.44-40 Chronograph Results

Today I went to the range with my brother, who has a Shooting Crony Beta Master chronograph. I was able to measure the velocity of three .44-40 loads. Measurements for each load was for a 10 shot string.

All shots were from my Cimarron Firearms Uberti 1873 Sporting Rifle in .44-40 WCF with a 24.25" barrel. Brass was Starline and primers in the handloads were Federal No.150 large pistol primers.

First up were 10 rounds with a ~215 grain cast bullet from my Accurate Molds 43-215C mold on top of 2.2cc (~35 grains) of Swiss 3Fg black powder.

Average velocity: 1329.4 FPS
Standard deviation: 11.6 FPS
Extreme Spread: 42 FPS
Muzzle energy: 843 foot-pounds

These grouped into about 2" at 50 yards.

Second were 10 shots loaded with a Lyman 200 grain cast bullet on top of 8.6 grains of Alliant Unique smokeless powder. The Lyman bullets were from a box I bought years ago. They are pretty good bullets but no longer available.

Average velocity: 1307.2 FPS
Standard deviation: 21.462 FPS
Extreme spread: 82.98 FPS
Muzzle energy: 758 foot-pounds

These printed a somewhat larger group, about 2.5" to 3". They gave noticeably better accuracy than rounds loaded with only 8 grains of Unique. I was not surprised at the much larger SD since I've read that .44-40s loaded with Unique can have wide variations, unless you tilt the muzzle of the rifle for each shot to get the powder back near the primer. In contrast to the largely empty case when loaded with Unique, the black powder loads have 100% loading density, and are in fact compressed loads.

That said, the rounds with Unique performed better than I expected.

Finally, I chronographed 10 Black Hills .44 WCF 200 grain cowboy action shooting loads. As expected, these were a lot slower than the first two loads.

Average velocity: 1123.1 FPS
Standard deviation: 15.358 FPS
Extreme spread: 41.78 FPS
Muzzle energy: 560 foot-pounds

Even though these were more consistent than the handloads with Unique, if you go by SD, they don't shoot nearly as accurately. Just like when I've shot them before groups were about twice as large as the full power rounds. It's also possible that the rifle doesn't like the Black Hills bullet.

I have three more loads that I want to chronograph, all using bullets cast in the 43-215 mold:

(1) 23.5 grains of Alliant Reloder 7.
(2) 2.2cc of Goex 3Fg black powder.
(3) 2.2cc of Goex Olde Eynsford black powder.

I'm expecting the Reloder 7 loads to at least equal but probably exceed the velocity of the Swiss BP loads, the Olde Eynsford to perform similarly to Swiss, and the Goex to tail behind but hopefully shoot accurately.

Loaded Black Powder .44-40s With Accurate Molds 43-215C Bullets

Yesterday I cast some more bullets in the Accurate Molds 43-215C mold, and then lubed and sized them. I'm pan lubing them with a homebrew mix of beeswax, mutton tallow, and a little paraffin wax. Here's my setup:

On the left is a hot plate with a tin in which I mix the lube. On the sheet of foil is my lube pan: a tin from a some kippered herring. To the right of that is the lid for the mixing tin on which is a .44-40 case that I drilled out the flash hole, which I use to cut the lubed bullets from the hardened lube. I push the bullets out of the case with a 9/64" Allen wrench.

After I cut a batch of bullets from the lube I put another batch in the holes left behind, then reheat the lube pan on the hot plate, then take it off to cool and harden. Like so:

I can fit twenty-two .44 caliber bullets in this pan, so the next time I eat a can of kippered herring I'll save its tin, so I can speed things up. Here's a closeup of an unlubed and a lubed bullet:

I wound up with around 120 bullets lubed and sized when I wrapped up last night.

Tonight, I loaded up two boxes of ammo: 50 rounds each using Swiss 3Fg and Goex 3Fg; 2.2cc of powder for both, which is about 35 grains.

I should get the chance to try them out next weekend on a camping trip.

First Shots with Goex Olde Eynsford Black Powder

Yesterday I went up to Cabela's to put my Cabela's Bucks towards some primers before election year buying goes full derp. I bought 1K each of CCI Large Rifle and Large Pistol primers, and 1K of Sellier & Bellot Small Pistol primers. (They were out of CCI SPPs.)

Ammo and powder stocks were in pretty good shape, they even had several kinds of pistol powder, which has been absent there for the past several years.

On the way home I stopped at Dixon's Muzzleloading Shop where I got a set of Lee commercial mold handles for the Accurate Molds 43-215C I have on order, and a pound each of Swiss and Olde Eynsford 3Fg black powder.

If you have to buy black powder in a shop rather than doing a bulk mail order, the price per pound is high. The Swiss was $32, Olde Eynsford was $29, and plain old Goex was $27. If you're willing to order a 25 pound case, Graf's has OE at $18.99/pound, only $1/pound more than Goex. Swiss is $24.99/pound in a case from Graf's.

Note: Graf's also carries their house brand BP made by Wano Schwartzpulver in Germany for $14.99/pound in a case lot. I've never tried it myself.

Swiss powder is a known-good quantity. I.e., it burns cleanly for BP and is more energetic than Goex. I wanted to get some OE to compare.

Olde Eynsford was introduced by the Goex company back in 2012 or 2013, IIRC. It's designed to compete against the high quality Swiss powder. The reports I've read on various sites like THR, cascity.com, and castboolits.gunloads.com indicate that they succeeded.

After a two hour long drive home due to an accident on I-476S, last night I went with my dad to his indoor range. I brought my Euroarms Rogers & Spencer percussion revolver.

My load consisted of a Remington No.10 cap, 30 grains of Olde Eynsford 3Fg, a home made lubricated felt wad, and a Hornady .454" lead ball. I put 7 cylinders -- 42 shots -- through the R&S.

We shot at only 7 yards but accuracy was good. The only shots which left a ~2.5" - 3" group were fliers caused by me. That's as good as I can shoot one handed.

Recoil felt like I was shooting Swiss powder, while the fouling was also similar to that left behind by Swiss. I.e., surprisingly little if you're used to shooting regular Goex, and easy to clean up. I'd forgot my .44 caliber cleaning jag so I had to use a brush, then a patch over the brush to clean the bore and chambers. The fouling inside the frame wiped off easily using a patch wet with MPro-7.

My next test of Olde Eynsford will be in loading .44-40 WCF cartridges. When shooting BP .44-40s using a bullet cast in the original Winchester mold I can shoot at least 50 rounds without fouling out. I expect that cartridges loaded with OE will behave similarly.