Smart fella.
I've seen a couple .32-40's, same difference. The thing isn't whether there's enough barrel diameter to safely contain the pressure, it's all about bolt thrust of the cartridge head. The formula to calculate that is based on the surface area of the cartridge head factored by the chamber pressure - it's late, and I don't remember the formula. But, it's simply understood by considering that if with, say, a .22 Hornet and a .219 Zipper with the same chamber pressure the Hornet will exert a heckuva lot less stress on the breech face than the Zipper will because of its much smaller surface area. The (uncommon) 44's with lugged hammers were meant to ameliorate that but they weren't that much better than a regular 44.
My 44 Stevens in .22 WCF has a chamber identical to the Hornet, it just uses a slightly larger bullet. I strictly adhere to black powder pressures, with smokeless, and wouldn't dream of cutting loose with some factory Hornets. It likely wouldn't come unglued but it would likely get stressed and loosened up considerably to the point of being dangerous in very short order.
Anecdote: in the very early 1930's Stevens gave the 44 one last lease on life by beefing up the action a bit, speeding up lock time, installing a wonderful trigger, and putting a heavy barrel and "modern" PG target stock on it - and called it the "Walnut Hill". As .22 target rifles they're wonderful beasties. They had the bright idea of chambering some initially in .22 Hornet too because the cartridge had just come out and the shooting world was ga-ga over it. Bad idea, those Walnut Hill Hornets started getting wobbly right from the start and Stevens had the good sense to stop building them right quickly - and those updated 44 actions were a lot better than than the old original 44 actions. The 44 was a jewel of the black powder era, but smokeless powder was its undoing.
