You can just flip a coin on this. I had a Ruger Old Model Vaquero in 45 LC and now I have this Lipsey special order Flattop in 44 Special.
Gunwriters have spent more than a century making a living by creating canyons out of hair splitting differences, I am going out on the limb and say that the difference between a 44 Special and a 45 Long Colt is not that much. I believe when S&W decided to upgrade the 44 Russian, they looked at 45 LC velocities and ballistics and decided to make the 44 Special a close duplicate.
How big of a difference is it between a 43 caliber 240 L bullet going 850 fps and a 45 caliber 255 L going 850 fps?
Their are libraries of articles in print claiming huge differences, but in my hands, on my targets, not so much.
In the Blackhawk frame either cartridge can be loaded to recoil levels that are just unpleasant.
Both are fine cartridges. In period guns, such as Elmer Keith used, a 43 caliber cartridge gave .02” more cylinder wall, and with the dead soft, plain carbon steel metallurgy of the day, that tiny difference allowed Keith to push 240’s at 1200 fps in his 44 Specials. If you read his book “Six Guns Cartridges and Loads” Elmer Keith writes of the number of Colt SAA’s in 45LC that he blew up trying to get the velocities he wanted. He tried 300 grain bullets in the 45 LC. And he blew up a SAA with that load.
Nowdays in thick walled revolver cylinders and modern alloy steels, you can push both cartridges to performance levels that exceed safety limits in Keith’s period SAA’s.
Not to say I would push the envelope in modern Colt SAA replicas. Those are still light framed guns and heavy Keith loads will beat them up. The upper load increased the diameter of the cylinder pin in my USFA 44 Spl. I don't know how it upset the cylinder pin but it did. Had to disassemble the frame to knock it out with a punch. That experiment did not last long.
However in something like a Blackhawk, you can get more.
I easily pushed a 240 L at 1000 fps in my 44 Blackhawk. The recoil was getting up there, the accuracy was excellent, and it is a powerful load. I don’t like shooting 44 Magnums, too much blast and recoil, so for me, this is a excellent top end load in a Blackhawk.
I have used the 6 ¼ grain and 6 ½ grain loads in Charter Arm Bulldogs. Loading manuals of yore claimed that 6.5 grains Unique was duplicate factory velocity. I have used tens of thousands of these lighter loads in N frame Smiths with far less wrist pain. You just have to shoot a Bulldog with a factory load to appreciate the recoil you get out of those things.
In terms of accuracy, back in Elmer Keith's day, the 44 Special revolvers tended to be more accurate but that was due to less variance in manufacturing standards. This might still be true today as 45LC chamber throats vary all over the place. You can find modern Colt made SAA’s and 70’s vintage S&W 45 LC’s with .457 or .458 chamber mouths. S&W reduced their chamber mouths in the 45LC in 1988 to 452 and in my hands, their 45 LC’s shoot just great. Ruger chamber mouths are .452 in the revolvers I owned.
Since I only shoot handguns offhand, I don’t use a bench rest and I don’t use a ransom rest, modern properly dimensioned 44 Specials and 45 LC’s are equally accurate in my hand, though I have this feeling that my M624 is slightly more accurate at 50 yards than my M625-9.
Mike Venturino got paid to publish articles where he claims that both the 44 Special and 45 LC stink when shot from a ransom rest.
Heck if I know.
Code:
[SIZE="3"]
44 Spl Ruger Blackhawk
240 LSWC Valiant 6.25 grs Unique thrown, lot 6/21/-98/92 Midway cases, Brass WLP
T ≈ 60-65 ° F 19-Apr-09
Ave Vel = 835.4
Std Dev = 26.83
ES = 74.52
High = 877.5
Low= 803
N = 24
240 LSWC Valiant 6.6 grs Unique thrown, lot UN364 3/9/92 Midway cases, Brass WLP
T ≈ 60-65 ° F 19-Apr-09
Ave Vel = 875.4
Std Dev = 25.94
ES = 109.6
High = 914.8
Low= 805.2
N = 25
240 LSWC Valiant 7.5 grs Unique thrown, lot UN364 3/9/92 Midway cases, Brass WLP
T ≈ 60-65 ° F 19-Apr-09
Ave Vel = 1001
Std Dev = 17.32
ES = 64.32
High = 1027
Low= 963
N = 27[/SIZE]
