Fourty four - Forty .

Undoubtably one of the most important calibers of all time (by far my favourite) is .44-40.  Apart from the perfect symmetry the .44-40 has, it is a great calibre for reloading as it's easy to handle, easy to measure, easy to trim and ensure it is within spec. Using certain ADI powders make it much safer for
hand-loading, due to obvious visual variance in load discrepancies.

The .44-40 was originally made in 1873 by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. It has a few alias, .44 Winchester, (due to them's owning it!), .44 WCF (Winchester Centre Fire, again stamping their mark), and .44-40 which breaks down to ".44" being the calibre and "-40" being the standard load of black powder. The later name came about from a company "the Union Metallic Cartridge Co". (U.M.C.). They understandably wanted to differentiate themselves from the Winchester model by dropping the WCF etc. I (and most of the world) tend to run with their name because it is the most descriptive. The .44-40 was one of the earliest centrefire cartridge's made by Winchester, .44 Henry Flat rimfire was precursor to it designed by B. Tyler Henry whom is the father of the lever action. This guy has a pretty impressive CV and a post on him is to come.  First of the center fire's, the .44-40 has a much higher pressure, speed and kinetic energy so a new stronger rifle was needed.  Winchester cerated the "model 1873" using the famed Henry lever action to accommodate the new cartridge.  The "model 1873" rifle is without doubt one of the greatest lever actions of all time!

1873 Winchester, "The gun that won the west."

Uberti  "Yellow boy" in .44-40

It didn't take long for the other manufactures (Remington, Marlin, Colt) to cotton on to the .44-40's success for a few reasons, its stoping power (by equivalencies at the time), its reliability which was aided by the model 1873 and Colts awesome single action revolvers of the time, and the fact there was many revolvers and rifles available in .44-40.  This meant you were able to carry one calibre for a variety of applications.  Many manufactures have continued to make their arms in .44-40 even still today with many re-issues being chambered .44-40.  A great deal of this may be accountable to popular competitive shooting in disciplines such as western action.

Variants of projectiles.

The original load for .44-40 was 40 grains of black powder. The common projectile used both then and now is a 200-grain RNFP (Round Nose Flat Point). Most common was the use of the "Flat point" projectile. This was because of the design of the tubular magazine in the rifles. A point on the end of the projectile will almost certainly cause a magazine fire due to recoil forces. I have not used a chronograph to measure my own loads but the speeds (mathematically) is 1,200 ft/s -/+%5. There have been other variants in projectiles like 217-grain, 188-grain, 165-grain, 140-grain, 122-grain plus more. Due to the popularity of western action shooting there has been a great many new products made in the .44-40 family and many many re-issues of the leaver and single actions.

Nowadays it more common to use the smokeless powder versions which can have a much higher pressure wilth the available space so it is very important to get accurate loads. One great product made by ADI (Australian Defence Industries) is the "Trail boss" powder. This powder is about a million times larger in size than most the others. This means that the physical space taken up in the shell is greater. Why is that good?? When a modern smokeless powder is used, due to its higher pressure capability, a much smaller amount is used. This means when the shell is on is side the bulk (actually nearly all of it) lays in the bottom 3/8 of the shell. This means the directed pressure is unevenly being dispersed on the projectile creating an unstable acceleration point. With the larger granule powder "Trail boss", the powder is nearly consuming the whole casing, not to compression load stature but closer to 6/8 of shel capacity. Hence giving a more accurate trajectory.

4 smokeless powder's, check the size of  Trail boss on the right! Might be a Black (powder) Flag.