[Jungle George]

I have a Ruger Redhawk with a 7 1/2 inch barrel in 44 magnum. I've been curious to see just how far I can push this thing without KB'ing it. I've been shooting loads at the listed maximum for about a year now and the more I've read and talked to other people the more I've been finding that the general consensus is that Redhawks have a very sizable safety margin built into them and that there are a lot of folks pushing these guns to velocities well past the list maximum loads.

The standard maximum load gives me 1425 fps using a 240 cast bullet.and gives 1082 ft lbs of force. I've been slowly working my way up over the course of the last couple of months and today I reached the apex of where I'm going to push it.

The load I worked up chroned in at 1791 fps with a 240 gn cast bullet yielding 1709 ft lbs of force. Amazingly enough I did not have a single split case at the mouth, not even a tiny little nick. I was especially impressed with this because this was the 25th reload for these particular cases. I examined the primers carefully and they have just started to flatten out, it is very slight but noticeable. A couple of the 15 rounds that I made up required a little extra pressure to eject them from the cylinder but not anything that i would classify as "stuck". The re-coil on these was significant but very manageable. After I shot these 15 rounds I followed up with a factory round just out of curiosity. It chroned in at 1212 fps and felt like a 9mm after shooting my reloads. The leading on these was moderate but it is hard to tell for sure because after I shot these 15 I shot another 100 standard magnum rounds.

Now that I have a good idea of what my gun is able to handle I will be backing my load back down quite a bit so that I don't risk stretching the frame over time. It is however very cool to know what this thing is capable of.

As a cautionary note I did this project over the course of many weeks. I did a very significant amount of research before I went even a tenth of a grain above the max load listed in the powder manufacturer's data. I shot my loads from a gun that I knew to be in excellent condition and was well documented to be able to handle very hot loads. I loaded only one round at a time into the gun and I inspected it after each shot and looked for any damage and signs of over-pressure in my cases. I wore a great deal of safety gear well beyond just safety glasses and ear protection. I never shot these loads when I was alone. I am good friends with the senior RSO at the range I go to and I always told him when I was shooting experimental loads and I shot these well away from other shooters. We had a contingency plan in place in case something went wrong and the gun blew up. In short I took every reasonable precaution to make sure that I stayed safe and that others would not pay if I made a miscalculation.

[Jux]

They are very good wheel guns. My mother uses two of them for her cowboy single action shooting competitions. I have fired them a good deal as well, with some reloads, but none that were super hot. Those rugers are one of those guns that you can tell are quality pieces just by holding them.

[duster066]

Nice. How was accuracy?

[Jungle George]

Originally Posted by duster066

Nice. How was accuracy?

It seemed to be grouping well. I was shooting at 25 yards and my chron was about 15 ft away so I was paying more attention to not shooting the chron but based on what I saw I would probably get 1 inch or less groups at 25 yards from a rested position with my Leupold 4X scope.

[Batjac]

Redhawks are THE wheelgun to have! They take almost anything you can throw at them and just laugh at you. I have a Super Redhawk in .454 and it can take more abuse than *I* can. After 12 rounds of .454, I have to back off to .45 Colt. The gun just lays there smirking at me, as if to say, "Only 12? You big Wuss!"

[MaryB]

I was hooting a friends 357 with target loads and he snuck in a hot load of his own. Pop, pop, pop, BANG damn near broke my wrist. He used to go quite a bit past recommended powder levels.