Rossi Rifleman

Can a .434 or .435" fit in a .44 mag case?

Probably can be made to fit with sufficient force, but the question then becomes is would the cartridge chamber in any given 44 mag.

Make smoke,

Blind Hawg wrote:Can a .434 or .435" fit in a .44 mag case?

Absolutely. Bear Creek offers an oversize, coated 205 grain 44 bullet for various obsolete and oddball old 44 caliber firearms. They are available from .431 to .438 inch. I ordered a batch at 0.433" for an old Iver Johnson Cattleman 44 mag of mine, which has .434 cylinder throats. They drop slick into the cylinder and shoot great.

Somewhere there is a 44 mag that won't chamber a round loaded with a .433 or .434 bullet. I'd bet my lunch money it won't be an R92. All I ever owned or fooled with had FAT chambers.

Edited to add: I saw your other post asking how fast you can run these. I'm keeping them around 950 fps from a 7 1/2" single action. Call Bear Creek and ask them, they've always been polite and helpful. Whatever BC is coating these with, they are very clean shooting and universally more accurate than any HiTek bullets I've tried. I've run BC and hot XTP loads back to back w/o experiencing any problems, accuracy or otherwise.

Lee die sets include a Factory Crimp die that essentially uses a carbide sizing ring to post size the finished cartridge to ensure it fits in a spec chamber.

Of course that may defeat your desire to have a oversized bullet for excessive diameter in the grooves.

There is also the possibility that a bullet that is sized down by the crimping operation will crush to a given diameter while the case springs back more than the bullet does resulting in a loose bullet that may be impacted in a tubular magazine under spring pressure or in a semi automatic may be more subject to impacting during the feeding cycle.

The Rossi 92s tend to have larger groove diameters than most revolvers simply because Rossi is adhering to the SAAMI spec of .44 rifle, which is different from the handgun spec.

My 92 in .44 mag likes .433" bullets the best, but does okay with .431". Smaller than that and it's not happy.

One of the things you may want to think about is that with a .433" bullet vs. a .430" bullet, for example, is that the case will have a bit more hold on the bullet. Keep that in mind if you want to push the envelope pressure-wise.