Dang, that was fun! Just got back from the range with the Frank Wesson 2 Trigger on its first outing. First the ammo was so easy to come by (ha, ha), but it was! Thanks to craigd for the suggestion to look at .445 Super Mag brass (think 44 Rem Mag but .0315 longer). Perfect, and made by Starline. Processing was also easy. Neck size (just a quarter inch) in my 44-40 dies turned up 5 turns from their 44-40 position. Expand with a 44-40 Lyman M die that I had chucked in a drill press and filed and sanded down a bit. Seat in my 44-40 seating die turned up 8 1/3 turns from its usual position. This gave an easy start to a 240 grain Accurate bullet sized to .421. The seating depth was just .1 which put the first driving band touching the rifling (left hand twist by the way) thus bridging the large freebore. I had found a vintage advert that claimed the Wesson ammo was loaded with 48 grains of black and a 216 grain bullet so I loaded 5 rounds with black as a bench mark. Then I loaded 4 groups of 10 rounds using 4 different powders each with 5 sets of 2 rounds each varying the pairs in .5 grain increments. The loads were loosely based on 44-40 loads which I knew to be safe in my Ballard taking into account that the Wesson case capacity with the bullet seated out was nearly 10% greater. There was: Unique, 7 to 9 grains; 4759, 14 to 16 grains; 4227, 15.5 to 17.5 grains; and 2400, 11 to 13 grains. I also loaded 5 rounds with the middle load of Unique (8 grains) as foulers and sighters. I put a target out at 50 yards and set the chrono up to align with the target. There were some broken clay pigeons on the 50 yard berm so I fired the first shot at one staying away from the chrono just in cast the lollipop and front sights had some surprises that might endanger the chrono. There certainly was a surprise! The first shot smashed the pigeon! I smashed 2 more and then let a guy at the next bench in on the fun. OK. Time to get serious. I fired the first BP round through the chrono - 1364 fps then 1382, 1367, 1365, and finally 1394 with no blowing or wiping for an average of 1374 with an SD of 13. There were some nice holes appearing in the target also with 3 almost touching. I cleaned the bore good and went through the other 40 rounds 2 at a time. Unique gave 848 to 1003 fps; 4759 gave 835 to 967 fps; 4227 gave 918 to 1125 fps; and 2400 gave 819 to 893 fps. Unique and 4759 gave the lowest SDs across the range (and some cutting pairs) so will start with them next time. Fun!

That sounds like it was a lot of fun!  I am turning just a slight shade of green 
Keep the info coming!
Greg

As I have it, a lot of the 44 Wesson 2 Triggers take the 44 Russian and I could shoot them in this one - kind of like shooting shorts in a long rifle. Of course that also means I could use 44 Special brass or 44 Mag brass in increasing lengths but the 445 Super Mag just happens to be the correct 1.60 length. I saw a reference that said that Wesson brought out the 44 Extra Long in 1877 for the Wesson No 1 rifle, the falling block target model, so mine wouldn't be older than that. By the way, just to confuse things, there was a later 44 XL cartridge (not Wesson) that was a shot cartridge for 44-40s and 410 shotguns.

Out to the range this morning. Forecast 6 to 8 mph wind out of the N turned out to be 15 to 18 out of the W. Anyway it was OK for what I wanted to accomplish. First thing I did was rotate the lollipop 180 degrees so I was looking through the correct side of the slider - one side is flat over the peep hole the other has a conical relief to the hole. This meant that I had to reset the windage. No sweat, first try at 100 was on. This added a half turn of elevation to my basic sight setting since it was shooting a little low at the match Sunday. That done I went on to tweak the load by shooting 10 round groups at 100. I varied the 7.5 grains of Unique by 2 tenths each way. Turned out the 7.5 was the best and it was better than the 14.5 and 15.5 grains of 4759. This was fine by me as I can save my stash of 4759 for other loads that like it. Then I fired my extra rounds offhand at 100 ram distance and at 75 turkey distance to get better settings for those distances. Brass is in the tumbler and I'm awaiting the arrival of the proper wheel for my annealer. I didn't know that Ken Light had passed but Brian Crawford has picked up supplying the parts. Time to get the mold back out and start dropping some more.

Smitty,

I did that for my 38XL rolling block, and after I ruined a couple of original cases with heel bullets not wanting to co-operate, I lucked onto an original 38L Ideal tool with a hollow base mold (rare) on evilbay, a #8 tool.  Worked like a charm with 357 MAX brass.

Have fun and good luck finding that tool.

James

Watch this space for coming data on the now identified Wesson in 44-40 Extra Long. Here's a shot of what a 444 Marlin looks like after being shortened to 1.6 inches and run all the way into a 44-40 WCF sizing die next to a 44-40 WCF. The soon to be 44-40 Extra Long has been annealed and is ready to be loaded and fire formed. Notice that the 444 Marlin has a thicker rim which is perfect for the Wesson's chamber.