that's a PITA.
I ain't saying it's perfect or quite a potent as a 300-grain .44 Magnum, but it's really done good by me so far. I would rather put eight 250-grain bullets right where I want them than six 300-grain slugs spread out all over the place like a shotgun pattern. A factory .460 Buffalo Bore 255-grain hardcast RNFP at 1,300 fps still delivers about 957 foot-pounds of energy and just scratches about 21 on John "Pondoro" Taylor's Knock-Out scale. It's hard to believe, but Elmer Keith and Ray Chandler and others proved that a big, heavy, hardcast Keith-style pistol bullet like this, even from the elderly .45 Long Colt, will penetrate deeper into the thick hide, ropes of muscle, and heavy bones of a grizzly bear at 25 yards than any of the high-stepping .300 Magnum rifle cartridges, mainly because at these minimal self-defense ranges the Magnum rifle bullets are just moving too fast for their bullet jacket design to hold up and retain mass and momentum.
The big, solid, hardcast pistol bullets deliver at these short ranges. You don't want a hollowpoint; that's for frail 2-legged varmints. When Remington first introduced the truncated cone Yellow Jacket high velocity .22 hollowpoint, we shot raccoons between the eyes only to have them hit the ground fighting the dogs. The hollowpoints often mushroomed inside the hide but outside the skull. If you farm hogs, an injured one will be torn apart by the healthy ones. Once, one of my Dad's feeder pigs nearing 250 pounds broke its leg somehow. To put it down, I grabbed a 2-inch snubbie .38 Special Smith I had in my truck. I shot that hog at about 10-15 feet range, right between the eyes, with a 125-grain JHP factory load. It ran away squealing. Dad had to put it down with a .22 LR right behind the eat. So, when it comes to large, ornery critters, big, heavy, fat, solid, hardcast pistol boolits good, big, heavy, fat, solid hardcast pistol boolits our friend.
No matter how you slice it, though, just like a Dirty Harry N-frame hogleg or the even more massive big bore .460 or .500 Smiths these days, even a .460 1911A1 is still another 2-1/2 pounds to schlep around. But you never heard any real complaints about the .45 ACP, no matter how heavy, from WWII or Korea.
I just thought I would share my experience, FWIW, for those who always wished there was an alternative to the double-action big-bore revolver. I once ran into a guy carrying a 10-inch, scoped S&W .500 Mag on its own sling. If your pistol requires a sling rather than a holster, it's not really a "handgun" anymore and you might as well just carry a big-bore carbine.
In all that time I didn't shoot the 6-inch S&W Model 29, and later a 4-inch 629, in double action hardly at all. It was all, later including a pistol scope, mulie and whitetail hunting in weapons restricted areas, deliberately aimed single-action shooting. The only time I shot the 4-inch 629 for keeps and on double-action was while fishing in rattlesnake country. I gotta say those CCI .44 Mag shot loads are about like hitting a snake with a .410 shotgun at 6-10 foot range. But when I started hunting the Unlimited Bighorn districts in Montana (just a big blank spot on the map marked "Here there be dragons.") what with all the grizzly bears that infest that country, and their mistaken belief about their real position in the foodchain after 60 years of Federal protection, I figured I should get serious about shooting my double-action Smith .44 revolvers.
I went right to the source, or Force, and consulted the Jedi of the Sixgun: Elmer Keith, Bill Jordan, Ed McGivern. I worked on this for about a half a year. I did thousands of dry-fire drills, with Snap-Caps, often with a dime balanced on the barrel flat. I went through many hundreds of Bill Jordan's short-range wax-wad loads (.44 Special case, primer hole drilled out, with just a large primer and a wad of parrafin wax pressed into the neck). Not to mention a whole lot of live ammo, mostly reloads but some factory bear fodder like the Federal and Buffalo Bore hardcast. I eventually came to the conclusion that I could shoot a double-action revolver accurately (single-action) or fast (double-action), but not both. Every now and again I would turn in an absolutely fabulous fast double-action group, but it took a lot of work and I couldn't do it consistently or at will. I still wonder why US law enforcement clung to the double-action revolver up into the 80's when we had John Moses Browning's masterpiece since 1911. See Stephen Hunter's American Gunfight. I think the real answer lies in that there are so many gun ignorant folks who are just horrified by a 1911 carried cocked and locked, as it should be. That hammer being back just looks so dangerous, never mind the two separate safeties. Anyway, one day after a particularly bad performance with the 4-inch 629, I brought out the old Colt 1911A1 and put nine rounds (8-round Wilson mags) into an excellent group in much less time than I could fire a bad 6-shot group with the Smith.
Well, that got me looking into the .45 Super. Eventually, I bought and did all the modifications to a Remington R-1 1911, including a muzzle brake, and had a great deal of fun getting my Rim Rock 250-grain hardcast RNFP .45 Super loads up to 1,120 fps, as hot as I wanted to go in a 1911. As much as it pains me to admit it, you can go hotter in "Tactical Tupperware", aka the Glock, with .45 Super brass and the Glock's supported barrel.
As much fun as I had with the .45 Super, and I loaded the hell out of it for about a year, the .460 Rowland still piqued my interest. The same bullet at 1,300 fps. Eventually, I broke down and bought a Kimber 6-inch Longslide in .460 Rowland. My timing was worse than usual, i.e. I bought it right after the 2020 election and just as the Great Biden Guns & Ammo Famine began. Rowland was having a hard time finding a Kimber Longslide to convert. Hell, I had my .308" 212-grain Hornday ELD-Xs back-ordered for well over a year to get them. It got considerably harder for Rowland when Kimber (wisely and good for them!) moved their whole pistol works from heavily-regulated and taxed anti-gun New York state to "We love guns! Ya'll come on in!" Alabama. So, it took a bit longer than any of us hoped for me to get my Longslide .460, but I finally did.
I've had it for a couple of months now and I'm happy as a gopher in soft dirt with it, although I do need to get the taller Kimber front sight. I mean, it was meant for a .45 ACP at 830 fps, so even with the rear sight bottomed out I'm about 3 inches high at 25 yards with 250-grain factory ammo. The Rowland factory ammo is advertised as 1,250 fps on the box, but out of that 6-inch Longslide the first ten rounds averaged 1,290 fps. I've been working mainly on Rim Rock 250-grain RNFP loads and some of their 255-grain "Keith" hardcast SWCs with Power Pistol, which works great in the .45 Super as well as the .460 Rowland, and with Accurate #7. The latter is supposed to be a low-flash powder so you don't dazzle yourself with your own muzzle blast if Mr. Griz comes into camp at oh-dark-thirty. Got some really nice groups around 2" at 25 yards with AA#7; now just chasing velocity to see if the groups hold up beyond 1,200 fps. The Rowland and Buffalo .460 bear loads note that they use low-flash powder. The .460 Rowland case is only like 1mm longer than a .45 ACP, just so you can't chamber it in Grandpa's old Postal Guard Colt 1911, but with pistol loads even a few tenths of a grain can make quite a difference. I also got some Hunter's 275-grain hardcast flatpoints I've started to load. There are guys who've loaded 300-grain Beartooth hardcast in the .460 Rowland.
All I can say is I'm pretty happy with the whole set-up so far. After the first range session, I did replace the Kimber's rosewood grips with wrap-around rubber Hogue grips. You are aware you're firing a pistol with considerably more snort to it than a .45 ACP, but the the extra meat and length of the Longslide makes everything work well and you're back on target pretty quick. If you convert a standard 5-inch 1911, a muzzle brake is pretty much mandatory. The Kimber Longslide is actually the same overall length as my .45 Super-modded R-1 with its brake.
Finding a holster for a 6-inch 1911 was problematic. I'm not a leather worker, nor do I play one on television, but I was able to buy some leather scraps from a local saddle-maker and, using a pattern I found on-line, make a modified M1916 style USGI holster with just my Awl for Awl. I wanted it in drop-leg length so it would always be one me, on my belt, at least as long as I have pants on anyway, and not on my pack or web gear when I needed it. I also wanted a full-flap USGI rig. In the mountains, weapon retention is my number one priority, plus open-topped holsters tend to end up full of pine needles and dirt and shit. It wasn't strictly necessary, but Volkommen Enterprises up in Great Falls makes a U.S. military cartouche leather stamp as well as a crossed-saber emblem than an old 19D could not pass up. FWIW, I finally figured out the strap that does around the leg on a drop-leg style holster shoulder be secured at a high level on the back of the holster, as with the M1912/M1916 GI patterns. If it's secured too low, it ends up slipping down below your knee while you're walking, and that's a PITA.
I ain't saying it's perfect or quite a potent as a 300-grain .44 Magnum, but it's really done good by me so far. I would rather put eight 250-grain bullets right where I want them than six 300-grain slugs spread out all over the place like a shotgun pattern. A factory .460 Buffalo Bore 255-grain hardcast RNFP at 1,300 fps still delivers about 957 foot-pounds of energy and just scratches about 21 on John "Pondoro" Taylor's Knock-Out scale. It's hard to believe, but Elmer Keith and Ray Chandler and others proved that a big, heavy, hardcast Keith-style pistol bullet like this, even from the elderly .45 Long Colt, will penetrate deeper into the thick hide, ropes of muscle, and heavy bones of a grizzly bear at 25 yards than any of the high-stepping .300 Magnum rifle cartridges, mainly because at these minimal self-defense ranges the Magnum rifle bullets are just moving too fast for their bullet jacket design to hold up and retain mass and momentum.
The big, solid, hardcast pistol bullets deliver at these short ranges. You don't want a hollowpoint; that's for frail 2-legged varmints. When Remington first introduced the truncated cone Yellow Jacket high velocity .22 hollowpoint, we shot raccoons between the eyes only to have them hit the ground fighting the dogs. The hollowpoints often mushroomed inside the hide but outside the skull. If you farm hogs, an injured one will be torn apart by the healthy ones. Once, one of my Dad's feeder pigs nearing 250 pounds broke its leg somehow. To put it down, I grabbed a 2-inch snubbie .38 Special Smith I had in my truck. I shot that hog at about 10-15 feet range, right between the eyes, with a 125-grain JHP factory load. It ran away squealing. Dad had to put it down with a .22 LR right behind the eat. So, when it comes to large, ornery critters, big, heavy, fat, solid, hardcast pistol boolits good, big, heavy, fat, solid hardcast pistol boolits our friend.
No matter how you slice it, though, just like a Dirty Harry N-frame hogleg or the even more massive big bore .460 or .500 Smiths these days, even a .460 1911A1 is still another 2-1/2 pounds to schlep around. But you never heard any real complaints about the .45 ACP, no matter how heavy, from WWII or Korea.
I just thought I would share my experience, FWIW, for those who always wished there was an alternative to the double-action big-bore revolver. I once ran into a guy carrying a 10-inch, scoped S&W .500 Mag on its own sling. If your pistol requires a sling rather than a holster, it's not really a "handgun" anymore and you might as well just carry a big-bore carbine.
is a quality post!
