I just finished loading up a little over 200 rds. of BP .44-40 loads. If you saw my previous post about a cheap D.I.Y. compression die, you'll know that I've had some irritations in reloading for this cartridge. Here are a few of my observations, since I had to use mixed brass (some balloon-head).
Seating and crimping in one step is certainly do-able, but next to impossible to do well if using mixed brass of possibly unequal length. I turned out some nice rounds crimped this way, but I had to use less crimp than I usually like in order to avoid bulging at the case mouth on the Ideal 42498 bullet. And even then, I had to readjust the die whenever I switched brass (I loaded in batches of each headstamp). I found it much easier to crimp separately, though this isn't unique to .44-40. I already crimp separately for just about everything else, and I've acquired a few extra dies in those calibers over the years to help me do this. I only have one Lyman three die set for the .44-40.
The PRS Big LubeTM Mav Dutchman bullet is a pain in the butt to seat concentrically with just a Lyman three die set! The meplat and ogive are just too big for the bullet seating stem to have a positive effect on aligning the bullet. I noted which rounds had been seated with the Lyman seating stem and wrote that information down on the cards for those batches, because it was very obvious by the way the crimped case mouth lined up with the crimp groove that many of the bullets had gotten canted. This was especially obvious when I was trying to seat and crimp in one step with the Mav Dutchman.
I grabbed my .44 special seating die and began using that to seat the Mav Dutchman bullets in a separate step. .44-40 brass will only enter a .44 SPL die about 2/3rds of the way, but adjusting the stem out further and the die up further allowed me to seat the bullets. This resulted in more concentricity, but the seating stem was leaving some deep and uneven impressions on the ogive (my bullets are VERY soft). I was really beginning to hate reloading .44-40; "I've never had this kind of trouble with .45 Colt. I'm gonna end up having to get one of those expensive Redding competition dies after all," I thought. Then I had an idea, and out went the .44 Special die and in went an RCBS .45 Colt seat/crimp die. And that, my friends, was the solution!
The SWC bullet seating stem on an RCBS .45 Colt seater mates up perfectly with the bullet nose of the Mav Dutchman, and the .45 Colt crimp die won't even begin to crimp .44-40, no matter how far the case enters.
Unfortunately, I didn't discover this until I started on the last 50 rounds. But they turned out beautifully. Now, I suspect that most reloaders here have already invested in numerous dies and accessories to load their .44-40. But if anyone on here is like me, trying his hand at some .44-40 after many years of considering himself firmly wedded to the .45 Colt, and is trying to make-do with a Lyman 3 die set, I hope this helps you. There are dies and/or parts from three other die sets incorporated into my setup, but it really does make some good-looking rounds that feed and chamber smoothly. Discovering that the RCBS .45 Colt seating/crimping die worked so well as a Mav Dutchman bullet seater was a big deal for me today. Swapping die bodies and parts around is a pain, and I know I'll acquire more .44-40 specific tools eventually, but it was nice to be able to make-do today and have the rounds turn out like I wanted them to.