Obie73 wrote:Sounds great! Yes, I used to have a 94 in 30-30 but was never completely happy with it. I wasn't really all that interested in the longer 30-30 cartridge, for a lever action. Always just wanted to shoot pistol calibre style lever actions. But as always, to each their own. Would you be able to pass on some of your load information for the 44-40 that you use, eg. powder grains, bullet type/weight, and primer? I'm new to all this. I'd say I probably won't be able to reload for the 44-40 myself for quite a while, until LR primers become available again, but in the meantime I can get started with 357 for which there are still some suitable primers around if you look long and hard.
I bought the 94 44/40 new on 1979 and soon after discovered it was horribly inaccurate due to the factory ammo only being made for revolvers so I started my reloading journey back then. Some years later that rifle plus many others were stolen from my home via two padlocks, that was 1988. I had the serial numbers and gave them to the police who came apon it during a raid in Townsville in 2002 and gave it back to me so I've got a soft spot for my old 94, anyway back to loading for it, as I said my objective was to find a load to suit all my 44s and to find one that has enough power to use on pigs and deer so for a hunting load that seems to be adequate without too much stress on the toggle links I'm using 17 grns of 2205 which should be around 1150fps and prints around "2 at 50mts, all my cast in this calibre are.427. I've tried .429 with no improvement even though all the rifles slugged at .428
6.5 of trailboss or 6 grns of AP70 are good enough for plinking but I find better accuracy with the slower powder in fact I don't even like the way the fast powders sound when you shoot them.
I used to load the 94 with 23 grns of 2205 but there is no way I would use those loads in the 73 or the 66, far too hot. A good place to start is to slug the barrel and buy a sizing die to suit if you're going to cast, usually the same diameter as the bore of a thou or so bigger. Lee stuff is pretty good.