Reshaping .44mag brass to .44-40

[Qball]

Well as the headline said this is posible, but is it practical?

My friend have a 1866 44WCF (clone) that he will let me borow for CAS shooting.
But he dont have lots of ammo for it so i'm gona roll my own.
I have a bunch of .44mag brass that i'm not using, and as .44-40 brass easily gets dented
id rather step on my own reshaped brass then his expensive "original" brass.

Thank you for input on this question.

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

I'm not saying it is impossible, but the trouble with this idea is the THIN NECK.

Most 44-40 chambers would not allow a properly sized bullet to fit with the ample thickness of the 44 Mag brass. 

How are your importation rules in Sweden?

[Qball]

Midway sell them here, not realy that much of a problem.

It's just that i am a cheap bast... (sorry) and was thinkin' that it would be a easy way of geting rid of the .44mag brass, thats all.
Not worth the trouble then?

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

Buy a new gun in 44 Mag, or trade off the brass.  You are limited in the number of firearms in possession, are you not?

The 44rm bases are smaller than 44-40 but that is not critical.  IF you have time & technology, you might try reaming the inside of the 44Rm necks.

[Qball]

I'll see if any one will trade them.
Thank you.

[Pettifogger]

Go here and click on the .44 Mag and .44-40.  Dimensions at base and neck are pretty far apart.  Biggest problem is that even if you ignore the difference in base diameter, the neck is much larger on the .44 Mag and a loaded round would not chamber in a properly sized .44-40 chamber.  http://stevespages.com/page8d.htm

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

I doubt it can be done. Here are the SAAMI spec drawings of the two cartridges and their chambers. 44 Magnum brass is considerably narrower at the base than 44-40. If you try to fireform it to shape it will probably just split above the case head. The case head won't expand at all. As for sizing the neck area, it is tough enough to resize 44-40 brass to 38-40 brass, and they are almost identical. You'll just end up with mooshed up brass if you try to resize 44 Mag to 44-40.

Save yourself the trouble, buy the 44-40 brass.

44 Magnum:





44-40:






P.S. I just went down and tried it. Surprisingly, with a little bit of lube a couple or 44 Mag cases ran right up into my 44-40 sizing and decapping die quite nicely. Of course the large diameter of the rear of the case was still too small for a 44-40 chamber, so I don't know what would have happened if I had tried firing one. Probably would have split. Anyway, when I ran the 44 Mag cases up into my 44-40 expander die they really didn't like it. 44-40 brass is very thin at the mouth, only around .007 thick. 44 Mag brass is more like .010-.012 thick at the mouth. So after being sized down to 44-40 neck size the inner diamter at the mouth was a lot smaller than it should have been. And when I ran them up into the expander die thay complained very loudly.

Buy the 44-40 brass.

[Qball]

Thank you for this information.

I did put up a trade ad in sweden but no respond,
so guess i have to put up the chash