.44 Special black powder bullet

[George Mabry]

I have never cast anything but round ball but am considering making some 200 grain .44 caliber bullets to use with black powder loads in my Cimarron Arms Winchester '73. I've been told not to use case bullets that were intended for smokeless loads because their grease grooves are inadequate. Is this correct? I"m told that cast bullets used for black powder loads have deeper or more grease grooves than their conventional counterparts.

Can anyone recommend a good 200 grain mold? My last question is how many grains of 3f do you put into the .44 Specials.

Thanks,

George

[Gunfixr]

The part about the lube groove is correct. The single groove is neither deep nor wide enough to hold enough lube for a rifle length barrel. Your best bet is probably going to be Lyman. They may still list a two groove bullet originally designed for the 44-40. It may have to be resized some. But I don't know of any .44 special bullets designed for BP. There was someone on the SASS Wire some time ago that had designed a custom BP bullet in .44 and was having custom moulds made in group buys, but I don't know if he is still doing it or not. They were very reasonably priced, and made 6 bullets at a time. I have a Lyman .45 cal. mould that is 2 groove that I use in my '73, and it works fine. Of course, you will have to use a BP compatible lube. As far as powder goes, you'll just have to see. As long as the charge touches the base of the bullet, you're fine. You can fill the case up and push the bullet in and that's fine, too. If you want milder, you can load light and use cream of wheat to make up the difference, so long as there is no empty air space in the case. A small amount of compression is better than just touching. The powder burns a little cleaner that way.

[Old Dragoon]

Email Old West Moulds at: [email protected]

Bernie can set you up with the perfect Bp mould. Possibly a heeled outside lubed bullet. In Bp you want the drive bands(between the lube grooves) to equal more than 505% of bullet length so they are accurate. Bernie at Old West Moulds is THE MAN!

Tell him Halfway Creek Charlie in CA sent ya. No I don't get a cut, but he's a great guy and he does great work and has great products. He'll steer ya right.

[mec]

kind of off to the side but, the only vintage .44 special factory loads I've seen were loaded with cupro-nickel jacketed bullets. These were remingtons loaded between 1913-16 according to people who should know. The whitish, lubrican is still sticky and the lub grooves are very narrow.





gun got kind of nasty but, no inordinate fouling build up in the barrel and the action didn't bog down with a moderate amount of shooting


the primers had gone dead so I pulled the bullets and replaced the old clorate primers with new remingtons. Reloaded most with the original powder and then some with Goex FFFg
Original powder 709 fps ten round average with a 73 fps spread.
Goex 3f 762 fps with a 56 fps spread

[Gewehr98]

I used the Speer .433" round balls on top of a Wonder Wad and Goex FFFg. The thing was dirty after a few cylinders full, but never jammed and accuracy at defensive distances was pretty good!

The nice thing about stainless is you can see exactly where the grunge is.