.30-30 Ackley and 170-grain bullets

The load I was using in the post below was as follows:

32.5 gr. IMR-3031
170 gr. Hornady Interlock FP (seated to the cannelure and collet-crimped)

When I was looking in Ackley's book for reload data for this cartridge, it didn't list any loads for 170-grain bullets. I thought this odd, as 170-grainers were the old standby in .30-30. Because I wanted to shoot 170's (and that's what I had on hand), I looked at the load data for IMR-3031 for 150-grainers, and cut it back to a charge weight which, I reasoned, left me some safety margin.

Looking around the web I see charge weights as high as 35.5 grains of IMR-3031 behind a 170-grain bullet. My starting load was a solid three grains under that, and I can hereby testify that 1) it didn't blow up my rifle, and 2) it dispatched a deer humanely with a standard broadside lung shot.

I understand that reload data that you find on the internet is worth exactly what you paid for it. It is, therefore, my pleasure to throw some more such data on the pile.

:-D

-AaronB

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is 30.0 gr. for a bit over 2000 fps in the standard 30 WCF case .. not the Ackley. My brother had a Savage bolt action .30-30 in Ackley Improved. You could get some performance with that because of the box magazine using spitzer bullets. But truth be told, the old .30-30 unimproved doesn't do badly. The Ackley improvement does help case life.

--
Ele era velho.
Ele era corajoso.
Ele era feio.

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I've got a 1950's production Winchester 94 in .30-30, and I've got this Marlin in .30-30 AI with a scope on it. My eyes not being what they used to be, I prefer hunting with the scope rather than the original Winchester buckhorns... so the Ackley gets the nod.

I suspect that, for me, the performance gains wouldn't be worth the price of admission if I was looking at running an AI reamer into an unmolested Marlin. I think the cartridge just appeals to me because it's a little weird, and a handloader-only proposition.

For some reason I like that.

-AaronB

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like the Russian 7.62x54R .. I spent a lot of time playing around with it and figuring out how to get a worn barrel to shoot minute of Whitetail. :-)

It had a bayonet fixed on the barrel. The barrel was worn .. the muzzle area worst of all but overall it was not real good. I cut it down, floated the barrel, made a peep sight for it and experimented with different loads. Got it to where it will work for deer.

[image]

It ain't nothing to write home about but I had fun doing it.

--
Ele era velho.
Ele era corajoso.
Ele era feio.

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is one cool piece o' kit!

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but it wasn't my idea. It was the answer to the question I asked.

--
Ele era velho.
Ele era corajoso.
Ele era feio.

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Your Mosin appears to me to be just about the perfect behind-the-truck-seat rifle for knocking around. Throw a cuff on it with some ammo and it's a great grab-and-go utility carbine. I can appreciate the butt pad. :-)

I had something very much that that in mind years ago. I was trading messages on a Mosin-Nagant board and ran across this person who had bought a Century Arms International U-Fix-Em. These were basket-case Mosin 91-30s, and you were guaranteed a barreled receiver... anything else was gravy. You might get a bolt, you might get a stock (broken or not), you might get a handguard and various hardware, but what you WOULDN'T get is a complete functional rifle. Cost was $20 plus the shipping.

The buyer of this particular U-Fix-Em was unhappy that what came in the mail was a barreled receiver, bolt, broken stock with a piece missing, and nothing else. He was griping about it online and complaining that his $20 had been wasted. With a project like your carbine in mind, Jim, I sent him a message saying that if he was unhappy with his basket-case rifle project I would make him whole on it. I would pay him his $20 back, plus shipping, and take that collection of parts off his hands.

I was eager for it to arrive. I wanted to get started working on it the day the box arrived. But when I opened the box, there was something weird about the barrel... it had a shallow spiral cutter mark on the outside from one end to the other, and a stepped profile, like the factory hadn't bothered to complete the finish on it. I checked the barrel date, and it was "1942."

I imagined Vasily sweating over his lathe trying to get one more barrel in the bin while listening to the bombs dropping outside. (Of course the Nazis never got near Izhevsk, which was the arsenal was that produced this rifle, but never you mind about that.) I took to calling it the "Siege of Leningrad" rifle in my mind. When I imagined me doing a Bubba on this piece of Russian history, well... I found I couldn't do it.

What I did wind up doing was spending about $150 more to buy all the missing Izhevsk Arsenal parts to complete that rifle (handguards, barrel bands, buttplate, etc.), plus I found a solid piece of white ash that I glued onto the buttstock to replace the missing piece, then contoured and finished to match the muddy greasy original wood. I even wound up getting a military-issue sling with dog collars for it, and the matching cleaning kit.

I would eventually sell this rifle to a Mosin collector who appreciated it. He reported back that it was quite a shooter, unexpectedly. So it all worked out well in the end, except I never did get my truck gun.

-AaronB

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