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Search matches names, aliases and the text of every page. An arm found by its service designation is found by its alias, not its title.

.44-40 Winchester

Introduced 1873Winchester Repeating Arms CompanyCIP standard

Also known as .44 WCF, .44 Largo — the same cartridge under different names, all of which find this page.

Dimensions and pressure

Generated from the schema, like every specification table on this site, so a figure recorded on this entry cannot be missing from the table.

Identity
Designed by
Winchester Repeating Arms Company
Introduced
1873
Production
not recorded
Standards body
C.I.P.
Case type
Rimmed
Case shape
not recorded
Dimensions
Bullet diameter
10.85 mm0.4272 insource

C.I.P. G1, maximum bullet diameter.

Bore diameter
not recorded
Case length
33.15 mm1.305 insource

C.I.P. L3, maximum case length.

Overall length
40.44 mm1.592 insource

C.I.P. L6, maximum cartridge overall length.

Rim diameter
13.34 mm0.5252 insource

C.I.P. R1.

Neck diameter
11.25 mm0.4429 insource

C.I.P. H2.

Base diameter
11.97 mm0.4713 insource

C.I.P. P1.

Pressure
Maximum pressure
110 MPa15,954 psisource

C.I.P. Pmax 1100 bar; 1 bar = 0.1 MPa exactly.

Pressure standard
C.I.P.

SAAMI and C.I.P. measure pressure differently and their figures are not interchangeable, which is why the body is always named beside the figure.

Loads

No load data recorded yet. Without a sourced bullet mass and velocity there is nothing honest to compute, so the ballistic figures on pages that chamber this cartridge stay blank rather than being estimated into existence.

Chambered in

Computed from every entry that lists this cartridge. Nothing here is hand-maintained.

Gallery

A .44-40 Winchester cartridge lying on its side on a pale ground, carrying an unjacketed lead round-nose bullet.

Image credit

Title
File:44-40 Winchester - 1.jpg
Author
Malis
Licence
Public domain
Source
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:44-40_Winchester_-_1.jpg
A .44-40 Winchester round with the soft lead bullet the cartridge was designed around.

Detail

The first centre-fire cartridge Winchester made for itself, introduced with the Model 1873 and adopted almost immediately by Colt for the Single Action Army. That coincidence — one cartridge feeding both a rifle and a revolver — is the whole reason it mattered: a rider could carry one kind of ammunition for both arms, which in 1873 was a logistical argument rather than a marketing one.

The case is nominally straight-walled and is not quite. It tapers and then necks slightly, with thin brass at the mouth, and the combination is famously easy to crumple when seating a bullet by hand.

Its C.I.P. pressure ceiling of 110 MPa is among the lowest on this site, and it is a modern figure set for antique guns rather than a description of what the 1873 load did.

References

  1. C.I.P. TDCC datasheet — 44-40 Win. · 2002-05-15 · read 2026-08-31
  2. .44-40 Winchester · 1351556125 · read 2026-08-31

Last verified 2026-08-31 · review status: agent-populated