.44 hollow base wadcutter

[Rod B]

A friend has an older Lyman single cavity mold that cast a 240gr hollow base wadcutter bullet. He has given me fifty of these to try

I cannot find any loading data on this.

Does anyone have any idea of a light target load for this bullet? I was thinking about 6gr of Unique but decide to pose the question here hoping someone would be able to advise me.

Thanks in advance, Rod.:lovebooli

[Buckshot]

............I'd think with that HB you might want to try something like Red Dot, 231, PB or Bullseye. No experience with the 44 Special, but there should be data around for it with those fast burners. The HB is there to expand and seal quicky and to be sure to engrave.

.................Buckshot

[9.3X62AL]

Interesting project. Some years back, a buddy of mine had a Smith N-frame built up for PPC shooting in 45 Colt, and has a custom-built HB mold for the critter. He still has both, actually--and can't be talked out of them. That wheeler SHOOTS--so I think it's worth trying those HBWC's.

It's an ENTIRELY different cartridge than the 44 Special.......but his loads were ~3.5 grains of Bullseye and ~4.0 grains of 231. This is from memory, so DON'T take it as gospel. His bullet weight was about 235 grains, and he cast them SOFT--I'm thinking half/half WW/unalloyed lead. He ran them to 750 FPS. He also flood-lubed them with cavity up. His rationale was to use a larger caliber boolit to cut lines that a 38 caliber hit in the same location would miss. He concluded after a season of shooting that the idea had merit, but that the fatigue induced by 200-300 rounds of shooting cancelled out the advantage gained by the wider boolit strike. He now uses 454190's and 454424's in the critter, and it is VERY accurate with these castings at 850-900 FPS. I last shot it with him 2 years ago, and it's quite a revolver.

I'm thinking that 3.0 grains of Bullseye would be a safe start load, as would 3.3 grains of 231. 38 Special HBWC loads use 2.7-3.0 grains of Bullseye or 3.0-3.3 grains of 231 with 148 grain HBWC's, so I don't think you'll get into trouble at that start point. I KNOW, yer not supposed to extrapolate load data--so yer on yer own here, but you knew that already. I suspect you'll need to add a couple tenths of grains to either powder to get to 750-775 FPS, but that remains to be seen.

Dunno if you'll be able to seat the boolits "wadcutter-flush" or not, that will depend on the boolit length and the skirt's interface with the case wall contours. Most people shooting HBWC's in 32 and 38 calibers run them between 700-775 FPS.

Good luck with this project.