44 Magnum question? Update

Interesting thread Skinny. Any idea how you didn't notice the hot loads v standard ones when firing?

*edit* I also shoot factory .44mag and Seller is a little hotter than most other offerings. I'm not certain if it's the powder they use or whether there is a slight metric/imperial measurement differential between "American made" and Eastern European ammo. In any event, the difference is noticeable when shooting.
 
plinker 777 said:
Interesting thread Skinny. Any idea how you didn't notice the hot loads v standard ones when firing?.......
Click to expand...

Since this is Skinny's first .44Mag I'm going to suggest that any felt difference was buried in the feel of all that fire noise and push. It takes a while with the big boomers to get to where you can feel the difference in the hand between the hit of a 10Lb sledge hammer hitting your hand and a 15Lb sledge.... :D

That last picture of the S&B casings and primers is what they are supposed to look like. Magnum pressure is high enough that you expect the primer cups to form to the gun and primer pocket to some extent. So we expect to see the machining marks from the recoil shield or bolt face impressed on the cup. And we expect to see the cup metal flow around the firing pin's nose. But with the S&B notice that we're not seeing the corner of the cup flowing outwards and creating a sharp rim like we saw with some of the Federal stuff.
 
This is perfectly normal for factory Federal 44 mag, I've shot a #### load of it through all 4 of my 44 mag revolvers and get flattened primers with all of them. The primers are Federal which have very soft cups. I've got buckets of this stuff waiting to be reloaded and they all have flattened primers. Federal loads their 44 mag with around 23.0gr of H110, give or take a tenth, well below the max of 24.0gr.

I've loaded 24.8gr of H110 behind a 240 gr hard cast and CCI primer with no signs of pressure either from the primer or extraction. However with a Federal primer I'll get flattened primers with as little as 22.0gr of H110.

As for the S&B 44 mag, you will never see pressure signs with this ammo, it has to be the weakest factory 44 mag I've ever shot.

For magnum revolvers I tend to look more towards how difficult it is to extract the brass as a sign of pressure and not as much to flattened primers, especially when shooting Federal primers.

There is nothing wrong with the OP's revolver.
 
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Flattened and with squared edges on the primer cups I can accept. And seeing the recoil shield machine marks in the cup faces is typical as well. It's a Magnum after all.

But flowed out around the edges like the OP had in his first post is way over the top. If you pushed those primers out you'd see a flared out ridge making the cup look like a top hat. And that's simply not right. Primer "flow" like this is typically used as a sign of over pressure. In fact I doubt if we would find a better text book example than what the OP had with that Federal ammo.
 
Flowed out around the edges like this. Left one is a primer from factory Federal 44 mag, right is from 44 mag with Federal primer that was loaded with 22.8gr of H110, well be low max. Both pieces of brass fell out of the chamber, no tight extraction. This is not a pressure issue, this is a soft primer cup issue, Federal Large Magnum Pistol primers to be specific.

Pressure signs aren't a one size fits all, I can load my 460 mag rounds so hot I have to tap them out of the cylinder with a wooden dowel but there will be no flattening or cratering of the primer.

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I knew that Federal primers were softer then CCI but I was still convinced that the factory ammo was over pressure for the flowed primers. But since you've gotten the same pressure flow results with the Federal primers on known reloads I guess I'm going to have to eat crow on this one.

But now I'm wondering why ALL the Federal ammo isn't doing this. So do we still have some highly inconsistent ammo which is apparently mostly well UNDER proper magnum pressure?
 
I guess another possibility is a bad lot of primers. I've used Federal primers in everything from low pressure 45 acp to high pressure 460 mag and I only get this flattening with the Federal large pistol magnum that I have.
 
Geez, if the 460 doesn't flow them like this then WTH? I can only guess that it may be something to do with the pressure curve and how it interacts with the primer pocket hole. Perhaps there's some dynamic going on that causes a pressure peak with the .44Mag that doesn't occur with the .460?


BTW, those are some very nice macro photos. SO much nicer than fuzzy cell phone stuff.... :D
 
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