A cursory look through the archives didn't reveal that this particular method had been discussed before. If I missed it, I apologize.
I've been loading up some .44-40 BP cartridges lately. .44-40 is a new one for me, having been a .45 Colt man all my adult life. But I had a moment of weakness and bought a Win/Miroku '66 in .44-40, so I'm having to learn a new cartridge. Anyway, on some of my loads, I was trying to duplicate the original loads using a few balloon-head cases and bullets that I'd cast from an old Ideal 42498 mold. Naturally, I needed to load 40 grains, and I needed a compression die.
Quite often, when loading oddball cartridges, I have to mix and match components from multiple reloading dies to get the desired results. And I had a few partial sets of .44 special dies that I'd been gifted over the years. It occurred to me that I probably had a few spare RCBS .44 special/mag bullet seating stems in the bunch, and I selected one. I then chucked it into the drill press and held a file against the bottom of the spinning seating stem to reduce its bullet-nose-cavity to just a flat square face. That didn't take very long at all, and voilla! I had a cheap compression die. This, screwed into a .45 ACP seating/crimp die and adjusted properly gave just enough room for the belled .44-40 case mouth to enter and still accept the homemade compression die. Worked like a charm and was free. I load these using an old Redding T-15 turret press that accommodates 6 dies, so it was nice to just have a dedicated position for powder compression.
On another note, I'm not a big fan of reloading these .44-40's compared to .45 Colt. Lubricating the cases for sizing isn't all that hard, but the resizing effort is still harder than with a nice carbide sizing ring on the straight-walled cartridges. And it looks like I'm gonna want to get a Lee factory crimp die for it, as these rounds I'm reloading are real sensitive to how heavily I crimp them with the standard bullet-seating/crimp die in my Lyman dies. Too much crimp makes for hard chambering, as it tends to bulge the case mouth a little, and I like a heavy crimp. I'm currently making-do with what I have and adjusting the die for a modest crimp.
I purposely did not anneal these case mouths, as I wanted to compare in-person the blow-by mitigating effects of my annealed .45 colt necks against the standard and thinner .44-40 case necks. But some of these balloon-head cases are pretty old. They're not mercury-primer old, but I did have quite a few culls when reloading them due to case mouth cracking. And I had a few loose primer pockets (two even had their primers pop out during powder compression). This was a phenomenon that makes sense, considering that the primer pocket is pretty much unsupported and more liable to stretch, but it was something I hadn't even considered until I had two primers just fall out. I will probably retire them after the first shooting and would likely be well-advised to do so. But as for the majority of my other cases--the solid head ones, I have a question. These are cases that I got from a friend and are at least once-fired. I'd like to be able to reload these as much as I can. Does anyone anneal .44-40 case necks for longevity, or are they already so thin that the case-buckling tendency of the thin-walled .44-40 would be unmanageable if I softened them by annealing?