The .44 Colt is an American

centerfire Two rounds of .357 Magnum, a centerfire cartridge; notice the circular primer in the center A centerfire cartridge is a firearm metallic cartridge whose primer is located at the center of the base of its casing (i.e. "case head"). Unlike ri ...

revolver A revolver (also called a wheel gun) is a repeating handgun that has at least one barrel and uses a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers (each holding a single cartridge) for firing. Because most revolver models hold up to six ...

cartridge that was produced commercially from 1871 to 1940.Barnes, p.169, ".44 Colt".

History

The cartridge was developed by Colt's Patent Firearms for use in cartridge revolvers based on the 1860 Army percussion revolver. The cartridge was briefly adopted by the United States Army, around 1871. The Army used it until 1873, at which time it was replaced by the better known and more powerful .45 Colt cartridge used in the recently adopted

Colt Single Action Army The Colt Single Action Army (also known as the SAA, Model P, Peacemaker, or M1873) is a single-action revolver handgun. It was designed in 1872 for the U.S. government service revolver trials of 1872 by Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Comp ...

revolver. The .44 Colt was made for use in the Richards-Mason conversion of Colt's 1860 Army

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

revolver. The conversion process involved boring through the chambers of the obsolete cap and ball revolvers and adding a breech-plate with a gated loading port to enable them to chamber centerfire metallic cartridges. This process left a chamber of uniform diameter, with no step at the front. Thus the bullet and the brass case were made the same diameter, .451-.454 in, with a short "

heel The heel is the prominence at the posterior end of the foot. It is based on the projection of one bone, the calcaneus or heel bone, behind the articulation of the bones of the lower leg. Structure To distribute the compressive forces exert ...

" section at the base of the bullet of smaller diameter inserted in the mouth of the case, similar to the construction of .22 rimfire ammunition. Modern .44 Colt ammunition is dimensionally similar to .44 Special with regard to bullet diameter and case width, the main exceptions being the shorter case length and smaller rim diameter.

Ballistics

The original .44 Colt loading used a heeled, outside lubricated bullet. The major diameter of the bullet was approximately the groove diameter (.451 in) of the converted ".44" cap and ball revolver. The smaller "heel" at the base of the bullet was sized to fit inside the brass case at approximately .430 in. Upon firing, the ductile soft lead bullet (alloys of pure to nearly pure

lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...

were used) allowed the base of the bullet to "bump up" to first the chamber diameter in the cylinder, then jump the gap, through the forcing cone into the rifling. This is effective with black powder, but less so with smokeless powder. Alloying the lead with

tin Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal. Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, ...

antimony Antimony is a chemical element with the symbol Sb (from la, stibium) and atomic number 51. A lustrous gray metalloid, it is found in nature mainly as the sulfide mineral stibnite (Sb2S3). Antimony compounds have been known since ancient t ...

to harden it makes this nearly impossible. Use of hard alloys typically leads to poor accuracy. Benet cup and Martin-type primers were later replaced by more reliable

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type primers. The ballistic performance of the original .44 Colt is comparable to the .44 Remington, and less powerful than modern .44 Russian loads. Cases for the modern .44 Colt-chambered handguns are typically made using trimmed .44 Magnum, .44 Special, or .44 Russian brass and a historically inaccurate .429 lead bullet. (As opposed to the older "heeled bullets" with a larger, .451 in diameter outside lubricated bullet.).sixguns.com
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black powder Gunpowder, also commonly known as black powder to distinguish it from modern smokeless powder, is the earliest known chemical explosive. It consists of a mixture of sulfur, carbon (in the form of charcoal) and potassium nitrate ( saltpeter). T ...

and smokeless ammunition remained available until around 1940, by which time the .44 Colt had been entirely supplanted by more modern handgun cartridges such as the .38 Special and .44 Special. The modern sport of

cowboy action shooting Cowboy action shooting (CAS, also known as western action shooting, single action shooting, Cowboy 3 Gun, Western 3-gun) is a competitive shooting sport that originated in Southern California in the early 1980s, at the Coto de Caza Shooting ...

has stimulated renewed interest in obsolete revolver cartridges like .44 Colt and, for the first time in nearly 100 years, commercially produced .44 Colt ammunition is available. Brass is available from Starline and can be made by trimming the length of .44 Special cases.

References

Sources

*Barnes, Frank C., ed. by John T. Amber. ".44 Colt", in ''Cartridges of the World'', pp. 169 & 177. Northfield, IL: DBI Books, 1972. . *Fitzsimons, Bernard, ed. ''Illustrated Encyclopedia of 20th Century Weapons & Warfare'', Volume 20, p. 2192, "Remington". London: Phoebus, 1978. {{DEFAULTSORT:44 Colt Pistol and rifle cartridges Colt cartridges

History

Ballistics

See also

References

Sources