44-40 Pistol or rifle primer?

[barnabus]

I have a 44-40 six gun and a 44-40 lever gun and shoot the same bullet.the Lyman cast bullet manual only has data for pistol loads using a pistol primer. should I use a rifle primer when loading for the lever gun or just use the same pistol primer that I use in my six gun.right now im shooting 6 grains of trail boss in my six gun and shooting it in my rifle but im thinking of dropping the charge down to say 5 grains in pistol and maybe go up to 7.0 in the rifle. thoughts?

[nicholst55]

The primer pockets are intended for pistol primers, so that's what I would use. Large rifle primers stand a few thousandths of an inch taller than large pistol primers do, and the primer pockets are sized accordingly. Using a large rifle primer in brass intended for large pistol primers might leave the primer protruding enough to cause problems.

[William Yanda]

The concerns are twofold: Will the pressure of rifle rounds cause issues with pistol primers, and will the pistol firing pen activate a rifle primer? Offhand, I doubt that the charges you mentioned will demonstrate pressures requiring rifle primers. That's my 2 cents.

[Froogal]

I shoot a .45 Colt six shooter and a .45 Colt lever action rifle. Same ammo for both. Large pistol primers.

[Outpost75]

Large rifle primers in .44-40 brass will "stand proud" because the height of the primer cup is different. Use large PISTOL primers ALWAYS in .44-40!

Loading for a .44-40 rifle to levels which are unsuitable for the revolver sort of defeats the purpose of the rifle-revolver combo. If you happen to have a RUGER .44-40 revolver or an 1836-1986 Texas Wagon Train Commemorative S&W N-frame Model 544, then you can shoot Winchester '92 loads in those two strong handguns. If you have either an original or modern clone of a Colt Single Action Frontier Six Shooter, you want to load 6 grains of Bullseye, Trailboss or TiteGroup or 6.5 grains of Red Dot, WST or 452AA with a 200-208-grain soft, no harder than 10 BHN, .430" bullet, and approximate the 13,000 psi pressure and (800-950 fps revolver, 1150-1200 fps rifle) velocities of factory loads.

My 1905 Colt shoots best with soft .430" bullets of 1 to 30 tin-lead alloy from Roto Metals. Vintage pre-WW2 Rem-UMC, WRA and Western factory loads also shoot well. I find Accurate 43-206H an improvement over traditional bullet shapes and it feeds well in lever-action rifles too!

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[Eddie Southgate]

You got your answer already but I will add a vote for the large pistol primer and using the same load for both . Your revolver load will be faster in the rifle and the pistol rounds are great deer killers so I don't see much need for a seperate hot rifle round that might accidentally end up in the revolver.

Eddie

[Walks]

I had a balloon head .44WCF case. It had a Large PISTOL Primer in it. Came from the Factory that way, marked UMC 44-40.
decapped it 40yrs ago using a Lee decapping punch & base. Just to satisfy my curiosity.

Never thought about putting Large rifle primers in a .44-40 case.

[Outpost75]

Even with the higher velocity loads intended for the Winchester 1892, pressures do not exceed about 23,000 psi and are well within the design limits of pistol primers, as .44 Magnum loads run up to 35-38,000 psi.

[bob208]

I have never seen a loading manual that call for large rifle primers in the .44-40.

[robg]

Rifle primers will stand proud of case head as they're taller than pistol primers very risky in a tube mag.