Mrs. Claus came home with...

[tommag]

a 1980 Win 94 30-30 that looks real nice except for some light surface rust on the receiver. The bore is nice as new. She won't tell me what she paid, but said she did have to haggle to get the price right.
When I slugged the bbl it was .308 on the nose, but seemed tighter near the muzzle. Do I have to take it apart and slug the chamber end for best results?
I am thinking about the 113 gr and 170 gr lee. Do these sound like good choices?
Also, what do you think of the x-die for cast? I'm thinking the brass wouldn't last long enough because of the flaring of the neck to take advantage of the x-die.

Thanks. Tom

[grumpy one]

First, if your barrel is slightly smaller at the muzzle than the breech, you have good prospects for accuracy - at least if the taper is uniform and there are no tight spots along the way. However you will probably find you want to know something about the dimensions at the breech end so you will know how the bullet fits. You may or may not want to use a fitted bullet-nose to center the bullet in the bore before firing. Most likely you can get some way down the track before you worry about this, though, and you may find the answers without slugging in any case, just by chambering and extracting dummy rounds then inspecting the bullet for rifling marks.

I use the 170 grain flat nose gas check Lee in my 30-30, and when I don't louse anything up it produces 0.6" 55 yard groups. Unfortunately most of the time I do louse something up. I haven't yet been able to produce equivalent results with 311291, but that may be because I haven't tried the right voodoo yet. For one thing, I've fitted the bullet nose to the bore with the Lee, and haven't done so with the 311291. If I sacrifice an extra couple of goats before I go to the range, it may all come together soon. Given the low cost of the Lee mould and the results I've seen, that sounds like a good place to start.

I use the Lyman M die to expand the case mouth just the right amount for cast bullets and find it works very well for everything except plain-base bullets for my rifles - but I'm having to size 0.311 for one and 0.312 for the other, so I need to open up the neck just about .001 more than the M die gives me, for plain-base bullets to fit into the neck without shaving. If your 0.308 bore measurement is correct you shouldn't need anything more than an M die even for plain-base. Don't be too worried about case life - the 30-30 cases I'm using for load development have been loaded 10 times, and I just got around to neck-annealing them for the first time after 3 out of 40 of them cracked. I do seem to get longer case life from 30-06 cases, but the 30-30 ones seem to me to give a reasonable life. Just don't expand the necks more than necessary, and with your tight bore you should be pretty happy with how long they last.

[rebliss]

Fun little rifle! I've got an '80 carbine I paid $250.00 for, and it's a lot of fun.

I also shoot the 170 gr gas-check Lee. I can push it with 28 gr. of IMR 4895 and get a powerful round, or run it with 8.5 gr. Unique, and shoot all day without a sore shoulder; good accuracy at 50 yards, and one-click up on the rear sight.

I also am in on the 113 gr. soup-can group buy (which I think is still open). You might try to get in on that, as a lot of fellows like this boolit!

[boogerred]

i use the lee 113-309 with h4895 in mine. with winchester sights and my sight i get about 1 1/2" groups at 50yds. im going to try some unique next because the 4895 meters so "jerky" in my measures. and also because i can use 1/3 as much. that bullet is a great jackrabbit load.

[Buckshot]

...............The 30-30 is one of the best cast cartridges around. The platform will have a lot to do with it, as the term "Levergunitis" was coined just for them :-). A friend has a 80's model M94 carbine that is a super fine cast boolit shooter. He put a Leupold VX 2 on it for load development. I showed up at the range a bit late one day and he about punced on me showing me what he'd shot earlier. It was the Lee C309-113F (Soup Can) over 21.0grs of H4198 + dacron.

The velocity was a bit over 2100 fps and he'd shot four 5 round groups that'd probably averaged between 1.25 and 1.5". Pretty good for 50 yards at that speed and for the rifle but these had been shot at 100 yards!

I think you'll find that if the rifle is accurate, it will pretty much be so for most anything you shoot through it.

................Buckshot

[tommag]

I'm going to pass on the group-buy 113 and make do with the 2-cav model. I ordered the 170-f and the 2-cav 113.
Buckshot, I would be in heaven if I could get 1.25-1.5 moa from a lever gun. Heck, I've had bolt actions that wouldn't do that.
I took it apart and found the chamber end was slightly larger than the muzzle end(.3087) I think a .309 die will make good boolits for this one. I hope so, as Graf and sons were out of the .310 die.

Mrs. Claus just went to town and said she wants to try it, so she's going to pick up a box of factory stuff for today. Will have to wait for a couple weeks till I get back home to start casting and loading.

[rebliss]

Mrs. Claus sounds like a great lady! Enjoy your thutty-thutty.