The Heavy Thirty Rides Again!

After experiencing sticker shock over my recent purchase of garden-variety jacketed bullets for my .30-30, a good friend here pointed out that jacketed bullets still may turn out to be just a passing fad and at any rate I could cast my own.

That caused a light bulb to go on over my admittedly thick noggin. I have stored about five pounds of these bullets around two separate shops for over a decade now, maybe close on to two decades. The bullet in question is the Heavy Thirty, from a mold I spec'd out with Dan at Mountain Molds. It's poured of wheel weight alloy (with added tin) and water-dropped for hardness. It's a bore-rider design of .310 diameter, and it drops at 220 grains with a nice broad meplat. It was meant to be a hunting bullet design.

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I looked up some Lyman Cast Bullet manual data for .30-06 using a Lyman 200-grain bullet, found a recipe using IMR 4198, and backed it off the max by two grains. I figure it may be good for 1800 fps. I function tested it into the woodpile through my old Springfield sporter, and it left the bore nice and clean while failing to blow the gun up. I consider that a bit of a win.

It cycles fine from the magazine of the Springfield, but the tube mag in my .30-30s is more of a challenge. In any event I think this would be a good design for .30-40 Krag. Maybe this weekend we'll see how it does for accuracy.

-AaronB

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Looks good! Heavy, flat bullets at moderate velocities? Sounds like a plan!

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I wanted an optimal cast bullet for hunting in .30-30 and .30-06.

My thoughts on this bullet design were:

1) Cast bullets, even with gas checks, require some wizardry to make them work over about 2000 fps. Who wants that kind of struggle? So...

2) Accepting a 2000-fps upper limit in a .30 caliber, how much weight can you push at that speed and bore size?

The answer is linked to this next question, which is

3) Without impinging much past the bottom of the case neck in the loaded cartridge, what's the longest bullet that can be made to work?

If velocity, diameter, and alloy density are all fixed, one remaining strategy to maximize performance is to maximize bullet weight. In order to do this I spec'd a design to make the most of the available volume for the bullet, leading to the bore-rider shank and the (mostly) flat point.

I set the weight limit to 220 grains because I wasn't sure the rifling in the average .30-30 would stabilize anything much heavier than that (or even that, to be honest).

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I'm looking forward to further testing results. I've experimented some with 200+ gr JSP's in my P=17, your cast FN looks like a very competent hole puncher in a milder level. I've done little with cast in rifles, just not up north enough time at once to do much. A few years ago I picked up some commercial cast, but don't think they were near as heavy as yours. Will have to check the cache next time I'm up there. What kind of velocity do you expect out of the 30 WCF?

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Paul, I'm hoping that I can launch this bullet at 1800 fps out of the .30-30 case also, using a very carefully chosen charge weight of IMR 4198 or 4895. I'm going to do a lot of homework before I try extrapolating a suitable charge; neither my Lyman nor Lee manuals have any .30-30 data for 220- or even 200-grain bullets. In any event I will undershoot my target charge weight and work up to it slowly.

We'll see whether my Marlin 336 likes these. It's got a little faster rifling twist than my old Winchester 94.

-AaronB

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The Heavy Thirty Rides Again!

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