Need help with .44 spl alloy

[Kermit2]

I recently purchased a Ruger Blackhawk in .44 special. I've cast some boolits using a Lyman #429421 mould. The alloy used is a 50/50 mix of soft lead and wheel weights. I was going to try the following loads. #1 is 6.0 grains of Unique and #2 is the Skeeter Skelton load of 7.5 grains of Unique. After doing a small amount of preliminary testing my chrono showed a load using 7.0 grains of Unique averaging 940 fps from my gun. Will this alloy work well for these loads or will it likely lead badly? A friend of mine told me to use the 7.5 grain load and said the boolits needed a good kick in the pants to get them to bump up and seal the barrel. He says even though the boolits are soft they need a swift kick in the tail. I'm also wondering if straight wheel weights would be a better alloy for these loads. Your thoughts and advice would be appreciated. Thank you.

[MT Gianni]

My gun shoots ww well with the Skelton load. I would be sure to mix things up if I had two alloys of bullets stored. Your alloy should work with the lower velocity but i have no experience with it. Leading depends on as much lube and fit as alloy.

[buck1]

That mix should work fine. it does in my .44 spl .....buck

[cbrick]

Your alloy should be just fine. Your friend says they need to be kicked in the pants? Nonsense.

What it needs is to FIT properly in the first place.

Slug ALL throats, then slug the barrel for groove diameter. The ONLY need to slug the bore is to know that it is at or smaller than throat diameter, it should be but every so often there is a reolver that doesn't match up so you need to check.

Size your bullets to a mild snug fit in the THROATS.

Accomplish this and there should be no leading and it should shoot very well.

50/50 WW and soft is a time honored alloy for the Special and you can shoot it all day without leading as long as the bullets FIT correctly in the first place.

Forget that kick'em in the hieny sillyness, make them FIT.

Rick

[runfiverun]

i have two of the black hawk 44 specials one stainless and one blued, and an as of yet unfired bisley.
i use the 429421 and 7.2 grs unique.
i really like the load, first one i tried in it.
and i am not changing.
i use a mix of 3-1 ww to soft air cooled.
the stainless cylinder does need to have the throats polished up some.
but me and the wife fired over 150 rounds from both guns the other day with no issues .
i could most likely go with a softer alloy but this is working nicely so why bother.

[fredj338]

I shoot a lot of 50/50 alloy in my 45acp & midrange 44mags & 45colts. It works fine w/ little to no leading. As Rick noted, fit is everything. Rugers tend to come w/ smaller cyl throats than groove dia. This will always cause some early leading. A Ruger BH in 45colt had 0.450" cyl throats, shot ok, but leaded badly w/ 50/50 or 25-1 alloy. SO I had them polished out to 04515" & the leading went away & accuracy was almost twice as good.

[JIMinPHX]

A general rule of thumb in selecting lead hardness is PSI/1440=bnh. I'm going to guess that your 50/50 mix is going to come up somewhere around 10bnh air cooled. That would mean that it would be looking to get pushed by around 14,400psi. According to my Lyman book, 6.9 grains of Unique should punch up around 13,300CUP, which looks to me like you are pretty darn close. That equation isn't real precise anyway. It's got a fair amount of wiggle room in it.

As has already been said, boolit fit is more important. If your groove diameter is bigger than your throat size, it can be tough to get things to fit up right. You really need to slug your throats & your barrel, then decide what to do. Your alloy should be fine.

[nicholst55]

I shoot a lot of 50/50 alloy in my 45acp & midrange 44mags & 45colts. It works fine w/ little to no leading. As Rick noted, fit is everything. Rugers tend to come w/ smaller cyl throats than groove dia. This will always cause some early leading. A Ruger BH in 45colt had 0.450" cyl throats, shot ok, but leaded badly w/ 50/50 or 25-1 alloy. SO I had them polished out to 04515" & the leading went away & accuracy was almost twice as good.

All of the Ruger .44s that I have examined, which granted isn't numbered in the hundreds, have had chamber throats of a rather generous diameter - typically around .432-.433". Several others have reported the same thing. Assuming that they're round, which they often aren't, the OP should be okay.

[ironhead7544]

My Flat Top measures .430 barrel with .432 throats. Seems to be the common size on these revolvers.

[canyon-ghost]

I've had great luck with my Flattop 44! Have been using 7.4 grains of Unique with some 200 grain bullets from Jerry at Carolina Cast Bullets. He said they were straight wheelweight, air cooled. It seems to have precise specs right out of the box. These will shoot to 100 yards pretty good.
I'm getting ready to try some other loads though. Love that 44 Special!

Ron

[Dale53]

I have a 5½" Ruger .44 Lipsey Special and a Ruger SS Talo 4 5/8" .44 Special flattop. The throats on both are a bit generous (.431"+) but they shoot my standard sized home cast Mihec #503 (250 gr Keiths) at .430". They will both do well under 1" at 25 yards. My alloy is WW's+2% tin. I use the same alloy for all pistols and revolvers except the full house magnums. I run those a bit hotter.

My "go to" load for the Special is the Skeeter load (7.5 grs of Unique). It runs 950 fps in my 5½" Ruger. I also shoot this in my Smith Model 24 and 624's.

Dale53

[Cowboy T]

Yep, 50/50 wheel weight and "soft" lead is good stuff for .44 Spl. It's also excellent for the .45 Colt, which runs at similar pressures.

[MikeS]

Yep, 50/50 wheel weight and "soft" lead is good stuff for .44 Spl. It's also excellent for the .45 Colt, which runs at similar pressures.

I have a slightly off topic question that I'm asking purely out of curiosity, as I don't own a Ruger Blackhawk, Super or otherwise. I'm wondering, I see in many reloading manuals they have 2 sections of load data for 45LC, one for original or older guns, and one for Ruger revolvers (I don't recall if it's just for the Super Blackhawk, or the regular Blackhawk, or if it even makes a difference), so would it stand to reason that the 44 Special can also be reloaded to hotter pressures than the published data in a Ruger?

Also, those loads that are for Ruger revolvers, are they specific to Rugers, or can they be used in any modern manufactured 45LC handgun? I'm curious, as I have a Uberti made Cimarron Thunderer that was originally 44 Special that's currently at the gunsmith having it rebarreled to 45 with 2 cylinders, a 45LC one, and a 45ACP one. I did this mostly to use 45ACP, as it was the only 44 that I had (since then my daughter gave me a 44 Special Taurus M720 that I had given her a while ago) and I didn't want to start reloading for yet another cartridge (which I ended up doing anyway!). It looks like I'm going to start reloading for yet another cartridge (the 45LC) as I just bought a conversion cylinder for my Ruger Old Army, so with it, and the Thunderer I'll have 2 guns in 45LC. I know I have to keep rounds for the conversion on the light side (and short too), but can the Thunderer use any of the hotter loads that are published as being for Rugers? I was originally going to have the gunsmith only fit a 45ACP cylinder, but he talked me into getting the 45LC cylinder as well, as he said the gun would have better resale value with both cylinders. While on the topic of the 45LC, is there any reason that the 452423 wouldn't work fine in a 45LC? Also, at the pressures of the 45LC (keeping them on the light side) how important is it to crimp the boolits in place? If it's not important, is there any reason I can't use any/all of my 45ACP moulds in 45LC?

[runfiverun]

a 45 colt or one of it's clones will not hold up to ruger pressures.
it's much like the old s&w 38-44's a 38 cal revolver built on a 44 frame with thicker cylnder walls.
if you have an old ruger vaquero you can up the loads for the 45 colts to ruger load pressures.
if however you have a newer one with the smaller sized cylinder and frame you need to stick with the lower pressure loads.
the black hawks will do fine with the higher pressure stuff. they come in 41 and 44 mag already, i haven't ever seen a 73 colt in 44 mag.

[Kirk Miller]

I'm with Runfiverun. I've got one of the Lipseys 5.5in. Ruger 44 flat tops. After quite a bit of testing with several different powders, primers, and alloys; The most accurate load for THAT revolver has been, 7gr. unique, 3/1 ww/pb and a Fed. 150 primer. Hope this helps.
Kirk

[MikeS]

I was under the impression that at least with 45LC the 'regular' loads are kept light because of the many antique 45's that were made back with the 45LC was a black powder cartridge, and that's why they listed stronger loads for the Rugers. I know that Ruger makes a Blackhawk, and a Super Blackhawk (don't know what the differences are between them), but was unaware that they made several different sized frames, I always thought that they were all the same sized frame (that a SBH in 357mag was built on the same frame as a 44mag one, etc.). How many different sized frames did/do they make? The only Ruger revolvers that I own is an old Bearcat that my father bought for me back in 1965, and it's had maybe a box of 22's shot thru it, and the stainless Old Army that I just bought the conversion kit for (and I've only shot maybe 30 shots thru it's BP cylinder). The Old Army is built on the standard older Blackhawk frame, right?

[Dale53]

MikeS;
Here is the definitive answer regarding Ruger frame sizes:

http://www.gunblast.com/Hamm_Ruger-SA-GripFrames.htm

I can suggest two EXCELLENT articles written by Brian Pearce in Handloader Magazine that will pretty much answer all of your questions about what loads for what guns regarding the .44 Special and .45 Colt.

The Ruger .44 Special article lists loads that modern S&W firearms built on the "N" frame after 1950 and the Ruger .44 Lipsey Special (midframe Ruger single action factory chambered for the .44 Special) can easily handle. They exceed SAAMI standards but are no problem for the described revolvers:

Handloader #260 June 2009.

One of the best articles of all time regarding strength levels of various .45 Colt revolvers is included in the article about the RCBS 45-270-SAA bullet:

April-May 2007 Handloader #246:

http://www.riflemagazine.com/magazine/PDF/HL%20246partial.pdf

If you read and digest these three articles, you too can be an "expert":mrgreen:

Dale53