Why did the .44 calibers loose favor over the .45's ?

[Kurt]

I have several .44's. The .44-77, .44-75 Ballard, a couple .44-90BN's and a couple .44-100 2.6 straight in the 16 and 17 twist. They all shoot very well, one especially well, the 25# Shiloh 17 twist heavy 1.3"x35" long round barrel I sent the barrel because the 19 twist was only offered at that time. I have not spent much time shooting the 25 pounder because it's just too heavy, it tips my gun cart over backwards if I don't load up the front end with a couple 100 round boxes of ammo
I shot it once at the Quigley I think in 2016 or 2017 and it shot very good in the Quigley winds that are normal there.
That rifle shot one 8 at 600 and all sevens on the rest except on the bucket I only hit two. That beast is just too heavy for off hand. Lost too much upper body strength in the 16 years of retirement But the two bucket hits knocked me out of the top 10 and that was about the last time I shot that heavy beast but since the recoil has been taking the toll on my eyes I just bulled it back out of the safe just in case I can make Lodi this weekend I will take it along with the .38-50.
Below are targets during load development close at 130 yards before going to a test farther out to confirm the close targets.
The one with the large hole was shot at 200 yards blowing out .45-2.6 brass sized to fit the chamber. That is a 100 shot group fired with out fouling control other than an occasional blow up the brick or down the muzzle when it got tight loading the shells. That group was shot with a 500 grain PP and only 4 or 5 went outside 4"
Kelly O. Roos shot the .44-70 with great results. Wonder what ever happen to Kelly. A lot of good information was posted from him as well as many others missing on here.

44-100 load developement.JPG

IMG_1242_zps765223af.jpeg

[martinibelgian]

I think there are 2 factors here - in the day, Sharps 'rationalized' the 44's out of the product range with some 'excuses', while the real goal probably was to streamline the manufacturing process.
In recent history, it has more been a case of no brass available, wrong throat configurations and barrel twists too slow to be competitive. Most of that has now been corrected, but the difference between .44's and .45's remain pretty small. And the brass issue mostly remains.

[Orville]

Bean counters of the old west, cut production costs, the 44 and the 50 went at the same time.

[marlinman93]

Likely it was as simple as the demand for .45 caliber cartridges being greater, and firearms companies making more .45 caliber firearms. I've got several old 1800's .44's in .44-77SBN, and .44-100 Ballard, and all have .452" groove diameters, so they're actually a true .45 already, just not a .457" that's sort of the standard.
In 1875 Marlin offered their new .44-100 cartridge, but about a year later they dropped it in favor of the .45-100 cartridge. I'm guessing the companies like UMC maybe suggested a change to the .45-100 would be cheaper with all the demand for .45-70 ammo and components, so the change was made just because of the demand.

[Kurt]

It's just like now days with the .223 being a military cartridge like them changing the .43's and .44's to the .45's
Yes the throat's or the chamber case stop transitions have changed mostly what now is used to the 45º. Personally I favor the flatter funnel transitions of the past. A lot of my rifles have a transition from a 4º to the 7º that Orville got started and they have held me high at the end of the Gongs at the Quigley.
The bull barreled rifle in the photo was cut with a reamer I had made that was made from a chamber cast from a Remington rifle used at the Creedmoor matches and it had a shallow funnel transition. The .45-2.4 I mostly use at the shoots and the .40-65 Silhouette rifle have a flat transition as well as the .38-50. Excellent shooters all of them.
I when the full metal jacket bullets came along the flat transitions were lost.
I just wish that I could shoot these rifles to their full potential.

Kurts44-100RemSt-1 (3).jpg

CPA .45-90.jpeg

CPA .40-65.jpg

[JonnyV]

Very interesting drawing...

[bpcr shooter]

Kurt, do you plan on being at Lodi this upcoming weekemd??? We may have to chat about a 44-100

matt

[desert deuce]

If as usual history is remembered according to what someone, somewhere wrote about it at some time.

Seems the 44-77 started out on the western ranges and also saw duty at Creedmoor. Buffalo hunting at first may have seen needle guns.

Creedmoor was about accuracy and winning matches. Bison hunting added the knock down power to the accuracy requirement.

Remington and Sharps started early providing rifles and ammunition for the U.S. Team as well as for the hide hunters so don't over look the 50 Calibers meeting the need for hunting at extended ranges while delivering more power. (1873-1877 more or less)

Remington actually developed the 44-2.6 cartridge and it was seen in the Hepburn match rifles which may have been too much of a good thing.

Later in the Creedmoor era Remington brought out the 44 2.4 or 44-90 Remington Straight which apparently was the final iteration of a long range target chambering from Remington and basically a shortened Remington 44-100.

In that same time from a group at Springfield Armory was modifying rifles and working with cartridges in rifles later named trapdoors which lead to the U.S. Military adopting the rifle and 45-70 cartridge for use up until the 1890's with the advent of the Krag and then the 03 & 06 Springfields.

In that transition period from Creedmoor Ideal Manufacturing even produced a 456132 bullet with pointed nose and beveled base possibly with the prospect of the 45-70 competing against the Krag at distance.

It is then possible that due to a modified form of manifest destiny that the adoption by the U.S. Military of the Trapdoor Springfield and 45-70 cartridge, also developed by the military at Springfield Armory, signaled the departure from general use primarily of the .44 cal centerfire calibers.

[Kurt]

Kurt, do you plan on being at Lodi this upcoming weekemd??? We may have to chat about a 44-100

matt

Matt,

No my shooting season is over. I just came home from the optometrist about the vitreous separation from the retina and he said that it cam move around. So I will hold off the rest of the season till he can check me again in December before he will do the surgery. So I will just get the .22 out till I'm healed up.
I would be an anchor around the person I would be spotting for because I cant see well enough looking through a spotting scope. Heck I cant even see a .38 caliber hole through the target at 100 yards so I wont see the conditions down range.
I shot silhouette at Alma last week and I had to hold center on a fuzzy blob.
I will let you drag that wagon axle around at Lodi some time

Kurt

[Kurt]

DD, The reamer below was from a Hepburn and I made a change on the neck diameter because it was more of a .45 caliber than a .44.
He also had a like new Hepburn in the 2.44 necked Rem Special. It was a lot like the .44-2-5/8 BN Sharps but it looked like the base was wider than the Sharps.

[marlinman93]

It's just like now days with the .223 being a military cartridge like them changing the .43's and .44's to the .45's
Yes the throat's or the chamber case stop transitions have changed mostly what now is used to the 45º. Personally I favor the flatter funnel transitions of the past. A lot of my rifles have a transition from a 4º to the 7º that Orville got started and they have held me high at the end of the Gongs at the Quigley.

I really love those gradual leads into the rifling, and hate the sharp angles that most companies put on their chamber reamers these days! I just ran into such an issue on one of my Hepburn rifles I had rebarreled to .40-65 Win. and tried various .40 caliber bullets I cast. The rifle accepted 3 lighter bullets, but my heavy 410 gr. bullet wont chamber without help as the rifling engraves on the ogive, even with the bullets seated fairly deep. But I tried the same cartridges and bullets in my Rolling Block, and a Ballard, and they chamber fine. Both have more gradual leads, and accept the heavy bullet fine.

[Kurt]

Yes, I call that a lead bullet chamber.
Here is what that 45º wall can do to a lead bullet shank. I deep seated that bullet in the case to see the effect of a 45º case stop. And note the paper to lead ring from the previous shot fired that it pushed out on the bottom of the ogive.

IMG_0645 2.JPG

[martinibelgian]

Kurt,

You'd better start up a new topic - this has nothing to do 44's vs 45's losing favour.

[DaveC]

I recall a post or an article somewhere written by MLV, where he wrote that Springfield Armory tested bottleneck .44 vs straight .45 cartridges of the same powder capacity with the same weight bullets and found the bottlenecks generated 2000psi more pressure for the same velocity. So they went to the straight-case .45s for further development.

Once done, of course, it was a prologue of the same story as the .30-06 becoming the standard civilian .30 caliber and the .223 driving the .222, the .222 Magnum and the wildcat .22 centerfires into obscurity. Cartridges with a level of R&D behind them that a private-enterprise gun company couldn’t afford to do, plus availability and affordability as the government dumped its overage stocks on the surplus market for cheap.

[Don McDowell]

I believe the 44's got left behind because of the govt going to the 45 right up until the advent of smokeless and the ability to go with smaller bullet diameter and much flatter trajectory, making the need for large caliber heavy single shot rifles go by the wayside.
I also don't think the 44's or other large caliber bottle neck over 40 cals lent themselves well to the early smokeless powder. In museum on the northern plains there's an 86 in 4082 on display. The card reads it belonged to one of the old locals, who was involved in the gunfight at Stoneyville. He rode into Mill Iron the next day and traded his sharps for the rifle, because of the need for more firepower available quickly than his beloved sharps rifle.
Always keeping in mind that back in the late 1800's and continuing on until probably well into the 1960's and 70's people just simply didn't have the extra income to buy a lot of guns. Most of the folks I knew growing up probably had a 22 and a shotgun and maybe a hunting rifle, good chance it was a sporterized Krag, Springfield or Mauser, or possible a Remington 724 or Winchester 70 in a bolt gun or a Winchester 94 or Savage 99 in the levers.
I asked an old guy who had lived thru that transition once what he missed most about shooting in that transition period, his reply was Kings Semi Semismokeless.