Loading issues, .30-30

[Walt]

I shoot straight-walled cartridges weekly, bottle-necked cartridges quite seldom. I have a couple of m94s in .30-30 that I shot last week and ended up with a box to reload, which I relish. I'd bought a Lyman 311041 mold a year or so ago and decided to cast and load those. As I inspected the freshly cast bullets I found that the sprue plate holes are not lined up well with the mold cavities. Although the bullets are probably not unbalanced enough to cause a problem, I filed a little off the place where the sprue plate contacts the stop so the sprue marks on the bullet bases are now centered.

The next issue was with the #2 RCBS shell holder. The groove that fits the cartridge rim was apparently not milled deeply enough so the body of the cartridges did not bottom out at the end of the slot. Again, maybe not terribly significant but the cartridges were entering the dies a bit crooked. After a lot of unsuccessful brushing and blowing, a bit of work with a small file corrected that.

I have separate seating and crimping dies for all my pistol calibers but I found that some lead was being shaved when seating my gas-checked .30-30 bullets to include a mild crimp. Not wanting to bell the mouths of the cases excessively with my neck expander die, I searched my die parts box and found an old .303 Britsh seater die with the proper stem to fit the small meplats on the 311041 bullets and it was smooth sailing from then on.

[Bill in Oregon]

Walt, I just had a different experience loading a small quantity of .30 WCF. I found 50 fresh Starline cases on Gunbroker. They arrived today. I counted out 20 and gave them a squirt or two of Hornady One-Shot. I then opened the box of Lee dies that arrived yesterday and slipped the FL sizer die into my Forester Co-Ax and adjusted it to touch the press's universal shellholder plus a 1/4 turn and ran each of the cases all the way in to uniform them. I chamfered the inside of the case necks, checked several for consistency of length and then screwed the seater die in to touch the shellholder plus a little and backed out the actual seater stem.
Primed them with WLRs with the ancient Lee Hand-prime using Lee's No. 3 holder. Just to start, I loaded five cases with 34 grains CFE 223, set a Speer 130-grain FP (that I believe our esteemed Mr. Taylor is fond of) on the unexpanded mouth of a charged case and adjusted the seater for a COAL 2.540, which just leaves the very top edge of the factory cannelure peeking out. Five sample rounds and done.
Then on to the Lee 309-170F -- a close relative of the Lyman 311-041. Some of these had "lumpy bottoms" as they came out of the Lee die, but I mostly ignored this and seated gas checks on them in the Lee .309 push-through die. Some I then tumble lubed and some I powder coated, let them sit overnight, and then ran them through the push-through die one more time. Using data for the 311041 in the Lyman 51st edition, I loaded five over 10 grains of Unique, seated to an OAL of 2.550.
I then ran the five with the Speer 130 and the five with the Lee 178 GC into the factory crimp die and checked feeding in the Marlin 36. It was like they were born there.
No issues with lead shaving. No roll crimping. No issues with off-kilter shell holders with the Co-Ax. Now, whether these will "shoot center" is yet to be determined as there really is a nut behind the butt of the rifles at my house..

[Walt]

Bill, a lot of people say that lever actions allow a lot of case stretching with .30-30s, leading to short case life. I don't set my sizing dies the way the die manufactures suggest, instead using the feel of the lever (or bolt) to determine sizing depth. My .30-30 brass only stretches a thousanth or two between firings and so lasts a long time. I end up trimming only seldom but check sized case length every time I load. In fact, with my particular dies, the shell holder at the top of the stroke is abouyt 3/32" from touching the bottom of the die.
Also, I size my bullets to .311 and am aware I could probably size them even larger.
It is likely that sizing my bullets larger is a reason I had lead shaving issues but I got that resolved.

[Bill in Oregon]

Walt, I will need to fire this virgin Starline brass in the new-to-me Marlin to see what kind of chamber and headspace issues I might be dealing with. Like you, I prefer to neck-size only when loading for one rifle and chamber.

[Walt]

Although I have neck sizing dies for a lot of my rifle calibers, I normally full-length size, being watchful of bolt-drop pressure with my bolt actions.

[Sixgun]

Walt,
I’ve loaded many thousands of 30-30 and the brass seems to last forever.

The 303 British neck expander may be too big……you should have a n.e.about .002 under bullet diameter……..use the 30-30 n.e.and bell it out to avoid shaving lead…….you need some tension……..forget the crimper on the seating die, use a Lee FCD and if you don’t have one, seat and crimp in 2 steps.

You’re doing right by backing out the FLS. I find a full turn will work, not push back the shoulder and still chamber in multitudes of different 30-30’s I have and have used.

Yes, .311 is fine….that’s what I size at. The objective is to center the bullet to the bore as much as possible so the bigger the diameter the bullet, the more concentric the bullet will be to the axis of the bore. Sometimes that doesn’t always work and it just takes experimentation with different diameters to find the sweet spot.

Make sure the gas checks are square on the base of the bullet and open them up if need be. I have a lead shaving issue with some moulds and the gas check so I’ve taken head bolts from engines (you want the bolts to be hard) and chuck them in a drill press to very slightly round off the bottom to bell out the check….some guys use a ball bearing but you need one big enough so you don’t make a dent on the center of the check plus one the right size so you don’t bell it out too much. Major PITA….I use a piece of smoothened oak 6” x 12” with an edge on the sides and can whip out several hundred in ten minutes. I’ll make a slot on the left side to drag the check after I belled it onto a piece of towel. Some guys also anneal checks…..I’m not going that far..screw it.

A good 30-30 rifle fired from the bench should be a 1.5 moa gun……carbines can be all over the place unless you work on them.

Good shoot in’—-006

[Walt]

Thanks, Six. I was only using the 303 British seater die because it has a nice seating stem which fits the meplats of the bullets that I cast. I don't even know whether that was the original stem for that seater; it may have come from a different die for all I know but it works well. I worry about using a factory crimp die because they're set up for bullets that are .308-.309 in diameter so using one on bullets .311" diameter would simply reduce the diameter back down to .309.
I have used a .45 Colt factory crimp die on .454 diameter bullets cast for a SAA and it does not work well. I suspect the same will happen with oversized .30 caliber bullets.

[Griff]

I have one rifle that chews up brass... It's my custom mdl 94 in .30-30 with a Numrich barrel. The chamber is quite simply, rough! I get about 3 loadings on brass used in it and the necks start showing cracks. Not the mouth, case body or shoulder, just the neck. I've not done a chamber cast, so I don't know if the neck area is oversized and working the brass too much... Hindsight being 20-20, I should have let the gunsmith that set the headspace set the barrel back a turn & recut the chamber as he suggested... but at the time... .

I have never belled a 30-30 case, relying on simply chamfering the inside of the case mouth. On my .309 sized GC cast I can feel each ridge as the bullet seats but doesn't shave lead. I use the same sizer whether I'm loading the .307 Sierra .30-30 bullets or .308 Speer. All seat well and crimp well with the combination seater/crimp die in my RCBS set. Which I do in a single step. I've had collapsed cases in the past, and in each case it's because I either mis-measured or skipped trimming the brass. I seem to think I have a second set of .30-30 dies, but... as I have on occasion charged and seated bullets at the range on my temporary setup, but it's probably been 30+ years since I've changed any of my loads.

With properly measured, trimmed and deburred brass, never over-lubing the brass, I feel the .30-30 is one of easiest cartridges to reload.

[308magtip]

Had good luck with this load just for plinking. I use it in an H&R single shot break open rifle

XMP 5744 20.0 grs. I use a little 1/2 gr of filter floss on top of the powder to keep it aganist the primer.

170 gr lead gas check flatnose sized to .310 and lubed with a heavy grease.

Bullet crimped with a Lee factory crimp die.
Overall seating length is 2.550.

Cases are trimed to specs.