Excuse me if this subject has been beat to death.

Though I own/shoot very many 45 LC's, 45 Super & 460 S&W I have only taken two animals with them. That was Remington Express 255 gr SWC's. I purchased some Laser-Cast LFNRP for my 45 Super, the meplat is small for a 45 slug.

Question is: Is there some inherent magic in the Keith style bullets? I have been reading up on 45 caliber lead hard cast & must admit I am somehow lured by the time honored Keith bullet. On the practical side, it would seem to me that meplat diameter is the key to the best choices.

What's your opinion?

No magic, just tradition

Still like the Keith bullets but use a lot of LBT style bullets for larger/heavier built critters and jacketed bullets for the deer and such. Have had better luck with blood trails personally with jacketed on the lighter animals. Also have been playing with softer alloy hollow point slugs in the 44, 45, and 475 calibers. They are awesome so far. Sort of like having the best of both worlds in one bullet. Get the initial "splash" from the expansion and you have over 2/3 of the bullet intact for a wadcutter shaped slug to penetrate if the nose should shear off. With the allow hardness matched to the velocity, its devastating. Just loaded a few boxes of soft 44 Keith from the HG503 HP mold from Miha this weekend for the 44 special and will do more this week for the 44 magnum.

Reloder,

Welcome to the fray, here. As Glenn pointed out, the Keith was an improvement over what was available at the time. Depending on how much time you have spent on cast bullets on the various forums, you can get a argument that the LBT style bullet improves upon the Keith design.

The 250 you have from Lasercast is really neither. You are correct, the meplat is more on the small side. They will penetrate for days, but that design is more of the traditional "cowboy" shape. I think the mold is a Magma style/brand, that is very popular as it molds well and is easy to make.

If you really want to get into the weeds, most folks would say many of the Keith's that you can buy are not true Keith design down to the penny, and that many of the LBT style bullets are not dead true to Veral Smith's LBT design.

I had an interesting email from the owner of Rim Rock bullets. They make a number of "almost" Keith bullets, and some that are like your 250's. He told me in an email that the 250 like yours would be his preference for hunting, over the SWC. Go figger....

I carry the 250 rnfp's in my gun when I am thinking more self defense, but am not too keen on the design for hunting.

Where's Whit, he could write a book about this. Oh wait, he did ;^)

Craig

Thanks Craig!

Magic? No, but they definitely have their place in the history of handgun bullet development. They were inherently accurate, and the flat nose ensured a good wound channel and straight line penetration. While I feel there are better bullet designs readily available, you still can;t go wrong with the Keith bullet. Beware that nearly every semi-wadcutter is now referred to as "Keith-style" and this is simply not the truth, no more than LBT-style.

Boy isn't that the truth!!! Everything is either a Keith or an LBT today

The original one had three equal width driving bands and a square grease groove with beveled grease groove. If I remember right, Keith started with a 65% Meplat and ultimately set it at 70%. If you look at a lot of the bullets touted as Keith bullets today, the meplat is nowhere near the 70% mark. The HG503 is really hard to find these days and when they pop up, they are expensive. Miha did a few runs of the 503 clone mold and its about as true to the original Keith design as I've seen.

Yall are killing me. I have an orginal Keith .44 mold that has survived all these years without a drop of lead touching it. Harder to cast than the 429421 but better in the long run. I am ready to have some nice weather and cast some bullets. reflex264

Which me do you have Flex? I checked the bullets downstairs today. The nose is the later 70% meplat. I like the LBT bullets but the Keith just looks so good to your eye in my opinion. Most likely due to excessive reading earlier in life and looking at a bunch of pics of those slugs all the time.

I ordered the RNFP .452 250's from Oregon Trail to shoot specifically in my 45 Super. The round nose facilitating reliable feeding in my 1911.

Moving on to the Keith style bullet for my 45 LC's, I ordered a mould of the original Keith from Ballisti-Cast, their #1101, 260gr PB. It WAS expensive but I feel good about it. I have never owned a bullet mould so I decided to start there and either be happy or learn from my mistake & move on.

for what it is worth--killed my first deer with the Lyman 410459 Keithy bullet-- entrance in hide was basically 41+ hole just like in paper-- in the heart was larger thumb sized -- about .70+ mv 1200--6.5 Blackhawk @ 45 long steps nothing has changed since then
I have that mold and a Saeco .411 230 gr with Lyman having a .255 meplat the Saeco .270
but when I have used my Mountain Mold .41 255gr LWNGC with a .33 meplat the entrance hole in the hide of deer or boar has been about 1" with shots around 40 45 yards& quite destructive to lungs and such
both will kill & both will shoot well if I do my part -- on deer or the boar I have taken ( biggest was 280 dead weight and deer 198#) it probably does not matter - both look good to me -- but the larger Meplat does tear a bigger hole