Back In The Saddle

[JEBar]

well, back in the saddle so to speak .... tonight, for the first time 15+ years when our oldest son took over reloading ammo for the family, I sat down and loaded a loaded a 50 round box of 44 Mag hunting level ammo on our 1960's vintage RCBS single stage press .... he recently moved his family from St Louis and is currently living in a rental until they find a spot to settle in for the long term .... right now he doesn't have a place to dedicated to reloading so we are in the process of fixing a temporary spot at our home .... those who reload know that loading a box of ammo isn't a big deal but they will also understand how nice it is to spend a relaxing evening working a press .... parts should arrive within a few days to get our Hornady Lock-n-Load progressive press .... looking forward to getting it back in action .... the 44's shown below are hunting level 240 gr Nosler JHP's, pushed by 23.8 grains of H110, ignited by CCI Large Pistol Magnum primers .... the casings are mixed brand that have been fired and resized .... they will be used for practice in our Henry 44 Mag and Ruger Redhawk .... our actual hunting rounds will be made from the same components but we will use new brass .... looking forward to sending them down the range

[Sir Henry]

Having a dedicated place is important for consistency. I haven't reloaded in a few years but when I was I didn't allow any distractions.

[RanchRoper]

Looks very tempting....hmmmm

[imeccentric]

You will enjoy your lnl hornady progressive press. I use mine strictly for handgun reloads. Use my single stage for all rifle loads. You won't find better brass than ordering directly from starline brass company. High quality, consistent, free shipping, and reasonable. I have thousands of different casings from them.

[DWD445]

That should be a very good hunting load, I've made almost the same load w/soft points at 23.4g H110.
No high tech chono stuff, but my shoulder says it's a strong load Feels like a 12ga in my BBS

[Squatch]

It's about time!

That should be a nice load. Anything above 23 grains is a nice H110 load for the 44 mag.

[Rugerfanboy]

The 44's are hunting level 240 gr Nosler JHP's, pushed by 23.8 grains of H110, ignited by CCI Large Pistol Magnum primers .... the casings are mixed brand that have been fired and resized .... they will be used for practice in our Henry 44 Mag and Ruger Redhawk.

JEBar...23.8 grains of H110 in a Ruger Redhawk is a HOT load. Not a dangerous load...but it's still HOT. Recoil and muzzle rise/flip is huuugh. The Ruger Redhawk can handle that load plus some. It's just a heavy recoil load for a shooter. Be for warned, that load will wreck your hand, wrist and forearm if you practice with it before hunting. It took me a week to recover from a 100 rounds range trip with that load. When I walked off my range that afternoon, I knew right then and there I was gonna pay for it dearly.

Have you tested this load in your Redhawk yet...??? If not...make sure you apply a heavy crimp.

[JEBar]

JEBar...23.8 grains of H110 in a Ruger Redhawk is a HOT load. Not a dangerous load...but it's still HOT. Recoil and muzzle rise/flip is huuugh. The Ruger Redhawk can handle that load plus some. It's just a heavy recoil load for a shooter. Be for warned, that load will wreck your hand, wrist and forearm if you practice with it before hunting. It took me a week to recover from a 100 rounds range trip with that load. When I walked off my range that afternoon, I knew right then and there I was gonna pay for it dearly.

Have you tested this load in your Redhawk yet...??? If not...make sure you apply a heavy crimp.

tested this load ???? .... yep, we settled on 23.8 grains of W296 or H110 pushing a 240 grain Nosler JHP shortly after purchasing the Redhawk in the mid '80's .... back then I felt that one should practice with the same round he hunted with so that was pretty much all that was run through it .... early on we almost exclusively used W296 but it has gotten a bit hard to find in our area .... all the literature and our own experience indicates H110 is an equivalent power, in short we can't tell any difference .... we've been reloading since the '60's and I literally have no clue how many thousands (more realistically 10's of thousands) of rounds have been fired .... a couple of years ago I decided that I didn't need that much power to punch a hold in a paper target so we backed off on the powder charge and went to lead 240 grain bullets .... she's done her share to put venison and pork in the freezer .... your assessment of recoil and muzzle flip is dead on, well it was up until (as can be seen below) we had her Mag-na-ported and upgraded the grip .... significant muzzle flip is pretty much a thing of the past, the recoil is directed back instead of up .... she retains her deep, rather brutal, bark so good hearing protection is a necessity .... it took a while to relearn to shoot it but that didn't take too long .... haven't really kept a count but we've fired something over 500 through our Henry .... firing the lower power ammo is certainly more pleasant and with us not hunting, we have reduced our stock of full loads .... I reloaded another 50 full power target loads today .... with our scope/red dot sights adjusted for low power loads, I don't plan to stockpile hunting ammo .... when needed, the 100 full power rounds we have will allow us to resight both the Henry and Ruger .... they could be used for hunting if we can't get any dedicated rounds made in time

[JEBar]

You will enjoy your lnl hornady progressive press. I use mine strictly for handgun reloads. Use my single stage for all rifle loads. You won't find better brass than ordering directly from starline brass company. High quality, consistent, free shipping, and reasonable. I have thousands of different casings from them.

in another thread I mentioned a problem with the Hornady press .... the part arrived today and we should be able to get her back in working order pretty quickly .... we use it to reload our pistol and straight wall rifle ammo .... as you mention, we load our bottle neck rifle ammo is loaded on our single stage press

[JEBar]

my plan is to use this thread to record our development of hunting and practice loads for several of our rifles and pistols .... yesterday we ran our hunting 44 mag loads and some HSM Cowboy action loads through our chrony :

as noted above, our 44 hunting load 23.8 grains of H110, ignited by a large pistol magnum primer, pushing a 240 gr Nosler JHP .... with the Chrony 10' from the muzzle of our Henry 44 Mag, they averaged 1850 feet per second .... per Nosler reloading manual #2, if we zero it at 1" - 1.5" high at 50 yards it should be about 1.5" low at a hundred yards where it will retain 1,000+ foot pounds of energy .... this is the first time we have actually run test on this load, its no wonder that it has been a very effective hunting load for us for decades

HSM's Cowboy Action loads show 1,210 feet per second at 10' from the muzzle of our Henry ... if zeroed about 3" high at 50 yards they would hit about 3" low at 100 yards where they would retain about 555 foot pounds of energy .... once we burn through about 150 more HSM Cowboy Loads we will develop a target load .... our initial goal is to bump the practice loads into the 1,400 feet per second range ... zeroed at just over 2" high at 50 yards the impact point at 100 yards should be about 2" low