Fire forming 30-30 to 38-55

[Tom-ADC]

So I was given a bunch of 30-30 cases and I think I've read on here you can fire form these to 38-55, my question is how is this done?

[leadman]

30-30 will be short for 38-55, but will work in a pinch. I would try fireforming with a powder charge with Cream of Wheat on top with a wax plug to hold it in place. I would start with about 7 grs of Unique and work up if it doesn't form the case out straight.
Use this info at your own risk..

[DHB]

If you have cases split (from going 308 necked to 375 no neck) you will need to anneal them. You can Google annealing brass to figure out how to do it. It's not really hard. You can use the melted lead method :-) if you're a caster.
D

[Jim]

ARTICLE (http://www.6mmbr.com/annealing.html) on annealing brass.

[garandsrus]

Hi,

I fireformed 30-30's with 6 gr red dot with cream of wheat on top. I used a small piece of TP on top to keep everything in. Load the round with the rifle pointed up and in a safe direction and pull the trigger. The case forms very well.

Yes, these will be a little shorter than the "old" 38-55 case length, but they work well.

John

[fryboy]

umm i dont have a 38-55 but i do have it's shorter stronger lil brother a 375 winchester , using used cases i recommend the annealing , you'll lose less brass that way IMHO , i use the 375 expander ( a intermediate expander also mite help only i dont have one that fits the case ) when done this leaves a hour glass type shape that is perfect for a .375 round ball , as a plus these are fun plinking loads , also of note in case anyone tries this - especially with 375 winnie loads hot loads are out but for cast boolits they are fun and it works , the way john above states also works ( sans plinking fun lolz )

[blackpowder man]

I used true blue, newspaper wad, then grits and elmers glue on top. I lost some to splitting, but one thing I found important was to point the gun straight up to get better results. This means you definitely can't do it at the range, not around here anyway, and you will get showered with grits and newspaper.

[NickSS]

I have fire formed a lot of brass into another caliber. What I do is anneal the case down past the neck. Then I load the case with a charge of unique or Red Dot depending on what I have on hand. Smaller cases like 30-30 I pust about 8 gr in and finll the case with corn meal of grits. I plug the end with a bit of wax to hold the filler in. I then go out in my back yard and blast away. I made 50 38-55s several years ago when I bought my first rifle in that caliber and still have about 45 of them still in use. They are shorter than even the short 38-55 cases but work really well in my lever action marlin that I mostly use them in.

[John Taylor]

Any fast burning powder will work. I use 4-5 grains of unique, a small amount of what ever paper is handy and about 1/2" of wax melted on top of the paper. Paper is there to keep the wax out of the powder. Anneal the brass first.

[Old Goat Keeper]

fryboy what powder and grains do you use? Also do you loob the ball?

Tom who gots both a 38-55 and a 375



umm i dont have a 38-55 but i do have it's shorter stronger lil brother a 375 winchester , using used cases i recommend the annealing , you'll lose less brass that way IMHO , i use the 375 expander ( a intermediate expander also mite help only i dont have one that fits the case ) when done this leaves a hour glass type shape that is perfect for a .375 round ball , as a plus these are fun plinking loads , also of note in case anyone tries this - especially with 375 winnie loads hot loads are out but for cast boolits they are fun and it works , the way john above states also works ( sans plinking fun lolz )

[lathesmith]

Yes, you can fire-form 30/30's to make 38-55 "short" brass, but I hate doing this, as it's time-consuming and makes a mess, so...I came up with a different method. I made a full-length tapered 375 expander, expanded out the whole neck of the case to well below the old shoulder, and then full-length resized them in a 38-55 die, and I then had a case that is ready to load with my favorite 38-55 loads. I had several hundred once-fired 30/30's on hand that I did this to. I didn't bother annealing them, and case loss was somewhere in the 10 percent range, which was pretty much the same as with fire-forming in my experience. For me this was much faster and neater way to get useable cases, I used my Lee turret press and the process went fairly quick. Yes, these are shorter than real 38-55's, but as my loads are well below max this was of no concern to me.


lathesmith

[390ish]

use a 38 special loading of something fast. i use AA no. 2. cream of wheat and plug. about all i shoot are blown out 30-30 cases.

[Red River Rick]

Tom-ADC:

There is a solution to your problem, simply redraw the brass cases longer.

The picture showns a couple of factory Win .375 cases, one unaltered, measured 2.050" and the other, after being redrawn, measured 2.250".

I wanted to be able to stretch exiting (30-30, .375 and new 38-55) brass into useable 38-55 cases having the correct case length of 2.130". The amount of stretch required is adjustable, so the tool is pretty universal.

The included picture shows what the Kal-Max case stretcher is capable of doing. Reforming cases from exiting ones, now makes shooting some of those old-timers possible.

Read this well done article:http://www.texas-mac.com/Stretching_Short_Brass_To_Fit_Your_BPCR_Chamber.ht ml

or, check my website for more info.

RRR

[excess650]

I don't like the idea of blasting COW or grits out of my barrels. I had a friend fireform a bunch of 30-40 Krag to 38-50 Remington, and when he was done, the throat looked erroded to me. I didn't use a borescope, just the nekkid eye, and his Shilen barrel never performed to expectations.

When I was in need of 40-60 Maynard cases, I had a couple of long, tapered expanders made. The first took the 30cal to 375cal in a single pass. The other from 30cal to 410 cal in a single pass. Cases made in 2 passes seemed no different than those made in a single pass, and I never annealed(RP cases). The only cases lost to splits had obvious kinks in the neck prior to trying to expand them, and once I figured that out, I never lost another.

[bearcove]

Ken Waters said to use 15 gr bullseye with a twist of paper towel to keep powder in. Aim up, fire. Said it works great. NO BULLET, WAX ETC... JUST POWDER!

[justashooter]

i use 5 grains of green dot, a caseful of long grain rice to the case mouth, and hold them upward while chambering, then firing into a "birdbox" above the reloading bench. the box is made from 1/4" luan board sides and 1X4 framing for about 6X12X3 1/2" wide size with a single 1" diameter hole on one end. a 2" diameter hole on the backside is covered by several layers of bath towel scrap stapled in place. the frame of the box is glued and nailed, and the luan sidewalls are glued and screwed. works like a charm and have lost one case to longitudinal split in over 100 fireformed.

shooting 38-55 in a single shot with fireformed cases and faster burning powders i do not resize my brass at all. i deprime in a 30-06 die, reprime, charge the case with unique or 2400 or 3031, and add rice to base of bullet. then seat the bullet by hand, putting it into the bullet seating die for crimping. the Lee 38-55 sizing die is actually set up to size below .375", so tends to work the brass too much, causing early failure in terms of longitudinal neck splits. going back into same chamber i have no feeding probs. crimp seems to be enough to get uniform burning rate and velocities.

[bonza]

Those of you who are fireforming these loads in your backyard, or in a box over the reloading bench, just how loud are they? I live in a regular suburban neighborhood, & would have thought I'd attract some attention if I was letting some of these go in my backyard, or even in the basement. It would certainly save a trip to the range though!

[stubshaft]

Those of you who are fireforming these loads in your backyard, or in a box over the reloading bench, just how loud are they? I live in a regular suburban neighborhood, & would have thought I'd attract some attention if I was letting some of these go in my backyard, or even in the basement. It would certainly save a trip to the range though!

I usually take them to the range to shoot. They are not quite as loud as a live round but they are noisy.

[justashooter]

Those of you who are fireforming these loads in your backyard, or in a box over the reloading bench, just how loud are they? I live in a regular suburban neighborhood, & would have thought I'd attract some attention if I was letting some of these go in my backyard, or even in the basement. It would certainly save a trip to the range though!

shooting fireforming loads in the basement won't be a problem for you if you keep the windows closed. they are quieter than a 22CB load, not much louder than a primer only and wax bullet 38 special indoor target load. the trick is to use a fast burning flake powder like bullseye or green dot and an over powder charge such as rice so that you get enough chamber pressure to expand the case, but not enough to have gasses exiting supersonic. rifle powders won't work well in this application.

[Donor8x56r]

I usually take them to the range to shoot. They are not quite as loud as a live round but they are noisy.

+1 on this.It took me good 5 min to convince range officer to allow me to fireform

30-30's to 38-55 with barrel pointing up.He agreed after seeing ruined cases after firing them horizontally.

8gr of red dot + bunch of toilet paper stuffed tight did the trick :)

[JFE]

I have converted quite a bit of 30/30 brass to 375 Win and found that with brass that has been fired before you really need to anneal first otherwise you loose a bunch of cases. With new cases you dont have to anneal.

If you want to practice with your fireforming loads rather than fire them to obtain cases, then as someone else pointed out expand the neck to 375 diameter (after annealing) and load as per normal. I like using 6.5 gr of Red Dot behind a Lyman 375248 for excellent accuracy and the load irons out all the wrinkles. Better use of components and loading time IMO.

[hk33ka1]

Just let a fireform WW 30/30 with Cream of Wheat go. Came out nice after trimming to even up mouth. I had annealed with a candle first. Now I just need a case stretcher...

[McLintock]

When I first started shooting 38-55 about 10 years ago, I used Bearcove's Ken Waters method of 15 grs Bulleye with a paper towel wad and it worked great on about 300 cases. Still using them and didn't split a single one during the fire forming and haven't lost many despite reloading them up to ten times or so.
McLintock

[Four Fingers of Death]

I did it once with a few cases, just a few grains of bullsaye and a bit of toilet paper. I stopped on the side of the road near a big tree and got the gun out and my wife held a big plastic jug over the end of the barrel, while held the gun straight up. We did ten and then moved off. One case was split and one looked like uit was one the verge of splitting, but the rest were ok. The brass was old and well used. Better brass and annealing first might work better, I didn't persist as I had three hundred 375W cases on hand, just was a fun experiment. The big old jug jumped all ove the place and my wife had the giggles.