Lower Velocity 41 Magnum Jacket Loads

R

RC20

New member
I am puzzled by the lack of what would be in other guns, Cowboy Action Loads (yes I know those are lead bullets)

Having pondered it a bit, my days of need full on loads for the 41 magnum are over.

So, I went looking for some lower velocity loads (call it 750-850 fps) and I keep seeing, lower velocity loads are not recommended in Jacketed. Ok.........

So, we have 44 special, we have 44 magnum, we have 45 Long Colt (yea I am from back in the day when we called it that and Hornady Manual did to!)

44 Special loads show as low as 750 fps for a Jacket bullet, but a 41 magnum has some kind of "Here there be dragons". I mean really, is there some kind of space tipping point?

Now if I was buying a gun now, no I would not go for a 41 magnum as I like to shoot easier loads these days. 44 Special, 45 Auto Rim, 45 LC.

But I have a plethora of powders from back in the day, I have a couple hundred 41 mag Jacketed.

I am happy to be schooled, but is this just wisdom that makes no sense?
 
I don't load too many jacketed bullets for the 41 mag, but do occasionally use the 210 gr XTP.
8.0 gr HP38/ winchester 231 yields 1000 fps which is is just enough for me.
i am guessing that 7.0 to 7.5 gr of the same powder would be mild and still burn clean in the 41 mag
 
Pick a medium-fast powder.
Adjust load to your desired velocity.
Be sure all bullets hit the target. All of all bullets, stripping the jacket with too slow a load is possible. So stay in Special velocity range.
 
Well I have Unique, BEye, HS-6 (a few years old) Green Dot (old), AL-8 (yep) , H-110, 2400.

So yea, those are mostly old powders from the 70s and 80s. The HS-6 is 5 years old so new.

Not sure about the H-110 but 2400 would be pretty dirty from past work with it at lower velocities.
 
Good deal, I have all too much Unique, 3+ lbs. One is a squat metal can, don't know how old that is. I got it in an estate sale with some other powders back in one of the powder shortages. The other 2 lbs was in the Cardboard Can.

That is now in modern 1 lb plastic containers (and yes, original label ripped off and labeled with what is in there now) - thinking on it, they are both full so more like 4 lbs total.

One container I did some years back, must have consolidated cardboard cans.
 
Another vote for Unique. I have some 215gr SWC from Matt's Bullets, loaded with 10gr. Shoots great from my 657 and Blackhawk.
 
Another vote for Unique. Don't have a 41 but in 357 and 44 mag it's a great mid range choice. You might like to find a copy of the RCBS cast bullet handbook.
 
Its a 6 inch from back in the latter 70s. 8 inch would have been interesting.

Back in those days our State Patrol used the N Frame 357s. I got to shoot one at their Practical Police Course. To make it odd by today s standards of practice with what you load for field duty, they used wad cutters.

It was like shooting a 22 after the full load 41 Magnum loads I had been shooting.

I placed really high up on their own list of shooters. The range guy asked me where I learned to shoot. Gravel Pits! Well a lot of shooting in gravel pits, once a week all summer long for 3 years. I would re-load after work and then had a day off (working 6 days a week, summers were too short not to)
 
44 Special loads show as low as 750 fps for a Jacket bullet, but a 41 magnum has some kind of "Here there be dragons". I mean really, is there some kind of space tipping point?
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Yes, there is a "tipping point" but its not in the loads possible, its in the data published. Even online, the majority of the data is what was tested, with an eye towards what they feel MOST people are looking for.

And the simple fact is that most people want to see magnum data, so that's what most of it is.

Starting loads in magnum calibers with jacketed bullets usually begin in the 1,000fps range on the LOW end.

If you're looking for jacketed bullet data in the 750-850fps range, you won't find much published, because that's not what "most" people are looking for in .41 MAGNUM. ;)

I expect a load of 7gr +/- Unique or the appropriate charge of Bullseye, 231 or any other fast to medium powder will do what you're looking for. Slow powders like 2400, 296, H110 etc are not well suited to the charge levels needed for the lighter loads. 2400 has the most flexibility in that regard, but at the 850fps level its wasteful, not burning very well and needing a heavier charge weight than the medium and faster powders, which results in fewer rounds per pound of powder. If that matters to you.

Every jacketed bullet I know of will be fine at 750+fps, but expansion will not be all that much, unless the bullet is made to open up well at that speed.

You CAN run certain jacketed bullets too slowly, particularly the old (Speer) half (or 3/4) jacketed SWCs. With those, you definitely don't want to go below moderate (7-800fps) or jacket separation can result.
 
Good info.

And very specifically in regards to those iffy Speer JHP, that is what I have. I also got the warning from Speer on those but its very well worth repeating. 800 FPS is the goal, have to see how it feels. I have been shooting Black Powder revolvers and including 45 Colt Adapter cylinder for the 47 Walker Replica. That long sight line is great! Those are 200 gr Lead SWC, not sure how that translates. I keep those under 900 FPS and more in the 750 to 850 fps area.

I don't know why I liked the 41 over the 44 magnum but I did. I had a 44 S&W I sold to buy the 41 magnum. The 41 had a bit less kick and just as good by my take.

It got stolen but my brother bought me a replacement as a thank you for work I had done for him on his house (winter and no work for me and at loose ends, we pulled it off and that was in the days before people built houses in the winter up here)

Good news was I had moved the Rosewood grips to another gun that was in a different and safe place. So the new gun got the old Rose Wood Grips.

At the time it was my woods carry gun for hiking and fishing. I knew better than to try to take a bear down with it, but something to make noise has value and if treed I had enough ammo to kill a grizzly down below if it was one of those rare bound and determined ones. So yea, hottest load I could build that was accurate (keeping in mind I was grunt laborer at the time and it did not bother me in the least)

Now? Yea those days are over. Just fun to take it down to the range and shoot it a bit. So the goal is not anything hot, purely plinking.

I do have a LabRadar so I can get accurate FPS and if its too low, just pull the bullets and up the load to a 800+ range.

Now if I had just kept that Model 25 I had, sigh. I don't regret selling most guns but that one I sure do.
 
I had a nice .41Mag in an old model Ruger Blackhawk back in 79. I rather liked it, but found myself needing a deer gun, and due to the stupidity of the state at the time, a 6" .41 Mag was ok, but the 4 5/8" one I had, wasn't legal, and it got traded for a good Marlin 336 .30-30.

After I was better established for some reason, I never went back to the .41, as the .44s and .45 Colt fit my needs and were more versatile and available.
 
It's usually the magnum powders combined with the Jacketed bullets that are not "recommended". The reason it's hard to find info is because few folks do it. And, like most of the responses, folks guess, and guess wrong since they have not done it.

Unique and HS6 would both be fine for ".41 Special" level loads in a .41 Magnum case with HS6 being the better of the two. I try to stay around 1000 fps, but I've gone down to 800 fps with other powders. I think if you look it up, you will find HS6 loads at, and just under 1000 fps with several .41 Magnum bullets.

One of the issues is case volume. If you have a way, you can certainly trim some .41 Magnum cases down (take off 1/8") and then you will have better performance with lower charge weights with more powders. Meaning, you can safely use the faster, cleaner powders in the smaller case volume. I have worked up several good loads for my .41 Magnum Revolver and Carbine with .41 Special cases and appropriate powders.

If you don't, just buy some .41 Special Brass from Starline.

https://www.starlinebrass.com/41-special/

A little googling will reveal it is not voodoo, and folks have been doing it for decades. The powders that are suitable for .44 Special are also suitable for .41 Special. The .41 Magnum is a great cartridge that was over-marketed to the sidelines by Dirty Harry.
 
It's usually the magnum powders combined with the Jacketed bullets that are not "recommended".
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This doesn't make sense to me, as written. IF you add "for reduced loads", it makes more sense.

One of the issues is case volume. If you have a way, you can certainly trim some .41 Magnum cases down (take off 1/8") and then you will have better performance with lower charge weights with more powders. Meaning, you can safely use the faster, cleaner powders in the smaller case volume.
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I believe you can safely use the "faster cleaner powders" in the .41 Mag case without bothering to shorten it 1/8". I don't see where you get anything useful in the small case volume reduction gained by trimming the mag cases 1/8" shorter.

At the velocities the OP is looking for (750-850fps), with most powders, even the shortened case is going to be only about half full, OR LESS. Reducing that air space by (only) 1/8" seems pointless to me.

The .41 Magnum is a great cartridge that was over-marketed to the sidelines by Dirty Harry.
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What put the .41 Mag "on the sidelines" was not Dirty Harry, but Remington. Specifically, Remington's decision to make magnum ammo their priority. The .41 Magnum hit the market about 1964, Dirty Harry hit the movie theaters in 1971.

The concept of a .41 caliber round, firing a 200ish gr bullet in the 900ish fps range was pushed to the police, and the public by several influential gun writers and others as it was felt that it would be a superior police round over the .38 Special and even the .357 magnum, and also very suitable for self defense. They weren't wrong.

But, what they got was the .41 Remington Magnum. And, in the early years, when the police and the public were testing the new round, the only ammo commonly available was the Remington magnum load, a 210gr jacketed in the 1200fps+ range. By the time Remington got around to making quantities of the 210gr LSWC in the 900fps range available, most police groups had already tested the .41 Mag (with mag ammo), found it unsuitable for police use and turned thumbs down on it.

Without widespread support from the police market, the .41 never really caught on, and became a niche round, several years before Dirty Harry made the .44 the magnum everyone wanted (and often found out they didn't want, after getting and shooting one.:rolleyes:).

I think that, IF Remington had made, and pushed the 900fps LSWC load to the public FIRST, the history of the .41 mag would have been quite different.
 
This doesn't make sense to me, as written. IF you add "for reduced loads", it makes more sense.
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Well, the whole thread is about lower velocity loads, and we know the mods are quick to stop thread drift, so completely unnecessary.

I don't see where you get anything useful in the small case volume reduction gained by trimming the mag cases 1/8" shorter.
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Well, one aspect of Reloading 101 is case fill percentage. More accurate loads come from case fills that are higher, not lower. Pretty basic stuff really.
 
More accurate loads come from case fills that are higher, not lower. Pretty basic stuff really.
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Percentage of case fill can be a factor with some combinations of case volume and the specific powder used, but, a case full of powder is not something that is an absolute necessity to have in order to have accurate ammunition.

For example, for well over a century bullseye shooters have been loading .38 Specials with 2.7-3gr of Bullseye and shooting target matches with that load which isn't even filling the case 1/3 full.
 
Longshot is another powder that works very well in the .41 for those 950 to 1100 fps loads. You can also deep seat bullets to achieve the smaller case capacity without trimming brass. Just crimp over the ogive.
 
I think that, IF Remington had made, and pushed the 900fps LSWC load to the public FIRST, the history of the .41 mag would have been quite different.
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If Remington had promoted the 900 fps .44 "medium" load, and S&W had made a 1950 Military Magnum for it, there would have been no .41 at all.

Jeff Cooper wrote of finding a 1926 .44 and loading a case of SWCs for a sheriff who was adamantly opposed to the .45 auto.
 
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