By Luis Valdes
When folks think of the Wild West, Cowboys, and Six-Shooter. Most folks think of the. 45 Colt Single Action Army. Yet one of the most popular rounds back then was the .44 WCF (.44-40) and more Six-Shooters from Colt, Smith & Wesson, Merwin & Hulbert, and Remington were chambered in that cartridge and sold on the civilian market.
Why? Simple!
The Winchester 1873 and later the Winchester 1892 along with the Marlin 1894 wetr all chambered in the .44 WCF. .45 Colt back then wasn’t chambered in lever actions. That didn’t happen until long after the Wild West became the Settled West and Hollywood started to make Westerns on the Backlots of their Studios.
As WWII ended and the Westerns began, production and popularity of the .44 WCF started to wane in popularity while the .45 Colt started to gain popularity.
So much so, that because of Ruger and their massively strong wheel guns, that the. 45 Colt was given new life as a quasi Magnum load.
But we’re not talking about the Ruger. Oh no, we’re talking about Big Blue and their two N-Frames chambered in these timeless cowboy cartridges.
S&W chambered two commemorative anniversary models in these old-school bronco busters.
The six-inch barreled Model 25-3 celebrating Big Blue’s 125h Anniversary and chambered in .45 Colt. The other is a five-inch Model 544 and it was made to commemorate the Texas Wagon Train that went around to the Lone Stat State to celebrate their 150th Anniversary.
The Model 25 is a pre-1982 production gun, it came from the factory with a pinned barrel.
The Model 544 was a post-1982 production gun. So, no pinned barrel.
Now, these are limited commemoratives that should live in their fancy felt lined boxes. Well, they don’t, not with me. Guns are meant to be well maintained and cared for. But they’re made to be shot, and shoot then I do. You can see the drag line on the cylinders.
The six-inch is a fun hog gun and the five-incher is a mighty fine open carry or home defense piece.
Both rounds aren’t slouches. A 225gr lead slug is no laughing matter and neither is a 250gr one either. Sure, neither are on the same level as the .44 Magnum, but honestly. That’s a good thing.
These are soft shooting N-Frames and allow the recoil adverse to get the benefits of a full-bore DA revolver. Both can even be fed by HKS speed loaders.
The .45 Colt in its original black powder loads saw action all over the Wild West, Cuba, and the Philippines. The .44 WCF also had a long history too. Serving a long career with the Spanish Guardia Civil with their Winchester 1892 clones, the Tigre in .44 Largo.
So, out of the two, which would you take?
Scattered Shots 
Given a choice between .44 Special and .44-40, I’d take the .44 Special, which can be loaded, like the .45 Colt, to higher-than-historical pressures in modern revolvers, and doesn’t give the “wrinkle” behind the crimp that happens sometimes in .44-40’s.
The .44 Special is a very special round (pardon the pun – it’s not truly ‘unique’, but it is special) in handgun history, due to its inherent precision, the power you can generate in modern, high-quality revolvers, etc. Elmer chose the .44 for his next “magnum” project for a good reason – he could have settled on the .45 Colt, which is also suffering from low, black-powder pressures, over-sized chambers, etc. But the .429 bullets just seem to group better than many other rounds out there, when shot out of .44 Special, .44 Magnum, etc.
Sadly, when the .44 Magnum came out, the sales of .44 Special revolvers fell off rather quickly, and if you see a modern revolver (eg, Ruger, S&W, etc) new production in .44 Special, you’d better snap it up, because the “.44 Special Fan Club” often makes the limited runs of .44 Special revolvers sell out quickly.
Back to the .44-40 for a sec: I have nothing against the performance of the .44-40. It’s the “thin/variable case mouth wall thickness” issue that’s my beef, and this makes the reloading process take a bunch more care. If you look at the SAAMI specs for .44 Mag/Special, .45 Colt, you see that their exterior case diameter at the neck minus the bullet diameter, divded by two gives you a case wall thickness at the mouth of 0.012″.
Do the same thing with the .44-40 (and you’ll have to look in centerfire rifle specs on SAAMI’s website) and you find that the SAAMI spec for .44-40 wall thickness at the neck is 0.008″.
If you cast a few .44-40 chambers (as I have as a gunsmith, when people have come to me to ask “Why can’t I fit this .44-40 cartridge into this gun stamped ‘.44-40’ or ‘.44 WCF??!”) with some Cerrosafe, one can find that .44-40 chamber sizes can vary significantly (as much as 0.005″ in my observation between “.44-40” chambers) in diameter in the case neck areas. The result is that some brass, from the factory (eg, Winchester is one that sticks in my mind) tend to run a thin case wall thickness, so if you’re using a ‘spec’ .44 bullet, you can still get the loaded cartridge to chamber in most .44-40/.44 WCF guns.
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Have you ever had any time with the .38-44 heavy duty?
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No, I’ve just fondled one. They’re the precursor to the .357, a heavy frame S&W meant to withstand Elmer Keith’s near-.357 loads in a .38 Special case.
Nice guns, increasingly collectable.
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