Awesome .44-40 rifle and pistol loading article by John Taffin

[Tuolumne Lawman]

I ran across an article by John Taffin on reloading the .44-40 rifles and pistols that was reposted on the Lever Action Shooters Society forum. It originally appeared as an article by Taffin in GUNS magazine in November, 2003.  Great read for any 44-40 reloader or shooter. It is the best single resource on the .44 WCF I have found.

http://50caliberforum.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=thewinchester1873forum&action=display&thread=2474

[Rafe Covington]

Thanks for the post, copied it for my records.

Rafe

[Tuolumne Lawman]

His hot load of 24.5 grains of Alliant 2400 with a 200 grain JSP (for MARLIN 94s AND WINCHESTER 92S ONLY) gives 1921 FPS and matches 44 mag loads.  I have used it in my Century Limited and got just over 2 inches at 100 yards.  It is an AWESOME load for hunting. DO NOT use in toggle link Winchester or Henry clones!

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[w44wcf]

Thank you for the link.  I remember reading the article several years ago.
It is a very good article on the 44-40.
The original W.H.V. factory loading (1903-1945) pushed a 200 gr jacketed bullet to almost 1,600 f.p.s.
John's loads for the '92 W and '94M are certainly in excess of that and shows what the old girl is capable of.

The blackpowder load at  1,566 f.p.s. is very likely a misprint and should read more like 1,266 f.p.s. based on my testing.

His reported accuracy with black powder and Pyrodex is much worse than what I have experienced. My best loads run in the 1" range @ 50 yards with the 427098.

w44wcf
 

[Tuolumne Lawman]

44WCF, I agree with you on his BP results being not typical of my own BP results.  I used exclusively BP  (and later on Triple 7) for CAS since about 1998 until this year.  Typical accuracy for me from 38-40 and 44-40 was closer to 1"  to 1.5" at 50 yards for me also.  I had an original 1889 Marlin 38-40 that would only do 2" at 100, though.