Heavy Thirty in .30-30 -- a qualified success

by AaronB, Saturday, April 04, 2026, 13:21 (7 hours, 3 minutes ago) @ AaronB

I have two rifles of the .30 WCF persuasion in the house, one a 1950's vintage M94 Winchester carbine in its original trim, and the other a Marlin 336 rifle that has been modified to .30-30 Ackley.

For my initial loadings of the 220-grain bullet in .30-30 I decided that 17.0 grains of IMR 4198 was unlikely to cost me any parts of my body. A remaining question was, what's the right OAL for this load?

The first time around I decided to crimp the case mouth right into the top driving band, leaving the entire bullet nose exposed. The resulting cartridge looked pretty extreme, but it kept the base of the bullet almost entirely inside the case neck.

Well, it didn't work. I could barely clamp the action shut on the cartridge in the '94. It wasn't even close to a reasonable fit for hunting. I fired that one cartridge into the end of a piece of white ash firewood and went back to the drawing board. Successive attempts involved seating the bullet deeper over the same 17.0 grains of 4198. They continued to give me trouble in the Winchester, so I got out the Marlin to see if they would cycle and chamber.

I don't know whether it's the micro-groove rifling that made the difference, but the heavy thirty seated to an OAL of 2.51" cycled and chambered quite nicely in the Marlin.

The above is what the 2.51 OAL cartridge looked like after being cycled through the '94. Note the rifling marks on the bore-rider section of the bullet nose.

This image (above) shows you the seating depth vs. case neck in the original .30-30 case, and where it would fall in the .30-30 AI case.

The above image shows how this load penetrated in white ash firewood, penetrating 4.5 inches. I thought this not bad for 220 grains at an estimated 1800 fps... that ash wood is tough.

The above image is what two of the recovered bullets look like. Yes, it appears I am now suitably equipped to go hunting trees.

-AaronB