First Cast Rifle Bullets: 30-30/.375 Win

[StrikeEagle]

I cast handgun bullets and I keep the velocities low... 750-850fps max. Now I'd like to try casting some plinkers for my 30-30 and/or .375 Win. But the velocities sound mighty high for cast bullets. I always understood that in handguns, keeping under 1000fps is a key to keeping down leading.

But now with rifles I'm seeing velocities of 1500fps and up. Why doesn't it lead like crazy? I don't want to complicate things with gas checks unless I can help it.

I also use the Lee sizing/tumble lube method of bullet prep, even with non TL bullets. Can I keep using this simple process with rifle?

The C309-113F is a Gas Check bullet, right? Do you use it with a gas check or not? It seems to be popular here.

I'm looking for a simple bullet to load plinkers in my 30-30. The 6grns of Unique sounds like the type of thing I'm trying to do.

What bullets are good for my purposes? Sorry to ramble on here, but I trust you can see what I'm trying to do. :)

Please advise.

[Marine Sgt 2111]

Eagle
If your shooting at low velocites, a gas check is not needed. A small charge of Unique, AA#5, 700X or for that matter any powder in that burning rate class would do. For 30-30 I like a bit of a heavier boolit as the bullet jump can be eliminated by seating the boolit against the lands.

Tumble lubing is fine, heck you might even try Rooster Jacket lube. You may want to consider using a round ball to really cut down on lead and powder costs.

[Bret4207]

Welcome Strike Eagle and Marine Sgt 2111 (Cpl Bret USMC '78-'82 here). If you look back through the older pages here you'll find lots of theories on why stuff works like it does. More importantly you'll find practical info on what works in real life. Just keep scrolling back through the pages and you'll pick up lots of good ideas and theory. It used to be I could tell you to search on a specific poster for good info, but we have so many newer guys giving great advice I can't do that any more. Also check the stickies at the top of the pages. Good info in them.

Basically if you want to get good results with any cast boolit/gun/load/combo you need a boolit that fits the gun. IMHO that means a boolit that fills the throat of a rifle as much as possible and still chambers. A lot of the time that means shooting them as they fall from the mould, or "as cast", with no sizing Lee's Liquid Alox (Mule Snot/Frog Snot) or Johnsons Paste Wax works good in that application. There is a certain speed at which LLA/JPW and a plain base design will start to lead. That point depends on the gun, load, boolit design, alloy, ambient temp, how your part your hair, etc, etc. HARDER booilts don't necessarily stand more speed before leading, despite what you read in the glossy ads. In some cases they do, in most they don't (my humble opinion). So start with plain old wheel weights for alloy. If you go to the trouble to slug your barrel, (search "barrel slugging") you'll have a better idea of what diameter you need to shoot for for decent results. Try to match the throat diameter plus .001-2. Some guns won't accept a "fat" boolit due to throat design, so you'll have to decide if you want to try sizing or seating deeper or going for the boolit engraving into the lead (my choice). Then you start with a sane beginning load from some place like the Lyman Cast Bullet Manual and work up. Look for the classic lube ring at the muzzle to see if you are carrying lube to the muzzle. (With LLA this doesn't always appear the same as with soft alox blends.) Go for accuracy at first, thats your plinker load. Then you can up the load and watch for leading. (Be sure ALL traces of jacketed fouling are out of the bore before you try cast. Copper plays havoc with lead boolits.) I personally feel I need 50 rounds of one load combo to before I start to see what it will really do. I call it "seasoning the bore to a load", others call it BS and get by with 5 round groups of 25 different loads and can out shoot me any day of the week. Use your own judgment.

As you start working up in speed you need to check a few things. Look for leading of course, accuracy ( a hot inaccurate load is good for....what?), pressure signs, and the general efficiency of the load. Now, if you visit the Cast Bullet Association website or the Shuetzen websites you'll find guys that really specialze in bench rest accuracy with plain base (PB) boolits. Many of those same guys stop by here and pass along good info. You can get away without a Gas Check (GC) up to at least 1400 fps in a rifle. Even this miserable wretch has done that in a 32WCF and 30WCF. 35 Whelen too come to think of it. So you can get respectable speed w/o a GC. Beyond the 12-1500 fps range with a PB design you need a good fitting boolit, a cast friendly barrel and some experimenting. Some guys use a filler like Cream of Wheat, various ground plastics, grease wads, fabrics. I even recall one guy who used plain old fiberglass insulation for a filler. When you start with that you run into other issues, like pressure, so do a search on "fillers" here to read up on that.

Most all of this applies to handguns too. You run into other issues like cylinder throat diameter and feeding issues with handguns depending on whether you shoot a revolter or steekin' peestol. It's all been discussed on this site for several years, so read the older pages and you'll see most any question you can think of covered along with valuable info on cats, sheep, cooking, cars, politics, kids, wives, home repair and something called a "glue-it". We get a little off topic sometimes.

Now this dissertation isn't meant to answer all your questions. In fact I doubt you'll stay just with PB boolits for long. You see my friend, this is a disease. A delightful, interesting, sometimes expensive disease. Your insurance won't cover treatment and your MD will only refer you to a Shrink. Your best bet is to let it run its course. Give in to the desire to haunt Ebay for 37 different moulds for guns you don't even own. Participate in the Group Buys, attend gun shows and yard sales hoping to find powder, primers, gear and that elusive design you can't live without. Make a pain of yourself at your local garages looking for wheel weights. Train your loved ones to scan the roadsides for WW. Become a major player in the burn ointment industry. It's all part of the Grand Plan. Most of all, have fun.

[RayinNH]

Bret4207, nicely written...Ray

[Ranch Dog]

Greetings SE and welcome to the forum. Nice job of writing Bret! I do agree with Bret's assessment that the choice of a bullet should fill "the throat of a rifle as much as possible" and still chamber. Even if this is only a "plinker" you still want something that is accurate. Meet this mentioned requirement and you will be happy.

Eagle, you didn't mention the specifics of your firearms but I thought I would give you an image to consider that put some of the opening text from Bret's post into perspective. This has been the year of the 375 Win for me, I've spent a lot of time and effort with the Marlin's chambered in 375. In a nutshell, these rifles have a HUGE chamber and long leade/throat. This is an image produced by a software product in development by TMT Enterprises (http://www.tmtpages.com/index.htm) of a chamber casting taken from one of my Marlin 375s.

http://www.ranchdogmolds.com/TLC379235RF/Images/TMT_TLC379235RF_Marlin375.jpg

It takes a lot of lead to fill the chamber, leade, and throat. The Lee 379-250-RF would be a good bullet to start with. I gave up on this bullet early and sold my mold but I think had I seated it shallower in the case and used a Lee Factory Crimp Die to secure it in place I would have had a lot better luck with it. My main interest is in a home cast big game bullet at factory ammo velocities so my consideration includes a gas check but I do use the Lee Liquid Alox with all my bullets.

I've asked some folks in the know at Marlin about the long chamber in this rifle and have never gotten an answer. I think it was Marlin's method of dealing with a 52.0K CUP cartridge in a 44.0K CUP frame. Cut the chamber long and let the combustion pressure escape. I know this is outside of your interest but I do think that if you fill up chamber, leade, and throat with a bullet (any bullet lead or jacketed) in a Marlin 375 you should not load the cartridge to the 52.0K CUP. While working with my pressure trace equipment I have and I don't think I will do it again! I don't think there is a lot of life in the bolt or locking bolt at those levels!

[Bret4207]

Best darn picture of a throat/boolit and related issues I've ever seen! Just need to show a little rifling in there. Good job RD.

[Ranch Dog]

Best darn picture of a throat/boolit and related issues I've ever seen! Just need to show a little rifling in there. Good job RD.

Thanks, again this is the work of Tom Myers and his TMT Enterprises. I'm really looking forward to the release of this Cast Boolit Drawing program and love his Precision Ballistics and Records software.

Look in the lower right corner for the bore (.3707") and groove (.3757") diameters plus their start point. This is a clip of a much larger drawing, too large to include here. I've "enhanced" the image to take note of the various segments of the chamber. The case is a WWS cut to the SAAMI spec of 2.02". Overall length with my proposed TLC379-235-RF is 2.505" (using forth crimp groove).

The four crimp grooves satisfy the 375 and 38-55 Win. One for the 375 Win and three for the 38-55 Win. There are two chamber lengths; the original Marlin-Ballard chambers and the more recent 336s offerings. Also two lengths of brass; Bertram and WWS (shorter of the two). The bore and groove diameters seem to be consistent across the two chamberings.

I had some pictures of locking bolt erosion from high pressure loads but I can't find them in my mess of directories. Basically, the upper leading edges of the locking bolt that meet the bolt are dog eared. These rifles will typically have a bit of erosion in the throat. All this is a product of a hard (jacketed) bullets jumping across the chamber under high pressure. All of this can pretty much be repeated for the 336ER chambered in 356 Win.

[StrikeEagle]

Wow, thank you all very much for the information. This sounds like something I'm going to play with for a while. :)

My rifles, 30-30 and .375 Win are both Winchester Model 94's. My 'standard' alloy is WW's plus a certain amount of added tin.

I'll try the .375 first, I think... it's appealingly similar to the old .38-55 which did well using lead bullets. And it's my understanding that those lead bullets were pretty much dead-soft pure lead. This Lee mold looks pretty reasonable to me and the price is right:

http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpage.exe/productview?saleitemid=476137&t=11082005

Unique powder isn't listed in any of the books I have for this. I 'assume' that 6 to 10 grains would be in the ballpark, but I like to see a proven reference for this. Thank you again! :)

[MGySgt]

Michael - Great drawing.

That drawing will explain pages and pages of text trying to explain chamber - lead - throat and bullet fit!

Drew

[twotrees]

I have loaded some Lee 250 FR's for my wife's 38-55 ( in 38-55 cases) with 10 gr of Unique and a tuft of dacron over the top. It shoots like a 223 as far as recoil and plants them in small clusters. Vel's are Aprox 1350 FPS ( too lazy to crono, last time out)

I have made a long tapered expander to turn 30-30 cases into short 38-55's (would work for your 375) and shot the same 10 gr Unique as fire form loads in them. They also printed well, but were loaded Way out of the case.

Good Luck and Good Shooting,

TwoTrees

[StrikeEagle]

I've asked some folks in the know at Marlin about the long chamber in this rifle and have never gotten an answer. I think it was Marlin's method of dealing with a 52.0K CUP cartridge in a 44.0K CUP frame.

I was thinking about this, and remembered that Weatherby used to do the same thing... maybe they still do. They freebore their rifles, to allow them to get by with higher pressure rounds than would otherwise be safe. So I'd really guess that you're on target with this.

Does the Big Bore 94 have a similar long chamber? It might not need it, because the receiver is beefed up from the 'normal' 94. Not that I'm planning to hotrod it, but it's an interesting point.

ps That really is a great picture... thanks again! :)

[jh45gun]

I found with my Model 94 and my K31 and my 308 Encore I got better groups using sized bullets. All work best with my bullets sized at .309 but then others may have different results. I know I tried them unsized first in case I did not have to buy a sizer. it just did not work out for me.

[Nardoo]

We have really good luck with the RCBS 250GC in our old .375 Marlin. I cast them in ww plus 2 % Sn, size them to .376" and lube them in Kanga rifle lube. Mostly we use .30/30 brass necked up as my 18 yo son is apt to work the lever fast and worry about picking up brass later.

Our girlie load is 8 1/2 gns of Red Dot giving 1200 fps.

Better accuracy is 18 gns of H4198 giving 1300 fps.

But 32 gns of H322 gives 1700 fps and 2'' groups at 100 yds. This is a mild load but shoots easy and kills better than any 30/30 you ever shot.

We have heavier loads but you need to discover what your rifle likes. That is where all the fun is. Presently we are working up a black powder load for use at our local club. The fun is endless.

Nardoo

[Ranch Dog]

Does the Big Bore 94 have a similar long chamber? It might not need it, because the receiver is beefed up from the 'normal' 94. Not that I'm planning to hotrod it, but it's an interesting point.

I received an email from a lurker following this post and he noted that the chamber of the BB94 is the same.

It is very difficult for me to talk about the Big Bore in this caliber. Last year, I think it was last year, with the news of Winchester stoping production of the 94 just starting to float around the forums, my nephew called me from a gun shop in Harlingen, TX (about 4 hours south of the ranch here). I was out flying (at work) and he told me that he was looking at a BB94 (375W) sitting on the rack, it looked new, for $350. I told him to secure it in any fashion possible, with his vehicle or hide as he is too young to buy it, whatever. He didn't, figured it would be there the next day, it wasn't. I'm still angry about it.