M1 .30 Carbine and Lee C309-120-R

Just for those who are interested, shooting my M1 Carbine and the Lee C309-120-r boolit.

My rifle is a Plainfield commercial .30 Carbine I bought in 1973. It is still in like new condition.

My load is the Lee C309-120-R, 50/50 coww/lead sized to .310, Smoke's clear pc, and aluminum gas-checks. Weight+-121 gr.

13.5gr/H110, 1.645" COAL, 1830 fps. So far grouping 5 shots into 1.5"-2" @ 50 yards. (Weather permitting, I will shoot at 100 yards.)

Shot into water-filled one gallon milk jugs @ 20 yards. Penetrated 4 jugs completely, and stopped in the 5th jug. The first 2 jugs were completely exploded. Expansion is about 1/2 inch, .494" to be exact, and retained weight was 84 grains.

Attachment 297936


Excuse the bad picture.

This is a sample of one,....the first try, I put up 3 milk jugs and the boolit was not caught,....I then only had the 5 jugs left, hence only one example of expansion.

I was really impressed with the little carbine round with a cast boolit. A 1/2 expanded slug, penetrating this deep would be a "significant emotional event" to anything hit with it.

My carbine functions perfectly with this boolit/load, after several mags full of shooting.

This load shoots very close to factory Federal .30 carbine 110 gr...I only required 2 clicks to the left on the rear sight to be zeroed, compared to the federal factory load.

Nice! Thanks for the report.

Cast bullets make the Carbine even funner if that's possible! I'm sure it will be good @100yds as well. I use the Lee C309113F and it's working so well that I'm just saving all that fmj/jsp ammo for later!

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1830 FPS is what I get when using Wolf factory FMJ ammo .

Thanks for the report! I too use the Lee C309113F, a little. But since finding an RCBS 30-115-SP, I pretty much throw rocks at all my other molds.

Suggestion- As an alternative to saving jugs to fill with water, go to the Dollar Store and buy a couple of laundry baskets. Line them with a couple of cheap poly tarps or trash bags, set them end to end, and fill them with water. If you have all your feces closely grouped and have all the loads you want to test at hand, you can fire several loads into the water and recover the bullets.

35W

Thanks fella's for the replies and the tips.

I have to give credit for the .30 Carbine loads to Larry Gibson and his posts on this board.

I was looking at the LEE 309-113-F, but was not sure about feeding in my carbine.

This boolit feeds in one of my carbines, but not my rockola version. I have struggled with finding one that would work in the rockola.

I was given about 500 Lee C309-120 R bullets sized, GC, and lubed. Have not loaded cast for my carbine but usually load 14.0-15.0 grs W296 with 110 gr jwords. Could not find any load data for W296/H110 with the 120 gr Lee bullet with COAL. Found this tread which was exactly for what I was looking. Thanks for the post.

I do have a Lyman 311359 mold I picked up about 9 months ago but haven't used. Want to use up the Lee 120's before i switch to what I cast.