Been meaning to get around to doing some testing with the snub nosed 44spl. Allot of people use a snub nosed 38spl and there's been tons of threads/talk about the:
FBI bullet and load
Buffalo bore 1000fps load for the 38spl
Well the idea behind the fbi bullet was a hb bullet would seal the bore's better creating more velocity for the same load.
Buffalo bore came up with the "MAGIC 1000fps load" for snub noses.
I prefer a snub nosed 44spl to a 38spl so I decided to try to hit the magic 1000fps bb did, but do it in a 44spl. So I decided to test 4 different bullets and 3 different powders.
power pistol
unique
2400
Top left:
lyman 220gr 429422 hb swc that I put a cupped hp in (210gr with hp)
Top right:
Mihec 220gr hbwc turned backwards
Bottom left:
h&g #142 hp swc a 200gr hp "thompson" designed swc with a gc
Bottom right:
Raphine 195gr hb fn that I put a cupped hp in (185gr with hp)
I need to make #40 of soft hp alloy to cast hp bullets for the 44spl's/45acp's. This was just junk alloy I had laying around. The raphine bullet didn't expand, after thinking about it I remembered I was casting rifle bullets (extremely hard alloy) with a single cavity mold so I grabbed anoth mold to cast with. Poured/filled 1 mold while the other cooled, faster and more bullets. But it dodn't do nothing for the hp/expansion.
All bullets were fired into wet newspaper. The raphine went thru 13+" of paper and the other 3 went thru 9"+ of wet paper. All bullets were shot a 7yds/21ft into the wet bundles of newspaper.
I only did 10-shot test strings with the chronograph setup 10ft from the muzzle.
Power pistol did ok but the 44spl really isn't it's cup of tea. I tested 8.2gr loads with the 429422 & 220gr hbwc. And 8.6gr loads with the 200gr hp & the 185gr raphine.
Unique did extremely well but couldn't keep up with the 2400. The uniques velocities were 30fps/40fps less than the 2400 loads with every bullet tested. I used 8.5gr with the 429422 & 22ogr hbwc and 9gr with the 200gr hp & the raphine bullet.
The 2400 loads were extremely impressive. I used 15.5gr with the 429422 & the 220gr hbwc and 16gr with the 200gr hp & the raphine bullet.
The matchup;
38spl fbi buulet ='s 158gr hb hp swc
44spl fbi bullet ='s 210gr hb hp swc
bb 38spl load ='s 1000fps
My 44spl load ='s 1000fps+
The snub nosed 44spl's are pretty good thumpers