Although I didn't get away from the Denver Show with a 3 barrel Pope like "Lucky" Vall, I did get what I was after which was a pistol cartridge rifle for 100 meter Cowboy Silhouette. Just a plain old #2 which did have a long range Ballard tang sight on it. The Ballard front sight has the standard post and the Ballard barrel rear sight which is in the way and will have to go. The original 38 Long barrel had been rerifled by LaBounty in Washington and now has a groove size of .429. Before springing for some other mould I thought I'd give the Lee 44-40 dual cavity mould a try. I haven't had a new Lee in a while and they are certainly turning out nice ones now. I preheated the mould on a hotplate and had the 1 to 20 lead at 705 degrees on my gas burner. The good looking 210 grain bullets dropped right out of the mould. The sprue plate holes are shaped for a good contact with a Lyman dipper and they are separated far enough that the overflow from one won't run into the other. They dropped at .4295 and I lubed them in a .430 die. I had new Starline brass and I can see where you have to be a little careful with those thin necks. I checked what was the max OAL I could use and loaded up a few rounds with light charges of Unique just to get a baseline and then 80 rounds of 10 round groups varying by .5 grain using SR4759 and H4227. I found some reports that these two powders have the closest pressure curves to FFg and FFFg and I wanted to stay in the BP ballpark as the 44-40 can have a lot of back thrust which is not kind to #2 links and it is a cast iron action after all. I set the Chrony up with the targets at 50 yards and put 4 targets on each backboard. I figured this would give me a good starting point for future development. The 4759 had very good SDs but the groups were not impressive.The first load I tried with 4227 was 16.5 grains and this gave me just over 1000 fps and 6 shots in .82 inches and 9 in 1.5. I'll try this load at the next match to get some sight settings. The SDs with 4227 weren't great but the group didn't seem to mind. Taking that Rocky Mountain sight off the barrel will give me a much better sight picture. We'll see what happens down the road.

As I was not satisfied with the 4227 load at 100 I decided to try a couple of other powders that were suggested to me. I had enough bullets cast to shoot 10 7-shot groups. 6 were loads with 2400 in 11.5, 12.0 and 12.5 grains in 2 different OALs - one seated out a bit and the other seated out to touch the rifling. The other 4 were 6.0 and 6.5 grains of 231 at the 2 OALs. The burn rate of the 2400 is closer to the ballpark I wanted to be in and I guess the gun agreed. The shorter of the 12.0 and 12.5 loads showed promise with 5 of the 7 of the 12.0 going into 1.5 inches at 100. The 12.5 load had 3 shots making a .6 inch cloverleaf and the other 4 going into 2.4 inches. Unfortunately I'm still getting some bad flyers. I just received a new mould (44-220N) from Tom at Accurate that is a real beauty and one that I hope will be more sympathetic with the rifle's full 44 sized bore. I did ask him to increase the width of the base band slightly to help with stability in the case neck when seating out. Tomorrow is casting day. We'll see.

If you can get a 44-40 to shoot any better, you ought to use it for schuetzen and skip the Cowboy part. 
Nice little piece, and you may just as well start calling yourself "lucky" as well.