Elmer Keith and the 44 magnum-Why not a 45 magnum?

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B.N.Real

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There is currently a 45 Long Colt hunting thread that mentioned the Great Elmer Keith as being a great proponent of the 45 Long Colt round for hunting.

That thread brought up an old question that I had always wondered about.

Why did Mr.Keith settle on the slightly smaller 44 caliber round when he had the 45 Long Colt caliber availible and could have likely had a 45 magnum gun made to handle the higher load pressures the 45 Magnum round would generate?

Was this simply a case where Smith and Wesson was supporting his research and developement and they did'nt want to promote a "Colt" type round?

Or was there another reason Elmer Keith settled for the 44 magnum size?
 
Because a cylinder bored for a .44 has more steel left around the cartridge. Keith blew up a number of .45s before he came around to the .44. You have to remember he was doing this work long before Ruger and Freedom Arms revolvers were introduced. With the guns available now people are turning .45 Colts into Magnums.
 
drail hit it perfect.

As metallurgy got better, Dick Casull and Jack Huntington and others started playing with .454, .475 and .500 diameter cartridges in the reinforced revolvers to start appearing in the 1960's starting with the super blackhawk.

Elmer blew up a lot of SAA Colts.
 
Real,

Ever notice on S&W N frames the bolt notch is cut on the cylinder at the thinest part right below the chamber? Get the cylinder of an N frame and look. Now the .45 LC is a wider round and that leaves far less metal at the bolt notch. To thin and that is where it will blow.. if she blows.

And that is why he settled on the .44 to overload and not the .45 LC.
 
I think there was also an issue with 45 Colt brass and the case heads not being beefy enough for the work.
I know: The only problem with the internet is that it give credence and weight to the uninformed opinion:D:barf:
 
In addition to what the above posters said, .45 brass was not nearly as good as the brass today. It was the "balloon head" type, much weaker than the .44 brass at the time.
 
and for what's it's worth, there was a 45 magnum along with a 9MM magnum. Of course as you all know they were not revolver rounds.
 
And...the OAL of both the .44 and .45 rounds is nearly equal to begin with. The longer .454 IS, effectively, the ".45 Magnum," as mentioned, with that extra length--not to mention power levels--requiring a different frame altogether than either of the two shorter rounds. The latter typically share basic frame size (if not heat treatments; maybe someone else can chime in regarding that aspect).
 
While the above conjectures are no doubt correct, personally I wonder if it wasn't more the chintzy little rim on the .45 Colt that never afflicted the .44.

Extractor stars much more easily jump .45s gumming up the works than .44s. Not an issue with the original .45 as empties were poked out from the front.

.45s are more suited to hawglegs, .44s to double actions. Not everybody wants a plow-handled SA so the .44 enjoys more experimentation and development.
 
If that's the case I'd suppose we can dismiss "cylinder bolt notch at thinnest point" as an issue. The Colt SAA's bolt notch is offset.
 
I owned the LAR Grizzly in 45 Win.Mag., great cartridge, wonderful ballistics and a reloaders dream. Problem is, its a rimless and when put it in a wheel gun you need half moon clips and thats a PITA. Keith used S&W's in later years and in many late pictures you'll see him with a model 29.
 
Damn, lots of weird stuff in this thread.

The bolt notch IS the thinnest point, Colt or S&W.

It was the guns, .44Spl's are stronger, strong enough to give him what he wanted, namely 1200fps with his 250gr cast bullet. .45's lacked the strength to reach that velocity.

It wasn't the brass. Keith's brass was balloonhead in both cartridges. His famous .44Spl load was 18.5gr 2400 in balloonhead brass. He started the weak .45 brass myth when he overloaded a SAA with a 300gr .45/70 bullet, blew the sixgun and blamed the brass. When solid head brass became available, the charge was dropped to 17.5gr.

Keith was not a gunsmith and the `smiths of the time were unable to build custom sixguns from scratch. Dick Casull was and still is a fine gunsmith and still builds guns from scratch. His .45 prototypes were Colt SAA's with custom oversized five-shot cylinders and specially heat treated frames. That is, until he designed and built what eventually became the Freedom Arms M83. All his experimentation was done with the .45Colt. He was eventually able to drive 260gr bullets to 2000fps.

John Linebaugh created the first .475 and .500 cartridges and they bear his name. I never heard of Jack Huntington until somebody started being his unofficial online publicist.

We didn't have a factory large frame .45Colt capable of handling heavy loads until 1971 when Ruger introduced the .45 Blackhawk.

Yes, Elmer Keith also hotrodded S&W N-frames in .44Spl. How else could he have pushed S&W to develop the .44Mag?
 
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