I recently purchased a Triple Lock chambered in .455 Webley from forum member THREEDFLYER. I have been looking for a Triple Lock for several years as a shooter so I wanted one with a good bore and mechanics. This example exceeded my expectations as the bore, chambers, lock up and timing are perfect.
The chambering posed some issues as brass is hard to come by. I decided to make my own cases from 45 Colt. The rims needed to be thinned to .04" and the overall length reduced to .87"
I own a 9" South Bend lathe so I put the 45 Colt cases in a collet and touched off on the back side of the rim and removed .015". The material had to be removed from the back of the rim as the primers would have protruded if removed from that side. The tool used to do this had to be quite small and took a couple of tries before I got it.
To reduce the length I chucked up and indicated a shell holder from a Lyman trimmer to hold the case, mounted my Dremel grinder to the cross feed and cut the cases to length. I ran the lathe spindle at low RPM as I fed the cut off wheel into the case. I was only able to hold the case length to about +/- .005" as the spindle in my Dremel has a bit of axial play.
I started with 55 cases as I hoped to wind up with 50 but by some miracle I did not lose any.
The cylinder throats on my TL will accept a .457 plug gage but not a .458 so they are quite large. The bore over the lands is .447.
The only bullets I had on hand were Lyman 45266 which measure .455 as cast. These were considerably smaller than ideal but I was anxious to shoot the TL so I loaded some up with 3.6 grains of Bullseye. This load is very mild but has always been very accurate in all of my 45 ACP 1911s and revolvers.
I first shot the TL at 7 yards and noted it was shooting low so at 25 yards I turned over a 25 yard slow fire pistol target and put a 2" diameter orange dot at the very top of the target hoping to land my shots somewhere near the center. I turned the target over as it was very hard to get a good sight picture with the black showing.
I shot standing at 25 yards using a 2 hand hold and was surprised by how good the accuracy was with the small diameter bullets. As you can see I did not quite get the group centered but was very happy with the group size.
This has been a very satisfying little project and I look forward to shooting my TL for years to come.
The chambering posed some issues as brass is hard to come by. I decided to make my own cases from 45 Colt. The rims needed to be thinned to .04" and the overall length reduced to .87"
I own a 9" South Bend lathe so I put the 45 Colt cases in a collet and touched off on the back side of the rim and removed .015". The material had to be removed from the back of the rim as the primers would have protruded if removed from that side. The tool used to do this had to be quite small and took a couple of tries before I got it.
To reduce the length I chucked up and indicated a shell holder from a Lyman trimmer to hold the case, mounted my Dremel grinder to the cross feed and cut the cases to length. I ran the lathe spindle at low RPM as I fed the cut off wheel into the case. I was only able to hold the case length to about +/- .005" as the spindle in my Dremel has a bit of axial play.
I started with 55 cases as I hoped to wind up with 50 but by some miracle I did not lose any.
The cylinder throats on my TL will accept a .457 plug gage but not a .458 so they are quite large. The bore over the lands is .447.
The only bullets I had on hand were Lyman 45266 which measure .455 as cast. These were considerably smaller than ideal but I was anxious to shoot the TL so I loaded some up with 3.6 grains of Bullseye. This load is very mild but has always been very accurate in all of my 45 ACP 1911s and revolvers.
I first shot the TL at 7 yards and noted it was shooting low so at 25 yards I turned over a 25 yard slow fire pistol target and put a 2" diameter orange dot at the very top of the target hoping to land my shots somewhere near the center. I turned the target over as it was very hard to get a good sight picture with the black showing.
I shot standing at 25 yards using a 2 hand hold and was surprised by how good the accuracy was with the small diameter bullets. As you can see I did not quite get the group centered but was very happy with the group size.
This has been a very satisfying little project and I look forward to shooting my TL for years to come.
