.44-55 Walker- Change brass, or switch cartridges?

[tinkerpearce]

Odds are you haven't heard of .44-55 Walker. That's hardly surprising since I invented the cartridge for a Walker Cartridge conversion, but basically it's a 'stretched' .44 Colt.

 
Currently it uses a 200gr. .451 heel-base bullet over 10gr of Trail Boss. This gives 1150-1200fps from this gun, good for about 600ft./lbs. at the muzzle. The issue is the brass- it's made from .303 British, and it's a serious PITA. 

Looking at the specs for .445 Supermag it ought to be easy to adapt the brass to this use, but it's spendy stuff.  The temptation is to simply ream the chambers to .475", deep enough to accept modified .460 S&W, which would also allow me to shoot .45 Colt in this gun and dispense with the heel-base bullets entirely. I reload a lot of .45 Colt, so from a practical standpoint this would seem to be the way to go, but I am reluctant to abandon my 'proprietary' wildcat for sentimental reasons.

Thoughts?

[magnumwheelman]

TINKER... now you're talking 45 Walker ( my name for 460 cases in a Colt Walker conversion ) at the time we made that, we shortened the 460 cases & chamber enough that some idiot wouldn't be able to stuff a 460 factory round into the Walker... I also must have gotten a bad batch of Hornady cases, as I ran into a few that started cracking, while belling the cases, so I took the whole 100 that I was playing with, & annealed the case mouths with a propane torch, & one of MRS cake pans half full of water to limit the depth of softening on the long cases... very easy to make cases, & 460 S&W dies work for reloading... I also knurled off the factory 460 head stamps on my working lot of brass...

older picture, before I shortened the barrel, & sent you the ejector assembly... with some loaded cartridges with Trailboss, & 250 grain cast bullets



The gun in its current configuration, with shorter barrel, & finger nail cuts in the cylinder for case extraction

[magnumwheelman]

Tinker... if you are wanting to keep the 44-55 ( I understand the desire to keep "your babies" ) I'm wondering if you couldn't swage / resize the 460 cases to the diameter of your 303 based wildcat???

similar to how I was making both my 401 Powermag, & my 10mm Rimmed cases out of 41 magnum & 41 Special cases... I was chucking them in the lathe, taking a few .001's off at the web, then resizing them... pretty easy as long as you have a lathe...

as noted in my previous post, if the brass is hard, may require annealing before resizing...

[tinkerpearce]

Thanks Magnumwheelman- I was going to ask you about .45 Walker; I figured to shorten the .460 cases about 0.10" and cutting the chambers for that- for the same reason that you did. Hard to make something foolproof, because fools are so damn clever... I think before I abandon .44-55 I may try resizing some .460 brass. I have a couple of pieces lying around, so why not?

[tinkerpearce]

I annealed a .460 cartridge and ran it through a .44 resizing die. Worked a treat! I'd need to turn down the base of the cartridge a bit... or maybe not? I kinda' like the 'belted' look, lol.

[magnumwheelman]

How about 444 Marlin cases... Newly available from Starline???