history of the 44 magnum revolver

7/29/2019 History of the 44 magnum Revolver

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THE .44 MAGNUM SIXGUN

JOHN TAFFIN

The .44 Magnum is now well into its fifth decade and it seems good to look back at the history of

this excellent, even all-around sixgun load and some of the fine guns that have been made and

are still being made for the big forty-four.

If you are not a reader of Elmer Keith I would suggest that you become one. It is impossible todiscuss the .44 Magnum without him. For much of his life Elmer was way ahead of his time. His

books on sixguns, SIXGUN CARTRIDGES & LOADS (1936) and SIXGUNS (1955, 2nd

Edition 1961) are still viable and still make good reading. His features and columns inAMERICAN RIFLEMAN in the 1920's through the 1950's, and GUNS and GUNS & AMMO

from the 1950'S until the time of his stroke in 1981, still make fascinating reading. As Keith

closed his book SIXGUNS in 1955, he said: "We desperately need a modern up-to-date, full-

powered factory loaded .44 Special--the King of all Handgun Cartridges." Keith was right, but itwould not be his .44 Special load but a totally new cartridge.

For thirty years Keith had been writing about his heavy handloads used in .44 Special sixguns,

namely Smith & Wesson TripleLocks, and Model 1926 Targets, and in Colt Single Actions. His

standard load was 18.5 grains of #2400 and his 250 grain Lyman #429421 bullet loaded over

standard primers in balloon head cases. This load was changed to 17.0 grains of #2400 with theadvent of modern solid head brass. Both loads give around 1200 feet per second from seven and

one-half inch barreled sixguns.

For those same thirty years Keith had been trying to convince ammunition manufacturers to

bring out his 250 grain/1200 feet per second .44 Special load but to no avail. Product liability is

nothing new and they were afraid that someone would blow an old .44 Special apart. Elmer

claimed there would be no problem with any Colt or S&W heavy frame sixgun, as he had beenshooting this load in pre- World War II sixguns for years. It was my good fortune to inspect and

unload many of Elmer's sixguns after his death in 1984. I was able to lovingly fondle all the

sixguns we had seen in pictures in magazine articles and books for so many years. None of the.44 Special TripleLocks, Model 1926's, Model 1950's, or Colt Single Actions showed any

evidence of `shooting loose" by any means.

One person that did listen to Keith was Carl Hellstrom, president of S&W in the 1950's. He

showed interest in Elmer's pet load and discussed the prospect of a new forty-four sixgun withhim. Who would supply the ammunition? Only with the dawn of silhouetting and the explosion

of handgun hunting would we see firearms being produced without factory ammunition

available. Hellstrom went to Remington and they agreed to supply the ammo if Smith & Wesson

would supply the sixgun. Remington produced the first lot of ammunition in 1954. The newammunition was one-eighth inch longer than the .44 Special, and this was done so it would not

chamber in .44 Special sixguns. This had to be done since this was not Elmer's .44 Special load

but truly a full-house big bore Magnum load. Please note carefully: Keith did not invent the .44

Magnum as others have stated. He simply lead the way with his .44 Special load and the ink hegave it for so many years.


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Smith rechambered four 1950 Target .44 Specials for the new round in 1954. These were

standard .44 Specials except for the rechambering and specially heat treated cylinders.Remington received one of the "new" revolvers for testing and it was soon obvious that the

thirty-nine ounce weight of the .44 Target Model was definitely too light for the recoil of the new

.44 Special Magnum. Keith had asked for 1200 feet per second and the new round was claimed

to achieve 1500 feet per second plus!

To provide the desirable increase in weight, S&W introduced a sixgun with a barrel that was .15"greater in diameter and a cylinder that was .18" longer. This brought the weight of the six and

one-half inch barreled original .44 Magnum up to three pounds. Strangely enough, thirty-five

years later, a "new" .44 Magnum Mountain Pistol would be offered with a .44 Special barrel!

By early 1955, tests were completed and Smith & Wesson began tooling up to produce what at

the time was known simply as the .44 Magnum. The first factory revolver was completed on

December 29, 1955 and shipped to Remington. In January, the next two were completed and onewent to the NRA for testing by Major Hatcher and the other was shipped to Elmer Keith in

Salmon, Idaho. By the end of 1956 more than 3000 Smith & Wesson .44 Magnums had beenproduced in the original six and one-half inch length as well as the easy packin' four-inch length.The eight and three-eighths inch length would follow in 1958.

As a kid fresh out of high school, I fired one of the first four- inch .44 sixguns that a local dealerrented out at six shots for fifty cents. It was a real attention getter at his range and it certainly got

my attention. I fired it and said the recoil wasn't bad. I lied!

Reporting in the AMERICAN RIFLEMAN for March of 1956, Major Hatcher said: "In shooting

the .44 Magnum, we found it advisable to use gloves, as the recoil can only be described as

severe. Without gloves, the checkering hurts the hand, and the sharp edges of the cylinder latch

are almost certain to shave off bits of skin. After firing many heavy handloads in the .44 Special,we expected a heavy recoil with this ultra-powerful new cartridge. At the first shot the gun rose

up a bit, and the first reaction was that it was not as bad as we had expected. Just about that time,

however, we suddenly experienced a sharp stinging sensation over the entire hand, as though wewere hitting a fast baseball with a cracked bat. I fired quite a few shots with this gun, but I must

honestly confess it is not an unmixed pleasure."

Keith writing in the GUN DIGEST looked upon the .44 Magnum quite differently than Major

Hatcher. After all it was his baby. "The big gun is, I would say, pleasant to shoot, and does notjar the hand as much as do my heavy .44 Special loads from the much lighter four-inch barreled

.44 Special S&W guns. It is definitely not a ladies gun but I have known women who would

enjoy shooting it. The recoil has not bothered me in the slightest, nor have several old sixgun

men complained who have fired it extensively, including Hank Benson and Don Martin. Therecoil is not as severe as that of a two-inch Airweight Chief's Special with high speed .38

Specials. With .44 Special factory loads it is just as pleasant to shoot as a K-22 and with the .44

Magnum loads, which give the highest recoil, it will not bother a seasoned sixgun man at all.

Recoil with my heaviest loads of 22 grains of 2400 and the Keith 250 grain bullet is much lessthan that of the factory load. The factory load, fired with one hand, flips the barrel up almost to

the vertical."


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I'm afraid Keith's assessment sold many .44 Magnum sixguns which then wound up back on the

dealer's shelves as slightly used guns since the shooter found that their reaction upon shootingthe .44 was much closer to Major Hatcher's.

By 1957, Ruger's offering in .44 Magnum was starting to show up on gun dealer's shelves. At

first they had rechambered their .357 Blackhawk, which was smaller than today's .357 NewModel Blackhawk, to .44 Magnum. Three of these were shown at the NRA Convention, with

barrel lengths of four and five-eighths inches, five and one-half inches, and seven and one-halfinches. Elmer relates: "They were very nice looking sixguns, but the cylinder was too short to

accept my .44 Magnum handload, and I told him (Bill Ruger) then the frame was too small and

the cylinder also too small in diameter for the heavy load. Bill asked me if I wanted one and Itold him I would like the four and five-eighths inch and would use it with .44 Special loads. He

told me to pick it up before leaving for Idaho, but when I went to get it the boys had packed it for

shipment back to the Ruger factory; so Bill said he would send it to me. However, before

shipping, he decided to proof fire it, during which time the gun blew up. Bill then wrote that Iwas right and he was redesigning the whole gun to handle the big load. The frame would be

made larger and also the cylinder, and it would be longer to handle perfectly my 250 grain .44Magnum handload. He sent me one in the so- called Black Hawk design in four and five-eighths

inch barrel. It proved to be very fine single action but I was still not satisfied."

Keith than goes on to relate the improvements he asked for which resulted in the SuperBlackhawk two years later. For myself, I much prefer the original .44 Blackhawk, now lovingly

known as the Flat-Top, to the `improved' Super Blackhawk. The original was much lighter and

had the Colt Single Action-style grip frame that I still prefer over the Dragoon style Super

Blackhawk grip frame that Colt dropped in 1851!

The first prototype Ruger .44 Magnums on the .357 frame were in the standard Colt Single

Action barrel lengths but for some strange reason when the .44 Blackhawk became a reality thebarrel length was six and one-half inches. I much prefer the balance of seven and one-half inch

length .44 Blackhawk and had my first year six and one-half inch Blackhawk first cut to four and

five-eighths inches and then later rebarreled to seven and one-half inches with an early SuperBlackhawk barrel.

For some reason the original Blackhawk was never offered with the shorter easier packin' fourand five-eighths inch length that was made up for Keith or the five and one-half inch length. Of

the nearly 30,000 .44 Magnum Blackhawks produced, around 1,000 each were made in seven

and one-half inch and ten-inch lengths and all the rest were six and one- half inchers.

In 1959, the Super Blackhawk was introduced and the standard .44 Blackhawk was finally

dropped in 1963 when Ruger went to the Three-Screw or Old Model frame and grip frame. TheThree Screw Ruger Super Blackhawks were offered only in seven and one-half inches in length

except for a very few that were one inch shorter. With the coming of the New Model Super

Blackhawk, ten and one-half inch models were offered for silhouetting and hunting and just

recently Super Blackhawks have been available with shorter barrels and standard Blackhawkgrip frames.


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By 1958, .44 Magnums were available from not only Ruger and Smith & Wesson, but Great

Western as well. The Great Western did not last long as the Great Western factory folded and theonly .44 Magnums available in the 1960's were the Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum and the Ruger

Super Blackhawk.

Enter Detective Harry Callahan. Clint Eastwood's unrealistic portrayal of a San Francisco copwho carried a .44 "Go ahead, Make my day!" Magnum created such a demand that Smith &

Wessons soon doubled in price. In a way this false demand turned out to be a good thing as othermanufacturers tried to get in on the .44 Magnum craze and we have since seen forty-fours from

Freedom Arms, Texas Longhorn Arms, Dan Wesson, InterArms, Mossberg, U.S. Arms, High

Standard, Iver Johnson, Arminius, Llama, Astra, R.G., F.I.E., and Sauer.

Two prototypes that never saw production are very interesting. The first is a .44 Magnum

TripleLock from Rossi of Brazil. This was a very good looking four-inch .44 Magnum with a

vent rib barrel and a cylinder that locked fore, aft, and also at the front of the cylinder. Thissixgun also had smooth wood stocks that looked much like the Skeeter Skelton style now offered

by BluMagnum. Whoever designed this .44 understood sixguns. Where is it now?

The second protype was a beefed up Colt Single Action in.44 Magnum that never saw

production. It looked much like the later Abilenes, El Dorados, and Sevilles. Finally after thirty-

five plus years Colt offered a .44 Magnum in the excellent Anaconda.

The .44 Magnum is no longer the World's Most Powerful revolver. It has been overtaken by both

the .454 Casull and the .445 SuperMag as well as the wildcat .475 and .500 Linebaughs. But formost shooters, the .44 is plenty gun, and perhaps even more than they bargained for. The forty-

four has been around for nearly forty-five years and I can't see anything in the future except more

popularity for this excellent cartridge and the fine sixguns made for it. As we are in the closing

days of the twentieth century, I think it will be safe to say that the .44 Magnum will be regardedby most sixgunners as the premier cartridge development of the last 100 years. It has been king

for nearly fifty years to which we simply say: "Long Live The King!"

history of the 44 magnum revolver

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