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44 Special in 44 Colt? - Advisory
machine gun moran
Member Posts: 5,198
I now have two Uberti Colt Open Top copies, in .44 Colt. The second one I purchased (also a new gun) was advertised as being marked for .44 Colt, but that it would chamber and fire .44 Specials. I did not mind having chambers which were .050 deeper, although I intended to fire only .44 Colts in it.
When the gun arrived, I found that it would indeed chamber .44 Specials - but that the cartridges would not headspace on the rims. They would stop short of the rims making contact with the cylinder, but would go in just far enough to allow gate closure and cylinder rotation, and actually could have been fired. I was trying factory-loaded .44 special ammunition which had a strong crimp, and it was obvious that the cartridges were headspacing with their crimped portions on the tapered throat leads at the front of the chambers. If fired with the crimp actually into the throat taper like this, the crimp cannot open, and the bullet will have to size down from .430 to .410 (the inclusive thickness of the brass walls) in order to escape the cartridge. This will do wonders for pressure (as well as accuracy), and seems to be very inadvisable to even attempt. The gun will not accept a new, straight (uncrimped) 44 Special case, which essentially represents the form of a fired case in the chamber.
All of which reinforces using the ammunition for which a gun is marked, in spite of claims by a seller or anyone else, to the contrary.
When the gun arrived, I found that it would indeed chamber .44 Specials - but that the cartridges would not headspace on the rims. They would stop short of the rims making contact with the cylinder, but would go in just far enough to allow gate closure and cylinder rotation, and actually could have been fired. I was trying factory-loaded .44 special ammunition which had a strong crimp, and it was obvious that the cartridges were headspacing with their crimped portions on the tapered throat leads at the front of the chambers. If fired with the crimp actually into the throat taper like this, the crimp cannot open, and the bullet will have to size down from .430 to .410 (the inclusive thickness of the brass walls) in order to escape the cartridge. This will do wonders for pressure (as well as accuracy), and seems to be very inadvisable to even attempt. The gun will not accept a new, straight (uncrimped) 44 Special case, which essentially represents the form of a fired case in the chamber.
All of which reinforces using the ammunition for which a gun is marked, in spite of claims by a seller or anyone else, to the contrary.
Comments
All of which reinforces using the ammunition for which a
gun is marked, in spite of claims by a seller or anyone else,
to the contrary.
If you were inclined to give the seller the benefit of the
doubt, I present the following possibility.
As I'm sure you are aware the original .44 Colt used a heel
type bullet of .440+ diameter. Modern .44 Colt's use a
regular style bullet of .429-.430 diameter, thus allowing
the use of readily available .44 Special bullets. Since many
people confuse/misuse the word bullets for
cartridges, he may have been told that it can use
.44 Special bullets, which he took to mean .44 Special cartridges.
Anyway, if I may offer a few photos of our .44 Colt made
by American Frontier Firearms in California, along with
Mrs. Johnny taking it for a test drive [:p]
Johnny
This is even farther off-topic, but the Colt percussion designs have to be the prettiest guns ever invented.
The SAA was criticized from day one for its' slow loading and ejection and these tricks were used.
Note,prewar production quantities for the many different calibers chambered in the SAA. Straight walled cartridges were very, very few while the bottle necked three were the major sellers by far.
A good example is the total 44 unit production of 45ACP despite its' popularity & brisk SAA sales following WW1. This is a true PITA to load because of the thick, uncrimped brass hanging up on chamber mouths.
On your Open top repro guns. I would run a 44Spl chambering reamer in the chambers to enable using 44SPL brass. I question strength of Colt's open frame design and would stay with 44 Colt equivalent loads; nothing more powerful than any caliber presently chambered in that company's open top repros.
I dont load anything hot for the Open-Tops, as I believe such recoil forces will be hard on the guns. I use only Trail Boss in the .44's, and I think my top load generated around 750 fps with a 215-grain bullet. But the load was shooting a little high, so I decided to stick with a 200-grain bullet at about 700 fps. I also have a .38 Open-Top, which shoots to the sights with 148 to 158-grain bullets loaded to around 725 fps. Apparently, the Open-Tops are sighted to shoot POA with loads in those ranges.
I wanted to go no larger than a .44 chambering because of reports that some of the .45's were splitting the forcing cones at the bottom, where their barrels are cut really thin for gas ring clearance. The splitting of forcing cones is apparently not a new problem, as a local gunsmith has an original 1851 Navy in nearly new condition, that has a split forcing cone. The metal is fairly thick around the cone in a .36, but the materials used were not nearly of the quality that they are today.