For what it's worth, a friend of mine had an original, that was essentially a rusty dug-up.  (He collected those.)  As I remember, most of the notches were all the way into the cylinder.  We surmised they were so thin a little bit of wear would result in a hole.  We also surmised that may have been why it had been discarded, or at least not looked for very hard when it was lost.

Just got a Case Hardened Charcoal Blue 5.5 Inch Cattleman in 44-40.  Will be interesting to see how it works.  I have some once fired brass from my Miroku 73 44-40.  Plan on making some dummy rounds for Dry Fire with the Revolver and the rifle.  New Loaded rounds won't really tell me anything as the New Starline brass has a straight taper and needs to be fire formed to look like a 44-40 case.  If I have extra once fired brass will also load some up.  Will use my cattleman cylinder as  a case guage.  Still waiting for the twin brother.  I may get sucked to the dark side once both are in the house.  Damn, I really hate to load shotgun shells but that could be in my future.  Hopefully the Goex/Olde Eynsford Plant gets up and running soon.

Made it to the range and did some load testing all went well something like 15 rounds down range, thought ok this is a keeper.  Fast fwd about a month and I attempted to shoot my first match with said pistole.  4 Stages great.  Stage 5 first round in cylinder Bang next for nothing.  Ground pistol pull second a $410 shipped uberti cattleman with new model frame 5 rounds bang.  Stage six fire the $419 shipped used pistole 5 bangs, pull the New Uberti Bang Click click click click.  Pretty obvious the floating firing pin is not functioning as it should.  Started the return for warranty work from Taylors.  In the mean time have given gun a good cleaning and will attemp to fire some more rounds in the next few days.

Welcome to th board!  Numrich/Gunparts corp and Ebay.  LOTS of marlin parts...

One could buy a .45 Colt Uberti Richards conversion (which has the corect bore for original .44 Colt heeled bullets), then fit a .44 Special cylinder that was bored to case diameter full length.  Then you could shoot heeled bullets.

You would need to shoot black powder though, unless you are fine with just getting one load from the case.  I found loading .375" heeled .38 long Colt bullets is that when you use smokeless propellants, you need to excessively crimp the heel into the case to create enough back pressure. The cases tend to tear where the petals of the crimp die join on the case mouth.  Black powder explodes, so it does not need as severe of a crimp.

I am REALLY excited!  This is my first match with my "Ideal" armory:  A pair of 1860 Richards conversions, an 1860 Henry (HRA "New Original Henry). and my Rossi Overland hammered coach gun!  This is kind of special because always before I was using "Author guns"  1872s, 1860 R-Ms, 1860 Richards, all in varying flavors. (calibers, barrel length, finish).  While I might have them for a year or so, they would either have to be sold or returned so I could get the next batch.

While I did write about my Kirsts, I purpose bought those to be my main match guns, and they were not "Author samples".   They were (or should I say are, because I still have them) close to my ideal pair.  There was, however, always that niggling "but they are only 5 shot!" floating around in my  "always striving for authenticity" head.  This pair is PERFECT!