WB
That is a pretty big ball fot a .44!
Friday, June 11, 2021, 07:26

Most of the Italian clones I have used, admittedly mostly Pietta and ARMI etc., use the .451's. I had some .454 for my Ruger but it shot .451's OK too. I figure the soft lead is very easily bumped up by the sudden forces of the Back Powder. It's my theory that its the main contributing factor to the good accuracy.

The only issue is bullet pull with larger bore C&B. Not something they really thought of or had to worry about back in the 1800's. I ran bullets as heavy as 340 grs. in my ROA. In the C&B you have a "fixed" volume to work with in that chamber. When you go to a longer bullet you take up available powder capacity. Also you just forced a greasy soft lead bullet into a hole, how hard is it for recoil to "pull" the bullet back out? You can mash it in there as hard as you want it is still a limited friction fit. The 340's would manage about 2-3 shots before the 750 fps inertia hammered the slugs out far enough to tie up the action. I found 270 gr. bullets about the perfect compromise (actually sized .451 (not .454) to allow easy loading. Using 777 powder I got right at 900 fps. Not a powerhouse but a step ahead of the old Cowboy .45 Colt or .44 Special. The 270's would hold still for the 6-shots I needed them to. I always wanted to toy with "hollow" base bullets tinkering with increased powder capacity with more bullet weight. But that volume thing cannot be overcome, you hit a compromise point.

Round balls weigh lots less than conicals. The forces of inertia are less. Even with the max. powder capacity used I have never seen bullet pull an issue. The only problem is the paper energy (math with coefficients) shows much less energy numbers even given a higher velocity. That said, the lead RB does much more damage than the math would reveal alone.