Constraints on the Bullet Design

by AaronB, Thursday, April 02, 2026, 08:21 (7 hours, 12 minutes ago) @ Slow Hand

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).