Reeder Custom Guns - Another hair-brained thought, a .44 on the 1911

Maybe a .429 ACP? I made some mock cases. One tapered .45 ACP to .430" that did fine. The other necked like an up-sized .400 Cor-bon or .357 SIG. They both looked good and fed from magazines fine.

The idea was to use .430" bullets from that platform at velocities around 1000-1100 fps. The excellent Serria 180 gr. JHC and even 240 gr. SWC would work. Sort of a hot .44 Special semi-auto.

One could use the .460 long case, or even the .45 GAP shorter hull and accomplish the tapered version. If the factory .45 ACP case gave you heartburn. You don't need all that much powder capacity to accomplish things at reasonable pressures. Fabricating a 1911 barrel in .430" is a bit of a trick but could be done. Busting off one in .44 cal. in a .45 chamber would not really do much anyway. I've accidentally shot .44-40's from .45 Colts. Took me a while to figure why my groups opened up, they didn't even keyhole!

Another goofy idea to die on the vine...

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barrel with a .44 cal. threaded on end. Then special chamber ream for a new cartridge. I've read of that technique. But I'm no gunsmith.

I have wanted to take an antique old shot out bored .22 and install a .17 cal. liner to make it a .17 HMR or MKII. I can rent the tools, just a long drill bit, Brownells sells the liners. Seyfried did that with a neat old Husqvara single shot.

cartridges thru the year and most have failed. The 440 Corbon interested me and Kase but when we tried to order one they wouldn't take our order. That was the 50 AE necked down to 44. It was a good idea but like a lot of ideas similar to that it just didn't fly. In the picture the 50 AE on the left and 44 Magnum on the right with the 440 Cor Bon in the middle.
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Cor Bon made some ammo and from what I heard it was tried in the Desert Eagle but apparently the pressure was a bit much. Necked down cartridges work thru revolvers if they are designed right but very few have lasted longer than a few weeks, even when promoted by the gun magazines. They were similar to the Short Magnums in that their high pressures killed the cartridge. The more you neck a cartridge down the higher the pressures will be and it doesn't take many people complaining on the internet about the cartridge to kill it.
The 41 Auto Mag and the 357 Auto Mag were examples of this. The Auto Mag was designed to handle high pressure and it was needed when the 357 Auto Mag was developed. Both the 41 and 357 Auto Mags were necked down 44 Auto Mag. I hunted all over for years with my 41 Auto Mag and had really no problems other than very short case life. The 357 Auto Mag had even shorter case life due to the high pressures.
So the mention of necking down a 44 Magnum case to various cartridges has been done and it takes a lot of work to make the brass and then it doesn't last long. So simply said, it's been done and didn't last long. The 41 auto Mag still lives today in the form of the 41 GNR. I copied the idea from Lee Jurras and his 41 auto Mag and substituted the 44 Auto Mag case for the 44 Magnum case and with my normal loads it works perfectly and is a great killing cartridge on animals up to Bison and bull elk size.

For the CZ and Browning. The .440 AE on the .50 platform, you only need a barrel I think?! Have not heard of it in a long time.

saw a barrel only or even heard of it. I did hear from Peter Pi at the Celebrity Handgun Hunt that there were only 4 guns made before they cancelled the whole project.
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after the .440 Cor-Bon died, Magnum Research tired to resuscitate it with a very similar, but not interchangeable, cartridge called the .429 DE.
I think it died faster than the Cor-bon.

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https://www.glocktalk.com/threads/38-casull-glock.1682573/

I was interested in the gun. I called around to get Casull's phone number and (I think) John Taffin gave it to me. Not sure about that (it was 3 years ago). Anyway Casull planned on chambering it in a custom 1911. I have the hots for any hot handgun round so this interested me. Anyway I made some inquiries and tried to order one. I found out Casull wasn't really satisfied with the cartridge. He had a lot of ammo made up for it and was ready to build and take orders for the gun. But something came up that killed that in the bud.I heard it was his health. It sounded really good as I am sort of a 1911 freak. And the cartridge looked good enough to give it a try but it just wasn't to be.
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A 125 grain JHP at 1600 fps sounded like a good small game round.But like a lot of other wildcat rounds these days it never made it.

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it was a LOT hotter than the .429 DE, about 300 fps hotter.

"With its deeper penetrating performance potential, more common (and less expensive) bullets for hand loaders and Magnum research offering Desert Eagles and accessory barrels chambered for it, the .440 Cor-Bon should have been a smashing success. But here we are, two decades later and this cartridge is a nearly forgotten footnote in American ammunition history. What happened? In short, the cartridge didn't run reliably in the Desert Eagle semi-automatic. Unlike straight-wall revolver rounds, which headspace from the cartridge rim, the .440 Cor-Bon head spaces from the shoulder, meaning the ledge where the narrower neck meets the wider portion of the cartridge case. Cor-Bon had difficulty creating and holding the shoulder position on necked down .50 AE brass. These variations in external dimensions translated into varying head space which in turn resulted in poor reliability. It wasn’t long before Magnum Research discontinued their .440 Cor-Bon collaboration."

40+ years ago, JD came out with the .41 Avenger.
Originally .45acp case necked to .41 caliber. He eventually landed on using .451 Detonics Magnum cases.
If I remember correctly, he was getting 1300fps with 170s and high 1100s - 1200 fps with the 210s.

JD was rather disappointed that it flopped. Sometimes good ideas are ahead of their time. A .41 is a .41, but a .44 is actually a .43! I'd buy one.

With bottle-neck semi auto rounds or even rimmed ones, it's a big deal how they headspace. The top performing .38 Supers and .357 SIG headspace on the case mouth.

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