Handloads...

Tue Feb 07, 2012 1:09 am by OldHorseman

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- Okay. New loading tools have me developing new loads...

- I previously handloaded .45 ACP only for my hollowpoint carry ammo, relying on cheap GA Arms "Canned Heat" bulk reloads for practice drill ball ammo. Always stuck with 230 grain because, hell, if I wanted "light and zippy", I wouldn't be shooting a .45 ACP!

- With my old loader, I was doing 230g JHP over 6.4g of Unique. (I try to stockpile the most versatile components, and few powders are as versatile as old Unique.) The closest notch to that with the Auto Disk was the .82cc hole, which the Lee chart says throws 7.5g Unique, but actually throws a consistent 6.5g according to my scale.

- Loaded 230g JHP and Ranier plated RN over 6.5 Unique with the new Turret press. These all functioned well, but I thought the load might be a little hot for the practice ball ammo. So I tried the .76cc disk hole, which is supposed to throw 7g Unique, but actually throws 6g... The 230 plated RN over 6g Unique cycled without fail, so that will probably be my practice ammo load.

- The only firearm I've ever bought that I later thought was a bad choice is our Spanish-made 1911 Officer's Model clone in .40 S&W. I went for the .40 because it performs better out of the shorter barrel, and gives us back the seventh magazine round we lose to the scaled-down Officer's grip in the .45 version. Had I known then what I know now, I'd've gone with a .45 version and experimented with some of the lighter, faster .45 ammo in the thing.

- The little .40 is actually a pretty nifty gun, and shoots very straight. The heavy construction and full-support chamber make the notorious .40 kB less of a threat. But has always been less than totally reliable when it comes to cycling. I polished the feed ramp and made other tweaks. Experimented with different factory ammo. It got better, but still not really good enough.

- I realized the problem was that the gun was essentially a .45 re-barreled for .40. The slide travel, magazine well, and ejection port were all identical to the .45. The feed ramp was the same steep design that worked so well with round-nosed .45 bullets... With relatively long run from the magazine, it was easy for the flat-nosed .40 bullet to get tipped-down to hit the steep feed ramp flat-on and jam there. Clearly my gun was designed for some sort of .45/.40 hybrid that didn't exist...

- So I had to start making the .45ish .40s myself. For starters, I chose the most round-nosed, feed-friendly bullets I could find in 10mm... The 165g Ranier plated and 155g Hornady XTP JHP... I seat both shallow to increase the overall cartridge length to something that fits the gun better. Well over SAAMI COAL for the .40 S&W, but I made sure to fit the magazine and not to drive the bullets all the way into the rifling when the rounds are chambered.

- Alliant lists a 7.2g Unique load for 165g bullets, and 8g for 155g. The Lee chart said the Auto Disk .88cc hole would throw 8.1g, but it really throws just under 7.1. I loaded some test rounds with both bullets over this charge. Also loaded some of both over a 6.5g charge.

- All these rounds fired and cycled fine, but were a little hard on the wife's hands except for the 155g XTPs over the 6.5g charge. So I tried cutting the 165 plated bullets down to a 6g charge, and they still cycled flawlessly.

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Sun Feb 12, 2012 10:46 pm by OldHorseman

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- Got to try out the 30-30 rounds I did in the new Lee Classic Turret. I thought the tired brass and full-length resizing might yield marginal performance, but popping milk-jugs at 100 paces was no problem. It's been a while since I gave the old Winchester a work-out. I forgot just how great a shooter it is. Just something about its balance and iron sights that makes it so easy to shoot well without a rest. It won't do sub MOA at 200 yards like the scoped 30-06 bolt-rifle, but it'd be a helluva' lot handier for moving targets and quick shots.

- 170 grain Remington Core-Lokt round-nose semi-jacketed bullets over 31.6 grains of H-335 was the Turret Press load. This is 1.1 grains over the current reloading manual maximum. Old manuals showed 34 grains H-335 under 170g bullets in the 30-30, and I've tested my rifle up to that with absolutely no problems. My hunting load (with weighed charges) is 32.5g under the same bullet, which gave me the flattest trajectory in my tests. (33, 33.5, and 34g charges gave identical results to 32.5 in my rifle. I suspect that anything over 32.5 is just wasted on extra muzzle flash and rocket-recoil.)

- 30g of H-335 produces trajectory pretty much identical to Remington Express factory ammo with the same bullet. The 31.6g load (closest the Auto Disk could get with a double-stroke) Splits the difference between that and my pet hunting load nicely.

- While the 30-30 was a smokeless cartridge right from the start, it does suffer from the "old time" cartridge curse... Basically, everyone in the gun industry just knows that somebody is going to stuff a high-powered, modern cartridge into Grandpa's rusted-out antique rifle and blow themselves up. So SAAMI assigns the old cartridges an over-conservative pressure, then ammo manufacturers and reloading manual compilers stay way below that already overcautious standard...

- Thing is, there's really no such thing as an "old" caliber. 30-30 rifles are being manufactured today. From the same steel that .308s and other high-powered .30 caliber rifles are. The barrels are just as thick, and the chambers are sometimes thicker (due to the smaller 30-30 case body hole in the same blank that could have been bored for the .308)... Nobody runs a "weak brass" plant either. There's really little reason why a reasonably new 30-30 firing a cartridge loaded in modern brass should be 20,000 PSI weaker than a .308... But the official standards have to apply to 117 year old guns and brass.

- Kind of a shame. Before the LeveRevolution ammo came-along, folks shooting the 30-30 with factory ammo were under the impression that you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with the cartridge much beyond shotgun range. Goosing-up the velocity just a little really improves accuracy at all ranges, and flattens-out the trajectory to make a 25-yard point-blank stay on a pie-plat out to 220 yards, which ain't exactly a .270, but plenty handy for a lot of practical shooting.

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Wed Feb 22, 2012 12:13 pm by hutoftung

Hold old are your old standard loads? Powders do change over time. Of course, that load data needs to safely work for a model 1894 made in 1894 as well as one made in 1994, so I guess an experienced handloader can indeed exceed those numbers.

Thu Feb 23, 2012 12:08 am by OldHorseman

hutoftung wrote:Powders do change over time.

- In terms of burn rate and pressure curve, they are NOT supposed to change. When Alliant came out with "new" Unique (the second oldest smokeless still made), they made certain that it performed precisely the same as the old stuff, just cleaner. Gunnies immediately put it to the test against "old" Unique and determined that performance was indeed identical.

- The manual publishers sometimes explain the down-charging by saying they have more accurate testing mechanisms now, and have discovered that the old maximums produced higher pressures than they originally thought... Which doesn't change the fact that folks used those old book loads for years without trouble.

Of course, that load data needs to safely work for a model 1894 made in 1894 as well as one made in 1994, so I guess an experienced handloader can indeed exceed those numbers.

- I suspect that a Model 94 from 1895 (first year it came in 30-30) in good condition could handle over 50k psi without hurting the chamber and barrel... The weak link would be the action, which didn't positively lock the block into place, so it might blow open under that kind of back-pressure. Later '94s have a compound leverage mechanism that makes the block more secure... The current Mossberg 30-30 levers have a sort of rotating bolt design that should be even stronger.

- Of course now, if someone wants to really push the performance envelope of the 30-30 lever, there are poly-tipped spitzer bullets, LeveRevolution powder, and the two combined in Hornady ammo... Makes the 30-30 a 240 yard shooter without exceeding book loads.

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Mon Mar 12, 2012 6:47 pm by hutoftung

Well the other problem with a 115 year old rifle is stress, wear, and decay that could weaken it over time if not well maintained. Of course that could also apply to a 5 year old gun stored in terrible conditions, and you have to use a little common sense.

Tue Mar 13, 2012 12:51 pm by spacecase0

metal fatigue is cumulative,
be careful about running the hottest loads you can for all your shooting.
loading a few for self defense that you just test and don't use often is ok, but don't max out your pressure all the time

Tue Mar 13, 2012 9:15 pm by OldHorseman

spacecase0 wrote:be careful about running the hottest loads you can for all your shooting.
loading a few for self defense that you just test and don't use often is ok, but don't max out your pressure all the time

- Quite right. Pushing loads up to the ragged edge of what the gun can stand usually produces poor accuracy anyway...

- It's just that in some calibers, typical factory ammo is so wimp-loaded that people get the idea that the cartridge is inherently inaccurate or shorter range than it needs to be. My hottest 30-30 loads are still well below the true max of the gun, but dramatically flatter-shooting and tighter-grouped than premium factory ammo. For plinking, I use factory ammo or factory-identical handloads.

- I rarely shoot the heavy magnum class rounds I have loaded for my Ruger Blackhawk in .45 Colt... Full standard pressure .45 Colt loads (which are less than half the pressure of the Ruger-only loads) are already way more powerful than most people think. A long history of extra-weak factory ammo and the recent popularity of low-recoil "Cowboy" loads has made folks forget that the original 1973 ,45 Colt load was pretty badass to start with.

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