Black Powder 30-30

[Gisli]

Hi everyone. I am a very happy owner of a 30-30 Marlin 336, and I am somwhat proud to say that of all the rounds I´ve put through it, there has not been one "J-word".


After several thousand boolits, I am thinking why not try black Powder in the 30-30. Now I have heard that it is corrosive and needs extensive cleaning. Well I do that anyway, so its no great matter.


I am thinking, 30-30 means 30 cal. and 30 grains of BP. Have you done this ? The BP will be homemade because it is not available in my country. Primer will be the usual Rem primers I use all the time.


I will be using my favourite boolit, 311041 with gas check.


So what do you think. Is it in any way harmful to my Marlin ?

[dtknowles]

The original lever rifle BP round closest was 32-40 so I bet you will get a little more than 30 grains in your cases. Remember don't leave any airspace, have some compression, maybe add a lube cookie and over powder wad. Let us know what kind of success you have.

Tim

[northern smith]

Well. Make sure to put in as much blackpowder you can and then kompress it so you can seat the boolit. It will bee more than 30 grains. I think the cartridge was loaded whith 30 grains of some kind of smokeless wayback then.

[Don McDowell]

30-30 as it's known today never was loaded with blackpowder by the factories. The second 30 was originally added by Marlin to keep from having to put wcf on the barrel, and while it did mean the powder charge it was smokeless.
If you use a good blackpowder (Olde Eynsford or Swiss 3f), and a bullet with enough lube grooves to carry a quality bullet lube, you might get along alright for a few rounds with black, but I'm betting that microgroove barrel is going to grab a hold of and hang on to fouling like crazy and your bp experiment might be a disaster.

[Gisli]

Thank you for a very informative answer.
I really thought that the second 30 meant the grains of BP, as in 45-70.
I thought that the 30-30 came before the advent of smokeless, but I could be wrong on that.
I am going to try this, you see I have all the ingredients to make 5 kilos (11 pounds) of BP.
Heavy fouling is not a problem, it can be dealt with, as long as I am not harming the barrel.

[Maven]

"If you use a good blackpowder (Olde Eynsford or Swiss 3f), and a bullet with enough lube grooves to carry a quality bullet lube, you might get along alright for a few rounds with black, but I'm betting that microgroove barrel is going to grab a hold of and hang on to fouling like crazy and your bp experiment might be a disaster." ...Don McDowell

Don, et al., I have a Marlin #336 Microgroove in .45-70 Gov't. and occasionally run BP loads through it (with CB's of course), but haven't experienced undue fouling with those 70gr. loads. A good lube, e.g. Emmert's and a blow tube also help to keep the fouling both soft and manageable. Clean-up with BP solvents or even 1 Ballistol : 6 H20 is fast and no more difficult or time consuming than clean-up with smokeless powder. Usually, I fire the BP rounds first, clean the bbl. and action, then use smokeless loads. In short, microgroove rifling isn't the problem child many think it is.

[BrentD]

Straight water can't be beat for cleaning. Then dry and oil as normal.

You will want to make a BP lube. 50:50 sheep tallow and beeswax works well. And a shot of oil if needed, jojoba, meadow sea foam oil, or sperm whale oil if you can find it. You can also make a pull through bore snake to run a damp patch every 5-10 rounds.

[Don McDowell]

Maven, yes sir those Marlin 45-70 mg barrels will shoot quite well with bp, problem is the 30-30 is a much smaller hole and leaves less room for fouling build up.
Have had some mixed results shooting black in the 30-30, it can be done, but not sure it's at all even worth the effort for anything other than saying, Yup I did it...

[Maven]

Don, I imagine cleaning those BP fouled .30-30 empties would be harder than cleaning the bbl. and certainly more laborious. Btw, I meant to say in my earlier post that I can get 8 - 12 shots from my Marlin .45-70 before I need to damp swab the bore.

[Don McDowell]

Cleaning the cases isn't any worse than any other cartridge.
Just wash, rinse and tumble in corncob when they're dry.

[BigAl52]

Shooting Blackpowder out of a bottleneck case can be very patience oriented. I had a 40-90 bottleneck at one point in Shiloh Sharps and it was fun to deal with the accuracy and the fouling. Al

[Don McDowell]

I don't find the fouling nor the accuracy with bottleneck cases to be any more of a problem than the straight cases. The 40-90 can wear you down at the end of a days sillouette match, but no worse than any other cartridge boiling a 100 grs of powder.

[Gisli]

My word. This thread has been a veritable fountain of information for me on BP.
I made some BP back in 1970-71, but that was for the smoke and fire effect.
This time I will be making it as it should be made. There are some good videos on youtube, but having seen most of them I have to say that those of tadserralta .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Fn12MnZcs are the very best .
Having never fired BP in a rifle before, what is the fouling like. ? Some say that the Marlin Micro Groove will
take badly to it, as opposed to, I suppose, the Winchester.
How will this fouling affect a gas checked boolit. ? I was thinking that a copper gc sort of cleaned the barrell.
but I may be wrong on that.

[Don McDowell]

This time I will be making it as it should be made. There are some good videos on youtube, but having seen most of them I have to say that those of tadserralta .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Fn12MnZcs are the very best .
Having never fired BP in a rifle before, what is the fouling like. ?

What the fouling is going to be like is an impossible thing to answer with you using homemade powder. If you're powder is dirty and slow the fouling will be thick, if your powder is dirty slow and dry it'll be thick and hard. A lot will depend on what you use for lube, if you make a good blackpowder lube it will help keep the fouling softer, assuming the bullet carries enough of it to start with.
The fouling comes after the bullet, so a gascheck isn't going to make much difference. The real trick will be what happens after the first shot, if the throat is full of crud and rips lead from the bullet, things will just go down hill from there.
To many variables to be anything close to predictable.

[GabbyM]

Winchesters' 32 Special was the black powder round offered in the new guns back when. Along side of the 30-30.
32 Special is nothing but a necked up 30-30.

[BrentD]

Gabby, I used to think that too, but there are some really well researched articles that say, quite the contrary, .32 spl was never a bp round. Google a bit and you will find them.

[Don McDowell]

32 special was never a blackpowder round. The 32-40 was a blackpowder round, but used a slower twist.
Here's what Winchester said about the 32 special cartridge in their catalog at the time of introduction

[BigAl52]

I don't find the fouling nor the accuracy with bottleneck cases to be any more of a problem than the straight cases. The 40-90 can wear you down at the end of a days sillouette match, but no worse than any other cartridge boiling a 100 grs of powder.

I wish you would have been around when I had mine so you could show me what I was doing wrong. Sold it and replaced it with a 45-100 and a 45-70. Never had the issues with the 100 I had with the 40-90. The 45-100 throws close to 100 grains of black. Had real good luck with it. Al

[GabbyM]

Gabby, I used to think that too, but there are some really well researched articles that say, quite the contrary, .32 spl was never a bp round. Google a bit and you will find them.

I hear you but that would mean all I've read was poorly researched.
Advertisements then and now are just what the targeted potential buyer wants to hear.
Pretty sure the 32 special was at least factory loaded with BP. Don't think the 30WCF ever was.
Will have to research that later. Since it's late night now.

[curator]

When hard-pressed financially back in the late 70s I was reduced to using my copious stores of real black powder to reload for my .30-30 M94 Winchester. Straight black and 180 grain cast 311041 was good for 3 or 4 rounds before accuracy went south due to fouling issues. A shooting buddy suggested "duplexing" with SR4759 and provided a cup-full for my experiments. I found that a "primer-charge" of 3 to 4 grains of SR4759, then a full case of FFFg black powder that allowed for about 1/4 inch of compression when the boolit is seated and crimped, would burn cleanly and give near-smokeless velocities and accuracy. Back then I did not know of black-powder-lube, so just used the 50/50 NRA bees wax-alox formula, but it worked fine. Certainly 20+ rounds could be fired accurately without swabbing the bore. Possibly a lube-cookie under the boolit (after the powder charge was compressed) would improve on the original load