Posted on 02/22/2005 2:46:34 PM PST by 45Auto
Most shooters who have been around a fair amount of time know that Elmer Keith's writings about the .44 Special from the late 1920s into the mid-1950s were directly responsible for the advent of the .44 Magnum. He did not invent the cartridge, per se. However, without his articles about taking big-game with big-bore sixguns -- especially when chambered in the .44 Special and using what is now known as the "Keith Load" of a 250-grain, hard-cast bullet of his design at 1,200 fps from a 7 1/2-inch sixgun -- we would in all probability have never seen the .44 Magnum. He not only spent 30 years paving the way, he also negotiated directly with Remington and Smith & Wesson to bring about the ammunition and the sixgun to shoot it.
Keith was not an overnight sensation by any means. He started like most of us, from nowhere, knowing next to nothing. In fact, nearly 20 years after the .44 Special had been introduced by Smith & Wesson, he had yet to see one. Remember that in Keith's early years there were no gun magazines as such, and the closest thing to instant communication was a letter that took several weeks to travel across the country. He was simply a young, hard working cowboy in the 1920s who was enamored with sixguns, mostly the old Colt SAA .45, which in his time and economic condition were probably black powder specimens that had seen better days.
Genesis Of The .44 Magnum
In the early 1920s, Keith had an experience that changed his life forever. He decided to celebrate the Fourth of July by tiring his old black powder .45 Colt 5 1/2-inch SA. He went upstairs and onto the back porch of his little ranch house to make some noise.
"When the gun rose from the recoil of the first cartridge, I unconsciously hooked my thumb over the hammer spur and thus cocked the gun as it recovered from recoil. When I turned the next one loose, I was almost deafened by the report and saw a little flash of flame. My hand automatically cocked the gun and snapped again, but no report. I stopped then, knowing something was wrong. The upper half of three chambers was gone. Also one cartridge and half of another case. Also the top strap over the cylinder. My ears were ringing, otherwise I was all OK" (The American Rifleman, August 15, 1925).
This was described in a letter to the editor of The American Rifleman and would begin Elmer Keith's long, colorful and tremendously influential career as a gun writer. When the above "accident" was investigated, it was found that Keith had been using heavy .45 Colt loads in the SAA made up with 300-grain bullets with a diameter of .458 inch originally intended for use in the .45-90 lever-action Winchester. Not only that, it also appeared that he had aided the ignition process by crushing the black powder into a finer grain size.
His old Colt simply died that morning, and Elmer Keith switched to the .44 Special. By 1929 he had a full-blown article in The American Rifleman about his famous Number Five Single Action .44 Special that he built to be, as he called it, The Last Word.
When Keith got his .44 Magnum, he got even more than he had asked for. All he wanted was his .44 Special loading of a 250 grain, hard-cast bullet at 1,200 fps. He suggested new, longer brass so that this load would not chamber in older, weaker guns. Ammunition manufacturers were afraid that early .44 Special handguns could not handle the load. Instead of duplicating the Keith Load for the .44 Special, Remington came out with the .44 Remington Magnum with a 240-grain bullet at 1,400+ fps. Keith was ecstatic about the new load, and about the Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum sixgun.
It is interesting to read the early reports. Keith downplayed the recoil of the new cartridge. Major Hatcher of The American Rifleman staff likened it to being hit in the palm with a baseball bat. For most of us, reality was somewhere in-between Keith and Hatcher, probably leaning in Hatcher's direction. The .44 Magnum kicked! It kicked hard!! Especially in the 4-inch Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum with the plain clothes stocks that Elmer preferred, and definitely in the Ruger Blackhawk with a grip frame that was identical to that found on the Colt Single Action Army. Over the years, I have learned to handle the recoil of the .44 Magnum by practice, by using hand-filling, custom stocks and, most assuredly, by welcoming new sixguns that added extra weight over the 3pound heft of the original .44 Magnums.
I also learned something else. Going back to Keith's original blow-up story, I noticed that he was using heavyweight bullets, not the 255-grain bullet standard for use in the .45 Colt at that time. Why? I would guess he was looking for greater power and deeper penetration for use on big-game animals. When he switched to the .44 Special, he also designed a heavyweight .44 bullet, which was produced by the old firm of Belding & Mull. However, remember that in the early stages of his sixgunnin' life he was still learning. His 280-grain .44 Special bullet had a very blunt, rounded nose, and he soon found that it was lacking in long-range accuracy. He went back to the drawing board and came up with the classic #429421 250 grain, semi-wadcutter bullet, which everyone knows today as the Keith Bullet. When the .44 Magnum arrived, he used the same bullet and simply increased the muzzle velocity by 200 fps over his .44 Special loading. This was his standard load for every purpose until he suffered his terribly disabli ng stroke at the age of 81.
For at least 25 years the Keith Load was the standard load for the .44 Magnum, just as for 25 years earlier the .44 Special loading from Keith had been the standard. That is a half-century of tremendous influence on .44 shooters by one man! Once the .44 Magnum arrived, many sixgunners began to take a serious look at hunting with a handgun. They also found very quickly than if they did want to hunt, they would have to load their own ammunition because there was very little available on the shelves which was truly suitable. The Keith load has served us well.
Heavier Can Be Better
Then in the late 1970s, a new influence began to be felt. J.D. Jones founded SSK Industries, which was dedicated to providing the best possible products for handgun hunters. Much of his early work was with wildcat chamberings in the Thompson/Center Contender. One of those wildcats was the .430 JDJ, which was simply the .444 Marlin trimmed back. There were few bullets available, so Jones designed his own as well as supplying bullet molds. One of these bullets was a 320-grain, flat-nose that he would soon discover worked superbly in .44 Magnum sixguns.
I acquired one of Jones' early molds for this bullet and used it extensively in a custom 10-inch Ruger Super Blackhawk over 23.5 grains of WW680 for 1,400 fps. Now we had the same velocity as the original factory loaded .44 Magnum but with 80 grains more bullet! A new era had dawned for the .44 Magnum. Today we are fortunate to have heavyweight bullets, both hard cast and jacketed, available from a number of suppliers, as well as excellent bullet molds for casting our own.
1. Accuracy: The longer a bullet is in relation to its diameter, the more accurate it normally is. It is a rare .44 Magnum sixgun that does not shoot 300- to 320-grain bullets more accurately than it does 240- to 250 grain bullets.
Why use heavyweight bullets in the .44 Magnum? There are two reasons:
2. Big Game Hunting: To be successful as a handgun hunter, you must understand the four Ps: Placement, Power, Performance, and Penetration. Placement refers to where the bullet hits the target; Power, the muzzle energy; Performance, whether it expands or not; and Penetration, just how deeply into the animal we can expect the bullet to go. The latter is extremely important when hunting large or dangerous animals. And the simple fact is that heavy bullets penetrate more deeply.
Cast Heavyweights
Let us look at some of the heavyweight bullets used in the .44 Magnum, beginning with 10 cast-bullet loads. All were assembled using Starline's excellent and durable .44 Magnum brass, CCI #350 Magnum Large Pistol primers and Redding's equally excellent .44 Magnum carbide dies. Loads were chronographed over Oehler's Model 35P. Six powders normally used for heavy duty Magnum loads were pressed into service:Alliant's #2400, Accurate Arms' AA#9, Hodgdon's H110, the relatively new Lil' Gun, H4227 and Winchester's 296. There are also some loads included with Unique and BRP's 290-grain, Keith-style bullet simply because I shoot so many of these in older .44 Magnums. Other bullets are also shown with Unique loads for the simple reason that heavyweight bullet loads in the .44 Magnum need not always be shot at full power.
ping
Not to change the subject (e.g., the caliber); but a 110 grain Hornady XTP, pushed with 22 grains of Winchester 296 powder, ignited by a Federal Magnum primer, will produce accuracy you have never dreamed possible in a S&W 357 Magnum with a 4" barrel.
"This is one of my favorites"
Stick a Lanyard ring on it and call it a Trail Boss out of the custom shop and it is one of my favorites too :)
My handgun of choice is a Smith model 66,.357, snub with Crimson Trace Laser sight. What an accurate, comfortable gun to shoot.
Although I like long heavy bullets, they are generally less accurate than shorter, lighter bullets. Just the opposite of what he says.
I also like large diameter heavy bullets loaded lightly. Sometimes the rifling twist isn't fast enough for the heavy bullets tho.
Could be. I thought I read they wouldn't penetrate glass without breaking up. The same with other barriers.I've been known to misread before. It'll be interesting to see the effect on a soft target.
Thanks for the reply. I was aware of the relationship of twist rate and bullet weight (a non stabilized bullet is an ugly thing). All other things being equal, (cardtridge, bullet, COL, primer, velocity) powder type is crucial. Nothing I've used beats IMR, and when I have called Remington, Spear, Sierra, Nosler, etc to pick their brains for an accuracy load, they have never recommended anything else.
The Bench Rest folks are like racers. They leave no stone unturned in the quest for better performance. Many conversations have turned to how many fairies can dance on a pin head I'm sure.
Check out the video
http://mysite.elixirlabs.com/index.php?uid=12665&page=1982
The Ballistic Coefficient (how well a bullet travels relative to the pull of gravity) also plays a role, but is far more important in rifle shooting than in pistol; most pistol bullets, especially the heavy hard cast semiwadcutters have the BC of a flying brick.
Can't argue with results. I've found that 'accuracy' in revolver shooting often comes down to finding out exactly what combination of bullet/powder is best for a particular gun. I have a Smith and Wesson 6 inch Model 29 that does very well with 240 grain cast semiwads over 23 grains WW296. That gun does not like heavier bullet weights under any conditions, fast or slow. My Ruger Blackhawk, on the other hand, really likes 300 grain Sierra JSPs with about 18-20 grains H110, and does not like the lighter cast or jacketed bullets as much. Go figure.
Yes, I know. I have to indulge him a bit, though. Most of his writings are pretty good. He has done a lot of experimentation with some really big stuff and was one of the guys responsible for the fame of others like Hamilton Bowen, John Linebaugh, Dave Clements, and Jim Stroh. Along with Seyfried these guys really pioneered big bore revolver building/shooting.
Simply stated, the ballistic coefficient is a measure of how well a projectile behaves in air. The ballistic coefficient is an important and useful concept that relates the drag deceleration of a given projectile to the drag deceleration of a standard bullet. The concept of the standard bullet and related ballistic coefficients was a major step forward, because otherwise the drag characteristic of every type of bullet fired would have to be measured individually – an impossible undertaking
That ain't necessarily so. A high BC is great, but it often comes at the cost of a lower initial velocity. When you're talking handguns, most of us aren't shooting them at distances great enough for that higher BC to overcome the initial velocity advantage of the lighter bullet.
Whichever bullet has the shortest flight time will have the least drop. Ussually this means that light bullets with high initial velocities and low BC's will have better trajectories at near to medium range.
I know from some write in's on the performance of SS in 3 different cal. it worked wonders. All soft targets.
Short bullets have a greater stability. That is why longer ones need a faster twist. Also bullets with the most weight at the outer edge rather than the center are more stable. That is why hollowpoints are almost always the most accurate.
Well, to give the guy credit I took his work and followed it on with my own custom 454 load. 405gr bullet .458 (45/70 bullets), trimmed down to .452 and stacked on 21.5 gr H110. Spits it out at about 1200 fps. Good HEAVY load for a solid 454 Super Redhawk.
My son is in Iraq and he mentioned my buddy had one built by David Clements. It turns out the guy he always talks about guns is David's son's friend.
Mr. Clements is a true craftsman.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.