Long range pistol caliber rifle

[Athena Jake]

This coming July my local group is doing Long range pistol caliber rifle shoot of 50 yd. and 100 yd. course of fire.

I want to shoot my new 44-40 rifle at this event.
Anything special when loading the rounds for this?

Rifle:  EMF Heritage 24" Octagon barrel 44-40
Rounds: 44-40 Starline brass with 200 grn MAV.

I had a thread before about reloading 44 Colts, is there a LEE dipper preference for the 44-40 cases for BP?

This whole thing stems from another reason I will be keeping my wife at least until she has cause to kill me! 
We got our check from the government and she let me have the cash to purchase the rifle!
No fuss no bother, so now I have a full kit, and can start getting serious about making all my loads BP!
Don't think I will have it in time for this Saturday's shoot but that is ok.

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Howdy, Jake!

I don't know about a specific dipper for 44-40.


Do it the old way:  fill the case up with BP so that the level of powder is where the bullet (or wad, then bullet if you prefer) will compress the powder about 1/8".  Then pour the powder back into the biggest dippers and then go smaller until you find the dipper that holds that amount of powder.

Kinda like reverse engineering.

[Jefro]

What Steel Horse said, fill er up with enough for 1/16'' to 1/8'' compression, then find the dipper that matches. Here's Lee dipper volumes and DJs photo illustration.
http://www.leeprecision.com/cgi-data/instruct/Dippers.pdf
http://www.cascity.com/forumhall/index.php/topic,18257.0.html

    Jefro

[44caliberkid]

I finished 2nd in the long range pistol cal rifle at the 2006 NCOWS nationals, using 44-40, BP, and the Mav-Dutch bullet.  I loaded just as the above posters said, using a Federal Large Magnum pistol primer.
   The trick to doing well is knowing where your load shoots at a given distance. (practice)  Shoot at targets at 50 and 100 yards and make note of your point of impact in relation to POA.  Then you'll know just where to hold on those targets at the match.

[Noz]

If you have the old Lee dipper kit (red), I have found that the 129 dipper is about right for the 44/40 with a Lee 200 gr RNFP bullet.


Your mileage may vary.

[Athena Jake]

Thank you all kindly!

This here Black powder shootin is just down right easy!
OK, 44caliberkid...  Aside from that whole "practice" thing....

Aside from the usual working with explosives safety considerations, loading BP is just so simple that it is mind boggling!
And I really should get off my duff and use my fancy schmancy case length tool and just cut a couple cases down to the right length rather than fussing with something that is nearly right.

Heading up to Wisconsin over 4th of July, so going to shoot the remainder of any faddish smokeless powder I have, and burn up a bunch of boxes of BP loads.  So from then on nuthin but BP (well... except in the winter...)

[Wills Point Pete]

 The real key is a tang peep sight tall enough to work for the distance. Of course what we call long range in CAS is actually pretty close. I have learned that when the distance stretches much past 100-150 yards a lot of the BPCR loading tricks come into play. For instance I made a drop tube by gluing a powder funnel to a two foot length of copper tubing to replace the old hollow arrow shaft I'd been using but my son in law "borrowed". This literally cut my two hundred yard groups by nearly half. I know that folks say that it doesn't make much difference at CAS ranges nor, in the big cartridges, at one and two hundred. It does, though, make a difference in the short cartridges.