30 Carbine brass prep

[sundog]

I'm thinking there would nothing wrong with neck sizing 30 carbine brass.

I'm also thinking that a collet die, like the Lee, would be the way to go. Since it would be for cast (but, of course!), the mandrel could even be a tad larger than conventional for 30 caliber.

Y'all got any idears?

One other thing, about head space. I know it's designed to head space on the mouth, like the 45 acp. The carbine case has a very nice taper to it. It will only go into the chamber so far. Only problem I see is if your are shooting max'd out loads and expand the case body too much, but at reasonable cast pressures that may not happen. Has anyone trimmed some too short? What happened? Just thinking out loud....

[45 2.1]

Have you tried a 32 Mag carbide sizer or the 32-20 sizer to neck size with?

[felix]

Corky, if it shoots fine now, don't change the expander plug. Don't crimp in the normal fashion of doing so, and treat it like an ACP case entirely. We don't want to loose any powder speed options. ... felix

[beagle]

Corky....don't get too hung up on the case lenght/headspace thing. Many of the GI cases I use measure about 1.275" (i'm pulling numbers out of my mind so check the book) and that's once fired. Only the WCC cases run long from my experience and commercial Winchester brass is also long and needs trimmed.

After measuring a BUNCH and trimming, I finally settled on the case length of the military cases and trimmed what I use to that and have had no problems. I figure if the military is using that length and the military carbine loads are as hot as they normally are, there's no problems.

These cases worked all right in my .30 Carbine Ruger as well.

Now, the military cases tend to crack or split due to the age and some are harder than others. Don't know if you got any of that French headstamped Norma brass but it's harder than hell. I've always steered clear of S & B brass but had a bunch in .30 Carbine and used it. As usual, it's soft and the "bean" chews it up pretty good but it lasts longer than any of the brass I was using.

Never did find out what happened to the two crates of WCC stuff that I ratholed from the Army Reserves in Savannah. Bet the #2 son knows./beagle

[NickSS]

I loded litterally thousands of rounds of 30 carbine useing RCBS carbide dies and no lube on the brass. I loaded mostly cast bullets and never had any trouble at all. I also never measured a case or trimmed a single one. All my carbines (15 give or take a couple performed about the same around 3 to 4 inch groups at 100 yards with just about anything I loaded in it.

[osage]

The first brass I got was LC52 & 55 most of which so long that the bolt would not close. I think it had been reloaded many times as I found loose primer pockets and warped bases. The brass was hard to trim until I annealed it. I did trim some shorter then 1.280 while dailing in my wilson trimmer. I have not had any issues with the short ones.

[Bret4207]

Might want to run them all through a trimmer after the first firing, inside chamfer, do NOT outside chamfer and then try the carbide or Lee Collet. I forget which case I had to do this with, probably 45 ACP, but it worked better for me leaving the outside burr of the case. The gun seemed to like the square edge of the case left like that.

[sundog]

The first batch of brass I prepped was range brass that I've been picking up 1 or 3 at a time over the years. Lengths were all over the place. I made them all the same and shot them, and not surprisingly some are now even a little shorter. I don't see where it's going to hurt a thing. Kinda like what happens to 45 acp cases.

I'm still thinking that a collet neck sizer would be just dandy. I don't know offhand what the standard mandrel is for .30/.308 neck sizers, but .001 or .002 larger would easily accommodate a .310 or larger boolit and should still have sufficient neck tension. Still thinking out loud...

[felix]

Never hurts to try it, Corky, but see if you can verify the boolit being tight enough to handle the slam-bang of the action closing, while maintaining "headspace" as defined by the boolit stopping any further entry. Measure overall length before and after the slam-bang? Boolits hard enough to resist heavy land marks? Action fully locked? Etc. Just guessing. ... felix

[Newtire]

Hi Sundog,

Beagle gave me a good startoff in cast boolit shooting in the carbine with his article. The length of the brass never was a problem being too short like most of them were. I found if I left the OAL to within .005" of just being able to feed into the magazine, that they fed reliably. None of these showed any signs of engraving the rifling and the bolt would close down on them. It was close enough to be almost touching though. I used the Lee factory crimp die on all of these.

Very fun gun to shoot. The boolits that worked the best in mine were the 311359 at 115 gr. and the Lee 120 RN. The Lee 130 RN also shot great but was much too slow to cast 1 at a time. I got mine to shoot into 1-1/2" @ 50 yds. with the 311359.

Just watch out for the "AMERC" brass. It is NO GOOD-very brittle and splits usually first firing.