I have been big fan and users of the .44 Special for at least forty years and presently have three revolvers chambered in this caliber.

One of my revolvers is the 624 the same as you own, over the years I have used this caliber as my carry firearm a great deal and it is a substantial self defense caliber when loaded correctly.

I have several suggestions regarding defense loads for the .44, for the past ten years or so I have been using Vihtavuori
N340 & N350 with great success. The advantages to these powders is they measure great, burn very clean and have proven to be extremely accurate in all of my revolvers.

I have done a great deal of testing with the Hornady 180 gr. and 200 gr. bullets and they are very impressive in all of our testing. Depending on barrel length it is very easy to obtain velocities between 900 fps to over 1100 fps with completely acceptable pressures using both N340 & N350.

Recently, a friend of mine with extensive reloading experience was sharing with me his recent testing with Ramshot (Trueblue) in his .44 Special, he convinced me to buy a pound and give it a trial, at this point I have loaded up 100 rounds but have not had a chance to test it as yet. The reason he decided to test this powder was it is considerably less expensive than the VV powders in his neck of the woods and he believes it has many of the same advantages as N350.