My buddy Mike and I got our two revolvers back from John Taylor, so it is time to dust off this thread and update it.
First range trials were with the .40 S&W cylinder, because we wanted to use that cartridge to establish a baseline for comparison with our wildcat. Firing ordinary 180-grain FMJ I shot a couple test groups, and made sight adjustments before firing handloads with the Accurate 40-182H bullet, which, incidentally is the same profile as our 40-220H, simply truncating the nose to increase the meplat size and to reduce the weight.


Hand held off sandbags while running over the chronograph I'll take these!
I have test rounds loaded now with 180FMJ, 182 LFN and 220 LFN all with 5 grains of Bullseye to shoot in the 10x25R cylinder then the range road is repaired from the storm washout.
DougGuy in North Carolina made our dies by cutting down and honing out .38-40 dies on a Sunnen hone.
RCBS dies are "harder than woodpecker lips" and go through stones like crazy, Lee dies also work and aren't quite as hard, but still eat stones. So the cost to do a set of these is $150, you supply the dies, Doug buys the stones, does the work and returns your dies insured in small flat rate box. If you want a Lee Quik-Trim case holder shortened, that's a bit extra.
The FL sizer and seater are both cut off by 0.4" and a new thread relief is turned.
The neck of the sizer die is then honed inside up to .420".
The neck of the seater die honed to .429" and the ball seat of the seater die to .402", if it need to be.
If you want to cut down .44 Special cases, Doug can take a .44 Special case holder for the Lee Quik-Trim, cut 0.16" off the top, and then you can adjust the Quik-Trim to cut necked down .44 Special to 1.000+0.000/-0.005"
A simpler way to make cases in quantity is to buy Starline .44 Russian cases, neck them down and just use them. The .44 Russian brass comes from Starline 0.0960-0.965" long. After necking down to .40 they are 0.970-0.975". This is a wee bit short for the chamber length on the Manson reamer, which is 0.955 ahead of the rim seat, plus rim thickness, but causes no problem whatever. The dies as modified by DougGuy are purposefully made a wee bit short so that you have wiggle room to adjust sizing, etc. to get an exact fit to your revolver chamber.
We elected NOT to get an inside neck reaming die made to thin the case necks, to save money and effort.
We are using necked down Starline brass as-is. With our Manson reamer as I had originally ground per print .400" diameter jacketed bullets fit correctly in the .424" chamber neck, using necked down .44 Russian brass, thich are about 0.001" thinner than cut-down Starline .44 Special. There was not enough clearance using cut-down .44 Specials or if loading cast bullets of .401" diameter or larger.
So we got Dave to make us a separate .429" neck reamer for John Taylor to enlarge the chamber necks in our cylinders provide 0.005" additional clearance, which in practice works VERY well.
If anyone else wants to order the 10x25R reamer from Manson I recommended to him that the neck diameter on the reamer should be increased to .428-.429".
Dave Reiss is next in line to borrow our reamers to have a cylinder made for his Herter Power Mag.
When Dave Reiss is done, Sam Hotton is next after him. Custom reamers and gages are expensive and we are all dividing up the cost to make this project more affordable.
When if nobody else wants to have a revolver cylinder done, next is to have the cylinder reamer reground to cut a rifle-type throat, about a $75 rework.
Sam Hotton after his .357 Vaquero comes back in 10x25 to have a .40 S&W barrel for his Bond Arms Derringer rechambered to 10x25R, and then to have John short-stroked and rebarrel a new Henry, the intent being to use with black powder for cowboy shooting. I figure then I need to have another barrel for the Infamous Bunny Gun.
As FYI 20 grains of Goex Fg or 4.0 grains of Trail Boss comes up just to the shoulder. You could compress 24 grains of black with a drop tube or compression die. Max. charge of Trail Boss is 4.5 grains and 4.8 grains is FULL STOP to keep from being stupid.
Not sure if I ever showed you guys our 180-grain bullet, but anybody has a .40 S&W Blackhawk this is it:

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia