Someone talked me out of buying one of those. They said the brass was fussy when reloading.
I look forward to hearing how it works out for you as I wouldn't mind adding a 44-40 SA to my accumulation.
Howdy
I don't know anything about the revolver you are asking about, but I have been reloading 44-40 for many years.
Brass at the case mouth tends to run around .007 thick. As opposed to the brass at the case mouth of 45 Colt at about .012 thick.
I used to buy Winchester 44-40 brass, because it has the thinnest brass at the case mouth of all. Difficult to find, these days I use Starline 44-40 brass. Always in stock.
QC with Winchester brass was not the best. I actually found a piece of 44 Mag brass in a bag of Winchester 44-40. Twice! Two separate occasions
Slightly out of round case mouths with 44-40 is not a problem. The reloading dies will usually make it round again. When the brass pickers return my brass to me at a CAS match, sometimes it has been stepped on. If the case mouth is slightly out of round I wiggle a dummy 50 Cal BMG round in the case mouth to bring it back close to round. The dies will do the rest. If the case has been squashed enough that there is a crease, I throw it away. If a slight crack appears at the case mouth after being reloaded several times, I throw the case away if the split is more than 1/16" long. If less than 1/16" long I go right ahead and reload it.
Here is a photo of loading up a batch of Black Powder 44-40 rounds on my Hornady Lock and Load AP progressive press. Notice the 50BMG round is handy if needed. Note: this is brand new brass. After being fired with Black Powder it is never this shiny again.
There are no carbide dies for 44-40. So you need to use case lube. I use Hornady One Shot case lube. I line up 50 cases in a loading block like this. A quick spray is all they need, too much leaves liquid droplets behind that can cause dents in the brass. A little dab will do ya. I usually only load up 200 rounds at a time, I set up 200 rounds in loading blocks like this and spray them before setting up my dies. Once my dies are set up, the cases are dry enough to load. Note: the case lube never completely dries. I usually wipe off freshly loaded rounds with paper towels while watching TV. Not absolutely necessary, but I usually wipe them off.
With brand new Starline 44-40 brass that has not been loaded yet, I can usually get away without case lube. The cases are so close to final shape that the sizing die hardly touches them. But once fired case lube is a must. Notice the color of this brass. Yes, it is actually clean. Just stained from Black Powder fouling. Stained brass is not dirty, it shoots just as well as shiny brass, but shiny brass is easier to find in the grass. I tumble my brass with Lizzard Litter (crushed walnut shells you can find at a big pet store).
Yes, the thin brass at the case mouth is fragile. If attention is not being paid and a slightly out of position case in the shell plate hits the bottom of the sizing die, the case will probably be crushed and ruined. The thicker brass of 45 Colt will shrug off such a blow. The answer is to go slowly. Raise the ram slowly so that if you feel the case contact the bottom of the die you can stop the stroke before damage is done. No, you do not have to guide each case up into the sizing/decap die with your fingers, just raise the ram slowly so you can stop the stroke if you need to. On my Hornady press, most of the cases find their way into the die just fine, only a few need a little bit of help. I always say loading 44-40 is not difficult, but it is a bit fussier than loading 45 Colt. I can load 45 Colt at full speed, if a case bumps into the bottom of the sizing die it shrugs off the blow. I like to run 44-40 a bit slower.
That thin brass at the case mouth is why 44-40 is the darling of Black Powder shooters. (38-40 too) It obturates to fill the chamber much better at the relatively low pressure generated by Black Powder than 45 Colt will. The action of my 44-40 Henry always looks like it has been fired with Smokeless because hardly any soot blows by the case in the chamber. (Fouling not getting past the chamber with 44-40 has nothing to do with the slight taper of the brass, gas under pressure can go around corners easily. It is the thin brass stretching to fill the chamber that does the trick.) Not an issue with revolvers because fouling gets blasted out of the barrel/cylinder gap and gets everywhere anyway.
A lot has been written about what brand of dies to use for 44-40. I have been using a standard RCBS set for many years. At some point I bought a Hornady set for 38-40. The RCBS Cowboy dies are a bit more expensive. They have silly brass locking rings to make them look old fashioned. RCBS claims the Cowboy dies are better for lead bullets. I only bought the two sets here because that was all I could find for 32-20 and 25-20 at the time.
A lot has also been written about seating and crimping separately for 44-40. I'm here to tell you that if you set your dies carefully, there is no reason why you cannot seat the bullet and crimp in one step in the seating/crimp die.
The problem comes from that very thin brass at the case mouth. If the dies are not set precisely, and the bullet is seated so that when the crimp forms the tippy top of the case mouth bumps into the underside off the crimp groove, the case will probably bulge below the bullet.
Like this. I purposely set the die very badly to exaggerate the effect. What happens is because the brass at the case mouth is so thin, it has very little strength. So as the crimp is folded over, as the case rises to 'swallow' the bullet, if the brass bumps against the underside off the crimp groove before the brass has finished rising, the brass has no where to go. So the brass shifts down and crumples under the bullet. The more robust brass of 45 Colt will just dig into the bullet, but the thin brass off 44-40 is not rigid enough to do that. This is why a lot of shooters claim you have to seat your bullets and crimp separately in two different operations.
Here is the trick to avoid that. Set your dies so that when seated and crimped, there will be a tiny amount of space between the tippy top of the crimp and the underside of the crimp groove. Again, exaggerated for the photo, a few thousandths is all that is needed. I never trim my 44-40 brass, the rounds do not develop enough pressure for the brass to stretch. When setting up my dies the first time I make up a few dummy rounds without powder or primers to set the dies. I first measure up a few pieces off brass and select the longest ones for my set up dummies. Using the longest brass guarantees that everything will have a tiny space between the top of the crimp and the underside off the crimp groove. As long as the same bullet is used, this only has to be done once. If a different style bullet is used, it will need to be done again.
Because the case mouth is so thin, the crimp made with 44-40 is not terribly strong. I find that when loaded with Smokeless if my rounds are run through the action of a lever gun more than once, the bullets may tend to telescope into the case. This is not caused by recoil, it is caused by the magazine follower slamming the column of cartridges back every time one is stripped out of the magazine by the carrier. This is the only good reason I can give for crimping in a separate stage. The crimp die sold by Redding gets high marks from a lot of reloaders for this. My Black Powder 44-40 rounds have a 'solid plug' of Black Powder in them which prevents the bullets from telescoping back.
As I said earlier, I used to use Winchester brass because it was the thinnest at the neck. This can be an issue if the chamber is tight. When I first started loading 44-40 for an Uberti replica of the 1873 Winchester, the rifle had a tight chamber. The groove diameter was .427. I experimented with .427, .428, and .429 diameter bullets. I found that .429 diameter bullets expanded the case mouth enough that the rounds were a bit stubborn to chamber. In this case, you want the brass with the very thinnest brass at the case mouth, so if 'fat' bullets, on the order of .430 or so are required, they do not expand the case mouth enough to cause problems chambering the ammo. No, do not resize ammo that has already been loaded, you will squeeze down the diameter of the bullet inside. I have been using Starline brass exclusivley now for a bunch of years, and although the case mouths sometimes run around .001 thicker than Winchester it has not caused a problem. Besides, always in stock at Starline.
I have five rifles chambered for 44-40 and I have slugged them all. Some are .427, some are .429. When I started shooting my Henry with its .429 groove diameter barrel about ten years ago, I experimented with bullet diameters again. The last thing I wanted was to be loading ammo with two different bullet diameters for different guns. I compromised on .428 for my bullet diameter for all my 44-40 ammo. It works fine, even in the .429 grooves of the Henry. Of course my BP bullets are very soft and may be bumping up slightly in diameter in the barrel and filling the grooves better. I doubt it, when I have slugged the barrel with .428 bullets, I get good engraving of the rifling on the slug.
I have a few antique revolvers chambered for 44-40, but they have five groove rifling, so it is difficult to get an accurate measurement on the groove diameter. What ever the groove diameter is in this antique Merwin Hulbert, it likes my Black Powder 44-40 ammo with .428 bullets just fine.
P.S. I use 200 grain bullets in my 44-40 ammo. When I was loading Smokeless I used regular hard cast bullets from a local caster. I use the 200 grain Big Lube Mav-Dutchman bullet sized to .428 for my Black Powder 44-40 ammo.
