Loading for 44-40

[Babbott213]

Hope to be getting one or two old Winchester 1873's here in a few weeks. Would love to load for them. I've seen where it looks like the newer guns in 44-40 are a little bigger in Diam. than what was used on the originals. .429" vs .426". What should I be looking for when looking for cast bullets or would it just be better to wait and get them and just slug the barrels? I pretty much know what I need to do, which is to slug the barrels, but I thought I'd see what others may have run into on second gen. 1873's chambered in 44-40. I'm itching to get to shooting these old guns and experiencing the past.


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[Outpost75]

The limiting factor in some of the old guns is the neck diameter of the chamber. If the neck of the chamber is smaller than .445" you won't be able to load and chamber a bullet larger than .429" which might be needed to fit an oversized or worn barrel. The first thing I would do is make a chamber cast to determine the neck diameter of the chamber, and the diameter of the unrifled portion of the chamber ahead of the case mouth, before the rifling starts.

The easiest way to do this is with a "pound cast." The "sticky" by Goodsteel explains this in detail.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?218414-FYI-This-is-how-I-do-a-pound-cast

The majority of original 1873s I've seen could chamber and extract rounds assembled in Starline brass using soft 1:40 tin-lead bullets of .430" diameter and these shoot well in most with 6.0-6.5 grains of Bullseye, Red Dot or 700X, or 8 grains of Unique, Universal or Herco. If you don't cast your own bullets yet, a reliable supplier of appropriate bullets is Matt's Bullets. This is the bullet which he recommends for the .44-40 and which I have used with good results in my modern Marlin rifles and Ruger revolvers:

http://www.mattsbullets.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=70&products_id=275

If you want to load black powder, John Kort has written the Magnum Opus on this subject which is gospel! http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?265478-My-44-40-Black-Powder-Journey

If you want a safe, full power smokeless load, using a bulky powder which prevents any possibility of a dangerous overload, which can be used in your 1873, Alliant RL7 powder is suitable when loaded in a nominal "case full" so as to give base support to the bullet in the same manner as loading black powder. This does not exceed factory pressure and will give the full velocity of traditional black powder loads which contained a full 40 grains of black in balloon head cases. The resulting charge of RL7 loaded with a 215-230 grain bullet, which I use is 24.5 grains. If you are unable to find RL7, either IMR or H4198 can be used safely in the same way with 22-24 grains with up to a 230-grain bullet, such as Accurate 43-230G, a dual crimp-groove design offering great flexibility in the .44-40, .44 Russian, .44 Special and .44 Magnum.

If your rifle turns out to be one having a tight, minimum chamber neck, combined with a large barrel groove diameter which requires a bullet over .430", but which will not chamber in your rifle, all is not lost. Tom Ellis at Accurate molds produces several .44-40 bullets having a rebated heel of .426-.427 diameter to fit into the case neck of tight chambered rifles, but with the nose at the base of the ogive being oversized, at .448" to permit sizing the nose to fit oversized barrels and old or worn throats. I have gotten outstanding accuracy with this bullet in Microgrooved Marlins and others report good results in original 1873 Winchesters having barrel groove diameters as large as .436"!

With the Accurate 43-200Q or 43-200QL bullets the nose only is sized to fit, and the smaller diameter shank is not affected at all by the sizing. The 200Q has a small lubricating groove, intended for cowboy loads using smokeless powder, and the 200QL has a larger lube groove to hold a greater volume of soft lube such as SPG for blackpowder use, although it works great with smokeless also.

http://www.accuratemolds.com/bullet_detail.php?bullet=43-200Q-D.png

http://www.accuratemolds.com/bullet_detail.php?bullet=43-200QL-D.png

http://www.accuratemolds.com/bullet_detail.php?bullet=43-230G-D.png

[Babbott213]

Thank you very much for that informative post. [emoji106][emoji106]


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[ironhead7544]

Good idea to slug any bore for cast. Cant say about the Winchester, but had a Marlin 1894 44-40 made in 1896 and the bore was .431.

[ajjohns]

Down the lever page a bit is a pretty good discussion about this but more towards 38 wcf. But both rounds are so similar, and topic in question is 1873 Winchester.

[Babbott213]

Good to know. I had read down several pages. Must have missed it. Thanks!


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[Outpost75]

Good idea to slug any bore for cast. Cant say about the Winchester, but had a Marlin 1894 44-40 made in 1896 and the bore was .431.


GROOVE is .431, bore is the tops of the lands or diameter of the reamed hole in the blank before rifling.

[smithywess]

Good idea to slug any bore for cast. Cant say about the Winchester, but had a Marlin 1894 44-40 made in 1896 and the bore was .431.


Quite a few of us have been down this road before. Nearly all rifles in these calibres that were chambered for blackpowder loads i.e. prior to about 1905 were all overbore and your rifle is another example. In those vintage days they relied upon the obturating effect of the explosion of blackpowder behind the bullet to bump up the soft lead to fit the rifling. Unfortunately smokeless powders, and even the very fast burning ones don't do a good job in obturating even very soft bullets. Bullseye or Unique might perhaps do it a little behind a hollow based bullet, but otherwise I'm not impressed.

Of one thing I'm sure is that only bullets cast or sized to diameters at least 1000 ths of an inch or more, overbore will give any accuracy at all.This leaves the shooter with few options but there are some. You can expand the rifle throat by reaming the throat with a throating reamer (Pacific Tools and etc) until it will chamber a loaded bullet of the overbore diameter you've determined by slugging the barrel, or you can try to compensate for the blow by gases that will affect your accuracy if you use an underbore bullet diameter. One effective way to do that was pioneered by Dave Scovill of Handloader magazine many years ago. He advocated the use of a compressed volume of polyethylene shot buffer overtop of your powder. This acts as a flexible gas check if you will.Two words of caution here. Firstly it will raise pressure, so start low. Secondly, unpredictable pressure spikes can occur with powders faster than Alliant's 2400 (Larry Gibson). That therefore includes Unique, Herco and the other various shotgun powders. FWIW.

[Outpost75]

Trail Boss, loaded in a case-capacity charge with light compression (about 10%) provides bullet base upset with soft alloys which is as good as loading with black powder and no risk of overcharging.