Round balls in the 44 Special?

[inthebeech]

I found a mold for a .430 round ball and was wondering if this is an appropriate diameter for firing out of my Blackhawk in 44 Special.
Comments?

[missionary5155]

Good morning
Just measure the throats on the cylinder and add .001+ . RB ´s can also be sized down from a larger size.. very simple to do.
5 grains of Unique is a nice easy shooting load. Remember RB´s need lube also.

[Charlie Two Tracks]

How in the world would you load that up? Seems kind of hard to do.

[Rocky Raab]

Nah. LLA the ball (sized if needed) and simply thumb-seat it to its equator. Apply a light crimp. Done.

With most cartridges, you can shoot a double-ball "Snakeyes" load. Thumb-seat as above without crimping and then use your seater die to seat the second ball to its equator. You do need to reduce the charge to Start levels to compensate for the loss of case volume. Weigh two balls to determine the "bullet" weight. If you don't use LLA, smear a small amount of lube in the space between the two balls by partly seating the upper one, retract from the seat die and then smear. Return to the die and seat the upper ball.

[Charlie Two Tracks]

Now that sounds like one nasty round! I may have to give that a try sometime. thanks

[Maven]

While I don't have any ~.430" RB's on hand, I DO have a .375" RB Ideal RB mold which I've used in my .357mag. with 2.8gr. Bullseye and/or 3.1gr. Clays. I first sized the RB (WW's + 1% Sn) to .359" and then seated it, as per Rocky's recommendation, to its equator. 25 yd. accuracy was quite good, maybe 2", from a rest. If I had the correct size RB, I wouldn't hesitate to try it in my Ruger SBH as well.

[stubert]

I used to load a .433 ball in a 44 spec. You may have to enlarge the flash hole using very low power loads, the primer sometimes backs out of the case. I don't remember the load I used. Speer used to show that load in their reloader manual.

[RU shooter]

My wife loved shooting the RB loads .The single ball load was with 3 gr of W231 or Red dot whichever both shoot great. The double ball loading was with the start charge of Unique for a 240 gr boolit and was just as accurate as the single load ,the spread was an inch on average at 15 yds.

[JIMinPHX]

If you look back in some of the older loading manuals, you will find data for "gallery loads".

Speer #11 lists the .44 Special with a .433" (120 grain) round ball over 3 grains of Unique, or 2.8 grains of 231 or 2.3 grains of Bullseye all doing somewhere around 470-505 fps.

For the .44 Mag, it lists 3.6 grains of Unique, or 3.4 grains of 231 or 2.9 grains of Bullseye all doing around 549-566 fps.

I suspect that the charges need to be kept low to avoid having the pressure go high enough to blow by the small contact patch between the ball & the barrel.

These loads burn pretty dirty, but the recoil is nearly as gentle as a .22 rimfire. Accuracy is usually minute of tomato @ 20 paces.

I usually use just a bit of a roll crimp to keep everything together reliably.

[rintinglen]

+1 on roll crimping. I shot quite a few of these a fw years back out of a 45 LC when a friend gave me a bunch of 457 balls he had left after he sold his black powder revolver. At the time, money was tight and I was grateful for something that I could shoot out of my 25-5. Those 140 grain balls shot pretty well, once I learned to crimp them a mite to give a more consistent burn rate. At first, I lubed them by rolling them in Javalina Lube, but then I started using LLA and thus was born the beggining of a beautiful friendship.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I never imagined...
I like the sounds of this.
Jon

[1Shirt]

Fun loads in all kinds of straight wall ctgs. Have loaded 430's in 44S, 44M, and 444. Coat them with Lee Mule snot, finger seat like Rocky says over a fairly light load of a fast pdr and go. The 3 ball load in 444 is a fun load at 25-30 yds, and will keep them all on 8xl0" paper. Would make a great chicken stealing fox load.
1Shirt!

[MakeMineA10mm]

I've loaded lots of 2-RB and 3-RB loads. 2 fit in the 38Spl and 44Spl, and three fit in 357 Mag and 444 Marlin.

I found for seating the bottom ball, the bell-mouth die makes an excellent "seating die" to press the bottom ball down deeper. After seating the first ball, I wipe in some 50/50 lube (using the stuff that squeezes out when I crank the pressure too high on the reservoir -- no waste!!) and then seat the top ball to it's equator and put a mild crimp on.

They're a ton of fun at the range. I like to ask someone to come over and ask if they can help diagnose what's wrong with my pistol's grouping, and eventually they ask to shoot it. I load in 6 cartridges and hand it to them, and they walk up on the previously clean target that now has 12 holes after 6 shots... [smilie=l:

I used the 3-RB load in 357 for pin shoots, but it was not really much more effective than a single bullet load. I still had to have the sights right on the pin to knock it over...