Are you tired of hearing about these ventures into 44mag rifle loads yet?
I did shoot them out of my M629 Classic with a 5" barrel too!
At any rate, I have run the gamut trying to find a lead load that works well in my Marlin 1894CS. My cast bullets seem to have a hard time with the shallow type of Ballard rifling these rifles have in them. I have used slow powder with hard bullets trying to get top velocities from those combinations. What I got was leading beyond belief and inaccuracy galore! I did get some pretty astounding velocity though! Well over 1800fps from a 250gr H&G #503 (Elmer Keith bullet)with my homemade lube.
Today I decided to take some of the commercially cast 200gr RNFP bullets and run them around 1600fps and see what happened.
The powder I used was AA #7 and just a tad below maximum from the Lee #1 manual for this weight of bullet. I had a pleasant surprise! I got coffee can accuracy @ 100 yards and just a little more velocity than what I planned. (I did hit the coffee can once with my M629 @ 100 yards too. Must have been luck with open sights!)
I am going to have to work on this load just a bit and see if it can be improved. At any rate, here are the results:
From the M629:
Low 1329fps
High 1431fps
Avg 1400fps
ES 59fps
SD 23fps
Not great but acceptable spreads.
From the Marlin 1894CS:
Low 1714fps
High 1754fps
Avg 1725fps
ES 40fps
SD 16fps
The difference in velocity that I was aiming for is due to using Wolf Magnum primers, I believe.
The best thing about it is that I got out to shoot today!
The only thing that would have made it better is if I would have been able to ride a horse too!
p.s. I think slowing them down a bit helped with the leading issues as well.