.44 mag oal in Marlin 1984

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.44 mag oal in Marlin 1984

Post by petemacsydney » 27 Jan 2018, 6:21 pm

just searched for .44 mag OAL in the forum and to my surprise no results.

sooo..

whats your .44 mag reload OAL? (in a lever gun)

i'm looking at 1.710" on some sites and 1.650" i think is marlin 1894 handbook recommendation.

So what's yours?

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Re: .44 mag oal in Marlin 1984

Post by Tripod » 27 Jan 2018, 7:23 pm

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Re: .44 mag oal in Marlin 1984

Post by bladeracer » 27 Jan 2018, 8:16 pm

petemacsydney wrote:just searched for .44 mag OAL in the forum and to my surprise no results.

sooo..

whats your .44 mag reload OAL? (in a lever gun)

i'm looking at 1.710" on some sites and 1.650" i think is marlin 1894 handbook recommendation.

So what's yours?

The attachment 1894.png is no longer available


I haven't bothered measuring any of my .44 loads, just seat to the crimp groove, but that would vary if you don't keep your brass trimmed to a consistent length.
The 265gn FTX seated to the crimp groove is too long to feed through the tube though, and seating it to the groove already takes up a lot of case capacity. I don't have any FTX's loaded currently but they'd be roughly 1.800" overall. The bullet is 40-thou longer than a .22LR cartridge.
I just checked my 240gn Nolser JHP loads and they're 1.580".
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Re: .44 mag oal in Marlin 1984

Post by straightshooter » 28 Jan 2018, 9:38 am

SAAMI maximum COL is 1.610" and minimum COL is 1.535".
You might be able to get away with other dimensions but I doubt whether any manufacturer would make a recommendation outside a SAAMI specification.
No matter what, you must be able to safely eject loaded rounds.
Now in reality it is possible to benefit from a slightly longer COL in Marlins by filing down the rim stop on the ejector and rounding the inside sharp corner of the ejection port. Go too far on the ejector and you will have unreliable ejection. Go too far on the ejection port and you risk weakening the receiver.
These tweaks are meant to be fixes for a situation where slightly over-length loaded rounds sometimes don't eject cleanly and not to enable somebody to make grossly over-length ammo.
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Re: .44 mag oal in Marlin 1984

Post by juststarting » 28 Jan 2018, 5:07 pm

Ha, I just make up a dummy round (almost always seat to crimp grove), per projectile. See if it seats. No - seat dipper. Yes - keep for future die adjustment. I do however make sure that the brass is trimmed consistently. Although, sometimes, I don't even do that lol. Bees dick of a fraction ain't going to matter for my loads.
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Re: .44 mag oal in Marlin 1984

Post by petemacsydney » 29 Jan 2018, 8:50 am

cycled a few rounds through her yesterday. 1710 seems to cycle fine. there's no crimp groove in the proji as they are the tigershark copper coated proji's.
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Re: .44 mag oal in Marlin 1984

Post by petemacsydney » 29 Jan 2018, 8:56 am

straightshooter wrote:SAAMI - I doubt whether any manufacturer would make a recommendation outside a SAAMI specification.


Excuse my ignorance, but what is the risk with longer rounds outside of saami? i'm used to reloading 223 and 308 right out as far as i can fit them in my mag which i think is over SAAMI, but all that does is improve accuracy. i did a whiteboard marker test on the 44 at 1710 and it doesn't even appear to hit the lands and grooves at 1710.

cheers and thanks, pete
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Re: .44 mag oal in Marlin 1984

Post by Gamerancher » 29 Jan 2018, 9:01 am

Just a heads up there Bladeracer, those FTX bullets aren't allowed in lever- action silhouette.
Round nose or flat point bullets only. Just in case you were spending time working on a load to use for that purpose. :thumbsup:

petemac, C.O.L in lever-guns is limited to what will cycle in the rifle. By all means you can load longer to chase the lands and maybe more accuracy, but, you will have to single load directly into the chamber and that sort of defeats the purpose of a repeating action. ( also against the rules in silhouette if that is on the cards for you )
For reliability in use, I recommend loading for a C.O.L that will cycle flawlessly every time. I've seen plenty of jammed Marlins on the line where the shooter has tried loading ammo for maximum length possible.
I've also seen plenty of rifles buggered up by folks "modifying" the length of the loading ramp to allow longer C.O.L. :thumbsdown:
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Re: .44 mag oal in Marlin 1984

Post by petemacsydney » 29 Jan 2018, 9:44 am

Gamerancher wrote:Just a heads up there Bladeracer, those FTX bullets aren't allowed in lever- action silhouette.
Round nose or flat point bullets only. Just in case you were spending time working on a load to use for that purpose. :thumbsup:

petemac, C.O.L in lever-guns is limited to what will cycle in the rifle. By all means you can load longer to chase the lands and maybe more accuracy, but, you will have to single load directly into the chamber and that sort of defeats the purpose of a repeating action. ( also against the rules in silhouette if that is on the cards for you )
For reliability in use, I recommend loading for a C.O.L that will cycle flawlessly every time. I've seen plenty of jammed Marlins on the line where the shooter has tried loading ammo for maximum length possible.
I've also seen plenty of rifles buggered up by folks "modifying" the length of the loading ramp to allow longer C.O.L. :thumbsdown:


cool, thanks mate. appreciate the help. the 1.710 COL i have done seem to cycle well from the magazine, so i think i'll load up 30-50 rounds and test them at the range before i commit to reloading them all at this length. cheers pete
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Re: .44 mag oal in Marlin 1984

Post by bladeracer » 29 Jan 2018, 12:07 pm

petemacsydney wrote:
straightshooter wrote:SAAMI - I doubt whether any manufacturer would make a recommendation outside a SAAMI specification.


Excuse my ignorance, but what is the risk with longer rounds outside of saami? i'm used to reloading 223 and 308 right out as far as i can fit them in my mag which i think is over SAAMI, but all that does is improve accuracy. i did a whiteboard marker test on the 44 at 1710 and it doesn't even appear to hit the lands and grooves at 1710.

cheers and thanks, pete


The risk would be that they might not cycle through some actions.
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Re: .44 mag oal in Marlin 1984

Post by bladeracer » 29 Jan 2018, 12:10 pm

Gamerancher wrote:Just a heads up there Bladeracer, those FTX bullets aren't allowed in lever- action silhouette.
Round nose or flat point bullets only. Just in case you were spending time working on a load to use for that purpose. :thumbsup:


Nope, too bloody expensive for that GR :-)
For now it'll be the Nosler 240gn JHP for competition - unless I manage to find an accurate cast bullet before then.
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