WB
LOL, anything can happen. Way back I really
Thursday, November 17, 2022, 13:06

wanted one of JD's .375 full house Contender rigs. This was last century, before I began working with Gary's rounds. I saved and saved and finally got one. It was a good gun, about all I'd truly want on that chassis. Even Mag-na-ported it kicked like the devil and whacked my knuckle. JD liked alloy scope mounts and industrial chrome plating. But that was a good round for the old TC, based on the .444 case.

Of late I got the idea of making .410 cases to use in my Mom's old Taurus I inherited. I wanted to make some multi-ball rounds to try and make it actually effective. Crimping gas checks for top wads made splits in the case mouths. I may try to anneal to help that. But I found using hot glue'd over card wads and no crimp it worked well. No extraction problems, a shotgun chamber is tapered you know. I figure it would work well in my TC .45/410 barrel.

A friend gave me a re-chambered .35 Rem. TC barrel done by Mike Bellm, it is an odd round. You pass a full length .444 case in a .358 Win. FL die. It makes a really ugly looking round, sort of a cross between a .30-30/.30-40 but in .35 cal. I had a .356 Win. so I shortened that Wildcat so the neck was about half as long, it was basically a rimmed .358 Win. or de-facto .356 Win. It's not anything special it is just an interesting exercise and a bump over .35 Rem. ballistics. Cases do seem to last a long time.

The .444 Marlin itself I had a little trouble in the Marlin rifle. It required a set OAL to function. "Some" heavy or longer .44 bullets seated deep enough to function bulged the case where it began to thicken. The .444 was designed for 240-265 gr. bullets exclusively. My 330's were just too long. But in it's design limits it worked great.