This comes under the category of "Just because it's there."

I am shooting progressively heavier bullets out of my 44 mag Super Blackhawk. It has a short barrel. And I am getting great pleasure out of shooting them slower. There are no grizzly bears roaming the streets of Florida, tho' the police did have to shoot a rampaging circus elephant here about 10 years ago, proving that if you have enough shooters with enough 9 mm ammunition you can kill anything. Note: it was a medium Indian elephant. A big African bull would probably have absorbed all the 9 mm ammo in the police department armory before bleeding to death. But that is another topic.

I want to work up some slow loads with different weight bullets, that have equal energy at striking, then measure penetration of each. The chosen bullets are all Beartooth WFN with .34 meplat. I have chosen 240, 300 and 405 to compare. I want to regulate each to about 400 fpe when they hit the medium, which I think will be a stack of soaked newspapers.

All my loads these days are mild to medium, and that's the load I'm looking for here. Just because I am curious to see for myself the penetration difference where the main difference is bullet weight, I have bought a box of 405 grain Beartooth WFN bullets for the heaviest one. They are really long. I mean REALLY long.

After doing the measuring, the best combination to get them to fit in the cylinder is to trim the 44 mag brass back to 44 special length - 1.15 inch - then crimp lightly in the second crimp groove. The finished product is about 1.65 and the powder chamber is about 45 percent of the amount that is under a 265 BTB in a regular length 44 mag case.

Here's the QUESTION: Does anybody have a clue as to what happens to pressures in the above circumstances? I am not looking to put it into orbit. Or me either. 675 fps with a 405 will yield about 400 fpe. Even so, I might be playing with more fire than usual.

The only comparison I have is the stumpy 45 ACP case into which is inserted a relatively heavy lead bullet with a small powder space underneath.

TiteGroup is my fast powder on the shelf, and I was thinking 3.5 or 4 grains of that might do it without doing me. Or because it is a heavy bullet which will induce more complete powder burning, maybe something like 7 grains of H4227 with a more gradual burn time to lengthen the time to pressure spike.

Anybody have a suggestion (do you think there is an exemption clause about this in life insurance policies? :eek: )

I look forward to any and all responses.
Thank you.

I think I'd use the slower powder, personally. Don't know if programs like 'load from a disk' will be of any use in predicting pressures, though.

Good luck.....

I think your first problem may be getting a 405 into a piece of brass without bulging the base! Have you made mock-ups of these shells?
As for powder, I'd go with something like AA-5 or Unique, maybe as slow as AA-7. HTH

PJ

Yes. I was thinking that slower powder might be better.

I didn't think about wrinkling the case with a long bullet. I need to see how far down one of my expanders will go down before the case mouth flare gets too big. I will load a dummy as you suggest.

Hi Dave,

I did something similiar last year. It was not with a Beartooth bullet but a cheapie 300gr cast lead bullet that seated quite deeply when crimped in the groove. I was looking for slow & heavy bullet for putting down bowling pins... and the fact I could think of no other use for the bullets. First development was wit AA-5. I do not remenber the loa of the load but the bullet seats short enough to load in a 444 Marlin so it's way down there. Loads were light and a couple worked out ok for very short range casual killing of bowling pins. The AA-5 burt kinda dirty so I changes over to AA-2. With that heavy bullet so deep in the case, pressures spiked all over the place. The AA-2 was simply not able to handle the pressure spike in that enviroment.

Many years ago I tried slowing down Beartooth bullets in my old S&W Mountain gun. When I got them (280gr WFNgc) down under 800 fps, they keyholed badly. At 1000 fps they were tack drivers.don't really know if that was just me or not.

Frankly, the 405gr scares me a little bit. You will have almost no room in the case and the powder has to gradually ignite a load under really spooky conditions. Personally, I would not do it but if you do, slower powders are most likely better. Still scares me though. The only place I have heard of using the 405gr bullet in 44 Mag is in Ruger Redhawks, seated out to the middle crimping groove and driven pretty hard for stability.

The 240 and 300 gr are just a matter of picking the right powders and velocities that give you the performance you want. With 240gr, AA-2, Bullseye and such should work fine. Not sure what 300gr you are using but AA-5 & Blue Dot should be good places to start. With LBT type bullets, do not be suprised if you have to keep things over 900 fps to have accuracy.

Good luck and hope you have a lot of fun with this project.

Bill