I have several 44 moulds, all some type of SWC. I am thinking
of buying a full Wadcutter mould for target shooting. I have
them for 38 & 45. k38 & m-25 both shoot them extremely well.
Anyone have experience with 44 WCs. Would like to hear about
Mould make & number and load data. Will be shooting out of
29s mostly.

Mine is a SAECO by Redding # 944 2 cavity WC that comes out with a 204 gr bullet.
Use 5 gr of BE.

This is the last time I shot it, one shot per ball.
M24-5

__________________
Only difference Fool/Mule-ears

I enjoy playing with 44 Wadcutters in my 4" 629, 7.5" SBH and even my 2.5" Bulldog. Load 116, 162, 208 (Old Lees) and 240 gr WCs (Modified Lee) From cream puff plinkers (Bullseye, Red Dot) to stout general purpose loads (Unique, Bluedot, 800X). Lots of fun.

I often make use of the old Lee 208 mold.
It's not the most versatile thing to shoot. It's kinda a one trick pony.
If driven much past 950 fps, it tends to flake out and tumble.
If your intent is to have a strict paper puncher load that respects the speed limit. Its one trick is a good one.

__________________
it just needs more voltage

My first six in 44 special are the Buffalo Bore Hard Cast Full Wadcutter at 1000 fps.

Don't reload but I can tell you they are hard hitting and accurate.

I will be running WCs between 800 & 900 fps. Run 242 gr WC
Out of old Ideal mould at 850fps, deadly accurate out of m-25.
Got 3 Lyman WC moulds in 38 cal, the button nose one shoots
best at longer distances, 148 gr. the double end WC, poured
soft,Aloxed & loaded as cast at 600fps is short range load. Load
in 38s and 357s. At 25' you can plop them threw same hole.
I'm not crazy about Lee moulds. They seem to pour rounded
edges. Would rather put out the bucks and buy a quality mould.

I don't cast, but I shoot a lot of Penn Bullets 185 gr. double ended bevel base, check the website for what they look like. Once I shot them out to 100 yds to test the "wadcutters tumble past 50 yds" theory and they flew true and the group size was as good as I can shoot a handgun at that distance. So that design works for my needs.
Normally I would load 5.5 gr AA 2 behind those for a mild recoiling target load, but that powder has disappeared from the shelves so 6 gr W231 is my alternate.

Don't know the mold #, it's a 200gr cramer mold. Someone made a home made sprue plate for the mold. Cramer put their identification makes on the sprue plated. The bullet is similar to the lyman 429383 that I used to own/shoot & foolishly sold.

Never bothered to chronograph target loads, accuracy is king & everything else is secondary so I can't help any in that area.

7.0gr of traailboss
6.5gr of international clays
6.5gr of american select
6.0gr of clays

All of those loads above gave me groups like these @ 25yds from a beater 629 with a tasco 4x pro-class scope with a target dot reticle from a rest on a bench.



I shoot/use a lot of target powders in every pistol caliber I own from the 9mm to target loads for the 44mags.



Some other bullets that will easily hold the x-ring on 25yd nra targets. These are 220gr hbwc's from a custom mold (Mihec). When I test wc/hbwc bullets I'll load them to different repeatable oals along with different lubes and lubed grooves. It used to be extremely common to only lube 2 of the 3 lube grooves in the popular h&g # 50 for the 38spl's/tighter groups.



A little off target but perhaps but another type/style of bullet to look at for the 44cal's are hb (hollow base bullets). I cast/use 3 different hb bullets, they are all completely different but all of them are capable of excellent accuracy and bring different things to the table.

TOP: A 220gr hbwc, loaded long/crimped in the top lube groove, very accurate.
LOWER LEFT: A 220gr hbswc (lyman 429422), it's the standard "keith swc" with a hollow base.
LOWER RIGHT: A raphine 200gr rnfp (round nose flat point) with a hollow base.



The hbwc does what any wc/hbwc does and as others have mentioned, accuracy falls off at short yardages.
The hbswc does everything the wc does & will hold it's accuracy longer/further.
The rnfp bullet is just as accurate as the other 2 an will help accuracy in any firearm that has timing issues (no bullet shoulder hitting the forcing cone) & will be more accurate at longer ranges than the swc and wc. The drawback of the design is it punches ugly holes in paper making them hard to score.

I have/cast/use these 3 different types of hb molds in the 35cals (9mm/38spl/357), 44cal's (pictured above) & 45cal's (45acp). Ton's of fun bughole bullets!!!

This custom mold maker (neo) has different wc and a hbwc mold for the 44cal's. I'm nothing more than a customer of theirs. They make excellent quality molds and unlike the big box store suppliers, they love being hands on/communicating with their customers.

Their 44cal bullet list.

.432, NOE Bullet Moulds

Their website.

http://noebulletmolds.com/NV/index.php

Something to think about:
They made the wc bullet to be nothing more than a short range target bullet that's accurate, punches clean holes in paper and uses less powder (bullet takes up more case capacity). The other thing is the bullet's length, s&w/ruger uses a 1 in 20 twist, tc uses 1 in 22 twist. Less speed/less stable. I use/shoot the s&w's and the tc's, I get better accuracy with a wider range of loads from the shorter/smaller/lighter bullets.

Good luck

One of the fun things about the .44 Special is all the dingbat wadcutter designs that have been developed for this caliber since the turn of the last century. To get a hint of these, take a look at Chapter 11 - The Wadcutter - A Cast Bullet Guide for Handgunners - Glen E. Fryxell Although I’ve been looking on ebay for a while for some of the more unusual ones, I finally bought retail and settled on a Ballisti-Cast #707B, a standard button nose wadcutter at 185 grains. Typical loads of 4.0 grs Bullseye or 3.8 grs of Titegroup gets ‘em downrange. If you don’t know about Ballisti-Cast, they basically sell the old Hensley & Gibbs designs and you will see many of the unusual .44 designs there. The molds are very high quality and expensive, $175 for a 4 holer. PS to drm50: I too get rounded edges from Lee molds but have found that smoking them with a candle (the carbon sprays are too coarse) helps a great deal. Just my experience.

Back when lee made one, I had a 210gr mold. Very accurate, as wc tend to be. No reason of to go with one, I just don't see the point. A swc is just as accurate for 99% of us & more versatile. If your want one, look at the offerings from Accurate molds, very high quality at a fare price.

__________________
NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO

I load wc's from a 4 cavity H@G mold. 107b. .430
It shoots very well from several M29's and m24's
5.0 grs reddot makes a very mild and tight shooting load

I have 3 that I can immediately recall:

Lee 208 gr.

Lyman 429348 180 gr. WC

Lyman 429352 245 gr. WC

Favorite is the 429352.

I just started handloading .44 Special wadcutters. I got the bullets from a supplier I see at gun shows in Massachusetts. He didn't identify the bullet mold, but his 180 gr. bullets look to be identical to the one shown in my Lyman/Ideal list/chart as #429348.
They shot very well for me with a 5.8 gr. Bullseye load.
George

Penn Bullets makes a .44 caliber, 245 grain bullet they call the Thunder Head. Not exactly a wadcutter, but cylindrical in shape. Has anyone ever tried them?

If you wants good wc mold, NOE is having a sale thru the week.

__________________
NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO

NEO molds are a class act!!!!

NEO themselves are excellent people to deal with, they love being hands on!!! They thrive on customer feedback and will take the time to talk to you about molds, designs and specific sizes of the bullets for your casting/alloy needs.

Hence:
If you contact them and say your looking for a wc mold that needs to drop a .431" bullet using nothing more than ww's or scrap range lead. They'll cut you a mold that will fit your criteria.

They also make custom expanders for different calibers. Typical factory 44cal expanders are designed to use jacketed .429 bullets. If you're using a .431 or .432 bullet the custom expander will keep you from swaging your lead bullets down when seating them.

Anyway, I'm nothing more than a neo customer. This mom & pop co makes an excellent quality product for little $$$. They take the time to listen and help their customers any way they can. And they absolutely stand behind anything they sell.

The Accurate Molds 43-240W might work for you:



Accurate Molds: Custom Bullet Molds

These work well over 6.0 grains of Unique in .44 Special cases.

Chronographed 813 fps in a 4” 24-3 and 842 fps in an 629-4 Hunter 7.5”

I hope nobody minds if I revive this thread.

I am in the process of using up some of my oddball weights and profiles and came across a mostly full box of 500 185 grain DE .44 wadcutters.

What kind of velocities are guys seeing with 185s and Unique?

I was digging through my stuff and found some of the ol Lyman 429-303 bullets... a 200 gr spire point that shoots like a wadcutter. The mold was in the box with the boolits too..a single cavity. Bout 3 or 4 months ago I bought another 429-303 2 C mold from a friend. Thought I had sold/lost the ol single. Haven't used the 2C mold. That bullet is kinda different lookin but it sure shoots good

Veral Smith @ LBT Molds will make a 44 WC mold for just about any weight and nose configuration you desire . His molds are excellent quality , I have purchased quite a few over the years .

How would one reach him?
His LBT website is no more.

__________________
What would Jim Cirillo do?

Jaymo , Verals website is up . I just checked . Google " LBT Molds " .

I never got the 180 grain .44 WC from the Lyman mould to shoot as well as a heavier SWC.

I would think that it needed more length vs. diameter to stabilize that 180 gr WC better .

Put a gas check in your 44 SWC mold to keep the lead from going into the point of the mold and you'll have a wadcutter mold.

__________________
Where we go one, we go all

+1
They have to be driven hard/fast to get any real accuracy out of them. The cramer 200gr wc (pictured above 11-29-15) is close to the lyman wc. The biggest difference between the 2 are the:
The Cramer has a longer bottom drive band.
The Cramer is a nose pour resulting in excellent bullet bases.

Light wc's will work in the 44cal's, but they tend to be the standard cylinder design. A 175gr custom wc and a lee 162gr button nosed wc for the 44cal's.


The 175gr is designed so that it has the same seating depth/load for the 44spl & the 44mag. Note the offset top and bottom bands. It's an extremely versatile wc design. It can be loaded flush or crimped in any of the 3 different lube grooves.

The 162gr wc is a standard button nosed wc that does surprisingly well. I read where a lot of shooters had better luck with the 208gr lee wc. So far I've had no problem getting x-ring accuracy (25yds) with it and several loads.

Both of those bullets pictured above are cast from lee 6-cavity molds. They don't burn a lot of lead per pull of the trigger. Cast a mountain of bullets in a hurry. And provide countless hours of quality range time.

On a side note:
The bottom row far right in the picture above is a h&g #50 148gr 35cal button nosed wc. As you can see the lee's have a flat button nose in comparison.