Back in the 80's I had two cherry Colt New Service's, a .38-40 and a .44 Special. Please feel free to kick my ass for not still owning them. The .38-40 was my "magnum" and digested many piles of hotly loaded ammunition, and suffered zero defects from it. The .44 was a pussycat though because my old mentor gifted me a train car load of truly ancient .44 Russian brass and a couple Ideal moulds. God, what fun that gun was, for all the reasons MS outlined so far. I honestly don't remember ever actually loading any .44 Specials, it was all Russians. (The .38-40, the way I loaded for it, was another wrist-breaking story though. I'll never forget the look on a smartass's face when he shot it after he denigrated it over the magnum-something he was shooting next to me.)


"You can lead a man to logic, but you cannot make him think." Joe Harz
"Always certain, often right." Keith McCafferty