A very nice, clean example; congratulations!

Reproduction Stevens flat "hard rubber" butt plates are available from N. C. Ordinance and CPA Rifles among others; search the internet.

There are no Stevens factory records.  The 44-1/2 was introduced in 1903 and by your rifle's serial number - there's no point to the "XX", by the way - it was likely made that year or early in 1904.

With regard to brass, assuming you mean ".32-40" rather than ".38-55",  unprimed shells should be fairly easy to obtain, either new or vintage.  However, I have no idea what you mean by "long" and "short" with reference to that caliber.

Bill Lawrence

I am a novice at best but have been casting for several single shot rifles for the last 2 years.  Not knowing anything, I asked half a million questions here and other similar sights and now know enough to be dangerous and am actually starting to shoot some pretty nice groups.  The best advice I got and I would never order a mould without doing it first is to do a chamber cast.  That process scared me but once I did one and saw how painless it was, I have done several since.  That is the only way you know how long your brass can be.  If the chamber is short enough I would go with good quality 30-30 brass and neck it up and let fly.  I shoot Nosler 30-30 necked down in my 25-35 although the Hornady brass seems pretty consistent also.  The second best advice I got was to fit the unsized cast bullet to the freebore if the chamber has any.  The third best advice is to check the twist and make sure your bullet is not too long.  The heavier the bullet the better in my opinion but overall bullet length to properly stabilize is the limiting factor.  If the barrel has no freebore, then cast the largest bullet that you can fit in an unsized fired case and still allow the cartridge to chamber.  Don't worry about a bullet being bigger than groove diameter by a little bit.  I like a bullet with a nose riding section but I am not experienced enough to suggest that they are better but it makes since to me that if we can center the base in the bullet with the case and the nose snug in the rifling then the bullet has a better chance to fly straight.  Bullet sizes are also dependent on whether you are going with black or smokeless but all of my 32-40 shooting has been with smokeless breach seated tapered bullets.  Accurate moulds is like the old Chrismtas catalogs so you can look at a dozen designs and then modify the dimensions to fit your rifle.  Have fun!  Tom

Re: chamber casting

The nice thing about the Stevens is that it's easy to remove the barrel.  Simpy unscrew the screw under the receiver, open the breech, make sure the extractor is clear of the barrel, and the barrel will likely unscrew by hand.  If not, it should not take much to get it loose.

Makes it a lot easier, and less worriesome to cast the chamber.

The barrel will likely stabilize a 200 grain bullet but even with that a .32-40 with a 1:16 twist at 300 meters will be a challenge.

Back in the early 70s good brass  such as 32-40 and 38-55 was not available at all
and  everyone was scrounging for it. I was into 32-40s and 38-55s I bought Canadian brass to unload it and fire it with lead. The Canadian Jacketed bullets were very rough and of course quality. The Brass was very stiff and hard and after a twenty or thirty reloads where the neck need to be sized the end would start to have short splits like a crack. I spent some time finding a better supply. For 32-40s I ended up buying Remington 32 Specials and resizing them in a 32-40 die. They reformed nicely with no losses and only came out about .025 long. Never had one go bad. 38-55s were a different problem and I spent a lot of time a shows chasing Rem. and Winchester old brass and they held up well. By this time I had aquired Bullet molds that Breech Seated well in my Rifles. So the working of the Brass became almost negligible. When Winchester introduced the 38-55 again I bought 3 cases of it and it turned out to be .05 short and so did a bunch of fellow shooters. But you know Winchester never did admit they made a mistake. Now you can get Winchester Re-Drawn to the proper length, this thins the Wall thickness and makes it easier to load as fixed ammo if you wish. So there are options you just have to consider them. HTH Regards FITZ, OLD TUCK

Real nice clean Stevens 44 1/2 32-40. Good luck shooting it.

Before I had plenty of .32-40 brass I made several hundred cases from .32 Win. Spl. brass I had. It was a very easy job to knock the shoulder down in the .32-40 die and they grew slightly in length doing so. Don't recall how much, but they shot fine.

Yes, Boats. I do keep mine in batches, and each in the group is the same length. 
And, like Vall, the .32 spl cases were always the easiest, and most nearly like factory .32-40 cases in length- within a few thou of 'correct. That's because the ironed out shoulder's metal needs to flow somewhere, and it's upward in the die. Opposite with the thirty-thirty, because, while the shoulder still gets removed, the neck steals some length back in stretching. Either one make a fine substitute. 
After final trim, they are still shorter, but no matter.