Shooting 44-40 in a Taurus Judge

Safety: Never do this! Always fire ONLY the proper ammunition specified for your gun!

Shooting 44-40 in a Taurus judge

When Taurus first came out with the revolver now known as "The Judge" they claimed it would shoot 44-40 ammo.

See the Taurus catalog ad here.


So I thought I would give it a try. So I shot 40 rounds of 44-40 in my Taurus pre-judge. The holes in the paper target indicate it keyholed.

The 44-40 has a slight bottleneck. The case bulged.



So the bulged cases look about the same length of a 45 Colt case.



44-40 about same length as 45 colt

I did not see any splits. So I guess I will reload them with 45 Colt bullets and see how they do. I am guessing those will not keyhole. So I am thinking I will reload them using a 45 Colt recipe since I will be using the 45 Colt bullet. Wait a minute, the case is a little smaller than a 45 Colt case. Or at least it was before it bulged. Any suggestions?

i dont know the measurements of the cases to know if it will all be enough but it should stretch back out in resizing.

thats why you always trim your cases to length AFTER sizing. we all made that mistake a few times as newbies. firing should stretch it some too.

my suggestion would be to stick to 45 long colts case bulg and key holes is a good indicator that the 44-40 is to small in dia i wouldnt shoot them could eventually it will damage the riflings the bullet is playing pin ball down your barrel!

I agree with Dart.... Use what works best.

So I started reloading this fire-formed 44-40 brass for .45 Colt. But when I sized the 44.40 brass with my .45 Colt resizing die the brass would not grasp a 45 caliber bullet. The 44-40 brass walls are too thin.


So I resized that 44-40 fire-formed brass in the 44 special resizing die. Four of the cases refused to go into the 44 special sizing die, even though I asked them nicely.


But sizing the case with a 44 special sizing die makes the case way too small to accept a 45 Colt bullet. So you have to expand the case quite a bit with the 45 Colt expander die.


Then throw in a scoop of Unique and seat the bullet.

I think I would abandon the 44-40 Idea.....unless you use cast minie type bullets with the expandable hollow base to deter the key holing.

hawcer wrote:I think I would abandon the 44-40 Idea.....unless you use cast minie type bullets with the expandable hollow base to deter the key holing.

But I did use 45 Colt bullets. I think that should stop the keyholing.

Yes it should using 45 colt bullets....I just hope those 44-40 cases will continue to live through the process.

I do give you kudos for making it work....I think I would have punted as soon as I ejected the 44-40 cases and saw the expanded cases walls.

maybe after a few firings the cases will iron themselves out and be easier to work with.