Reloading and casting for the 30-30

I have a very nice Marlin 336-A in 30-30 that was made back in 1951. I inherited it from my Uncle as his boys did not want any rifles living in shotgun counties and I live in a rifle county. Even if I didn’t there is no way i would pass on this beautiful gun.

There is the bullet I choose to use in the 30-30. It is an NOE 311-184-FN-J5 5 Cavity gas checked mold. It is said 184 grains and I think mine weighed in an 183 using wheel weight lead.

I wanted a nice, heavy bullet with a big wide metplat (front tip) for hunting. It couldn’t be better in my opinion unless it was a dimple or hollow point. The meplat makes a good pushing surface to help with deformation and expansion. Where as a round tip or spire tip push meat out of the way more, but can fly better over distance.

I casted a bunch and did some with deer fat/beeswax lube to be shot naked.

Close up pic of lubed bullets

Cleaned, sized and ready to be loaded.

I took the other half and powder coated them to see which way I liked them better. I was more interested in the plain, lubed rounds at this point.

Powder coated bullets gas checked, sized and ready to load.

The lead rounds seated on left and ready to be seated on the right. This way you can see how much bullet is in the neck of the casing.

Powder coated ready to be seated.

The lead rounds seated and crimped in my loading block I made. As you can see IMR 3031 was my powder of choice. More to come below.

Both rounds.

Okay, so you saw they are all loaded. I loved the look and the “old school” feel of the lead rounds. Even though pan lubing them was a pain in the ass. I figured I wouldn’t be doing them but evey couple years, so lets go old school. First shots at the range and 25 yards good, 50 yards good, and at 100 yards they are starting to fly off low and right. Damn it! I asked around the they said shooting the naked rounds you need everything tuned, powder, lead hardness and lube. One variation wrong and you get poor accuracy. Yup, that is what I got. Now I got 125 short range hunting rounds, or plinking ammo in 30 caliber.

Now the powder coated rounds none of those problems. Dead on at 100 yards. I guess I know which round I like better now. I have not tested them for longer ranges yet as hunting season was coming and I’ll be hunting in the woods.

Now I loaded these with 29 grains of IMR 3031 and Gordons reloading tool calcs that to be just over 2000 feet per second at 2008.9 and I am happy enough. Between the heavier round and the 3031 my gun has a bit of a kick to it now and the muzzle noise is louder and sharper than the core-lokts I used to use. I fired 5 in a row and my buddy took the gun and thought it was going to burn him. These are some hot little rounds.

Another thing i noticed is using the Remington Core-lokts is that I had to have the rear aperture on the second notch to be sighted in. With these rounds I have to lower it to bottom, where it probably should have been. So I am assuming this round is flatter shooting, but I have not tossed any pills 150 to 200 yards yet to see longer range performance yet. We will get there in the spring. As will the 30-06 also. The Remington Core-lokts started diving like bricks getting around 150 yards or more. I am hoping these do better and will report back more later on.

I bought a new Bergara B-14 hunter and a new NOE 165 grain mold for that one. I got IMR 4198, but am considering 4227 and maybe even V120 for the speed and see if the powder coat holds up at 2500+

Enjoy!