Are the .44-77 BN and the .44-90 BN viable contenders in modern Creedmoor

[Nuclearcricket]

My plan is to put the 44-60 on a Hepburn I am working on building. I have a 17 twist GM barrel, also have a roller action in the safe waiting its turn. I had talked to the buy at CH dies a while back and he had told me to just fire form necked down 45 cases and I would be good. I am a skeptic so I had to play around and find out for my self. Well not having a 60 chamber I did the next best thing. I necked down a 70 case to where it would just fit in my 77 chamber, loaded it with a GG bullet and set it off. Nicely formed case, short neck of coarse but no issues other than that. Only problem I ran into was when I went to push the shoulder the rest of the way down, the taper didn't match and I ended up running the case into a 40-65 die to take a bit of the taper out of it. If the neck is a nice fit int he chamber your cases sound come out nicely centered. Once fire formed, just neck sizing should be all you need to do. If you feel you need t do more, spend the money and wait 2 years or so for CH to make you a set of dies.
If you have more than one gun in that caliber, either keep cases separate or run them back into a 45-70 die to reduce the body diameter.
One other thing I would like to mention is if you are thinking of the 44-70 Maynard, be advised that there are 2 different reamers out there for that. One is 2.1 and the other is 2.2 in length.
Just keep your 40-65 rounds away from your 44-70. They will fit and fire just fine. Then you get to spend the next 2 weeks mining lead.
Sam