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I recently bought a Rossi under leaver in .44, it came with .44 S&W special cases. primers, 240 gr bullets and 1lb of Red Dot. My Lee reloading manual and the Alliant web page do not give any load data for Red Dot and 240 gr bullets, can any experienced reloader give me any advice about what to do please?

For normal gallery rifle shooting at up to 100yds, 6 to 6.5 grn will be fine. red dot is just a little slower burning than bullseye but, in the good old days, used to be a lot cheaper. Hence I have used rather a lot of it in the past.
Fred

Thank you for your reply, it confirms what another experienced reloader has told me so I will load some ammo tonight

Yup, 240gn LSWC with approx. 6.5 gns, CCI primer gives around 900-1000 fps.

Just checked on my (very) old Speer manual... using a 240gn lead bullet, for .44 special loads, 5.0 gns of red dot gives 763 fps, and for the magnum loads, 6.5 gns gives 937 fps...

According to Speer those are the MAXIMUM loads.

Daryll wrote:Just checked on my (very) old Speer manual... using a 240gn lead bullet, for .44 special loads, 5.0 gns of red dot gives 763 fps, and for the magnum loads, 6.5 gns gives 937 fps...

According to Speer those are the MAXIMUM loads.

Aye, but they are probably for a pistol barrel, not a rifle.

Almost certainly.... it seems to be tricky to find load info for pistol calibre rifles.

I've just started loading for .45 Colt, and its the same for that... at least 80% of the data is for revolvers, and most of them low pressure loads for very old guns..

Try looking at Contender loads.