38-44 Special

[cshold]

What's the story on these?

[Blaine]

You made me look....Seems like the first stab at what eventually became the .357??
http://americanhandgunner.com/the-3844-heavy-duty/

[Rusty]

Sometimes at gun shows you'll see a .38-44 Outdoorsman. It was an N framed .38 Special designed to take heavier loads. The handguns are really nice, Almost look like a 1917 from a distance. IIRC I've seen them in 4" and 6".

[gundownunder]

A 357 load in a 38 special case, made for a 38special revolver on a 44 special frame
I didn't know they were commercially produced. I thought they were only Elmer Keith's hand loads.
Thanks for sharing.

[Sixgun]

Nothing special...no pun intended.....

Just a hot loaded 38 Spl, designed for the n-frame Smith, back in the early thirties for cops who wanted more power than the standard 38 Spl. Velocity was around 1150 fps.

The 357 put it out of business.-----6



Next to a modern 38 Spl. RN.

[rbertalotto]

Not to be confused with the 38-44 Target of about 40 years earlier

http://rvbprecision.com/shooting/sw-3rd ... ading.html

I wrote this article a few months ago. It will be reprinted in the Single Shot Exchange next month.

[w30wcf]

By the 1960'S or 1hereabouts Remington had a cartridge head stamped R-P .38 SPL HI VEL which was a continuation of sorts of the older 38-44 cartridge. I lucked onto about 20 loose rounds at a cartridge show several years ago.

They were loaded with a 158 gr lead bullet and 13 grs of some type of ball powder. Velocity was 1,104 f.p.s. from the 6" barrel of my Ruger Security 6, and 1,381 f.p.s. from the Rossi's 20".

By comparison, some original 38-44's contained 7.5 grs of a disc type powder and produced 1,105 fps from the Ruger and 1,263 fps from the Rossi.

rbertalotto,
Excellent article as always! I left a comment on your site regarding some original 38-44's I have.

w30wcf

[vancelw]

LGS had some of those a while back. He was asking me about them, so we had to look it up. I had never heard of them before that.