Help with 30-30 reloading

[ckpj99]

Developing a load for my Marlin 336 (actually a Western Field) is slowly driving me insane.

When I first got the rifle, I started with testing factory loads. Most didn't shoot great, but 150 grain Hornady Whitetail ammo shot great. Also, Hornady Lever Evolution shot pretty well, but not as good as the Whitetail.

Then, I started reloading with lead cast. I was using 165 grain .309 Magnus bullets with IMR 4198. I did ladder tests and loaded over 100 rounds searching for a good load. It just wasn't happen. My local range is 50 yards. There I discovered that my grip on the rifle had a huge effect on where my shots landed. At best I was getting was 2" groups at 50 yards if I really held the rifle tight on the bench. I took my lead rounds out to 100 yards expecting 4" groups, and could barely hit paper.

Next, I decided to load some jacketed bullets. About the only flat points that are available (and not so expensive they make reloading pointless) are Speer Hot-Cor bullets. I bought some in 170 grain (which I have yet to test) and 150 grain. I'm pairing those bullets with Lever Evolution powder.

I loaded up a ladder test of these bullets. I have a theory that heat was really affecting accuracy with my gun. I also had a theory that the very slow velocity of the lead rounds was causing the issues with the rifle grip.

So, my test protocol was this. Fire three rounds of Hornady Whitetail offhand just to warm the barrel up. Wait five minutes. Fire another three rounds of Hornady Whitetail for accuracy at 50 yards. Wait five minutes. Fire my first test group with reloads. Wait five minutes. Fire my next test group. Wait five. Repeat until done with the test loads. Then fire another group of Hornady Whitetail just to see.

Here's the results. Keep in mind that the Hornady groups at the beginning and end were shot with a 5" bullseye, all other groups were shot with a 3" bullseye.



As you can see, my first group with the Hornady Whitetail is good. Keep in mind, this is open sight shooting. So getting hole-in-hole groups is pretty hard, at least for me. Next you'll see the 35.5 grain group, which is five shot because a loaded a couple extra sighting rounds. And so on. You'll also see the final group of Hornady rounds opens up a bit. This may have been from my own fatigue or the heat build up on the gun, five minutes between groups does not allow for the barrel to cool completely.

So what do you guys think. Should I try a different powder? Should I try to hunt down a different bullet. The Hornady Whitetail uses a boattail round, and the Hot-Cor rounds don't have boattails. Should I just stock up on Hornady Whitetail and give up on reloading!? I don't know what to do. I also realize that shooting open sight is not the best way to test rounds, but it's all I can do at the moment and I want this to be an open sight gun.

I'd love any advice you might have.

[jwrowland77]

Is the 4198 the only powder you've tried to date? If so, and this was me doing this, I would change one thing at a time and see what happens. I would probably try one or two different powders. If that didn't work with the Speer bullet, I might then go back to the original powder but with a different bullet. Maybe try the bullet that Hornady uses in their factory load.

This is just me though. Others may suggest different stuff or other things to look at shooting or loading.

[Gadawg88]

You might try the Hornady 150 gn Interlock rn. I have loaded it with H335 with some success.

[snuffy]

A thutty-thutty is no target gun! Just too many things hanging on that barrel, and the 2 piece stock just doesn't support the action.

That said, you should still be able to get 3-4 inch groups @ 100 yards, maybe 1.5" @ 50 with jacketed bullets. You need time and a close look at your loading procedures to see if there's something you're doing wrong. I have never got IMR-4198 to work in anything. IMR 4895 however, has been good in anything that the 4198 failed in.

Now, I don't load for 30-30, but it's offspring, the 7X30 Waters, I do load. Close enough to give some advice.

As for the lead loads, did you get all traces of copper out of the barrel before trying the lead? Copper fouling will make lead bullets perform badly. Also, did you slug the barrel? You have to know the inside diameter of the barrel, then match the bullet diameter to that size, oops, I meant go over that diameter by .002. I'd bet those bullets were too small.

[ckpj99]

Just to clarify. The test targets I posted are loaded with jacketed Speer Hot-Cor bullets and Lever Evolution powder.

I understand the complications with loading lead. I probably need .310 bullets instead of .309. I clean the barrel really well before every testing session. I used Hoppes before I started testing with lead because it has copper removing stuff in it. Again, I'm sort of done with shooting lead for now.

Also, people keep saying that a .30-30 lever gun isn't an accurate option, except clearly it can be. If you look at my first target with factory ammo, I shot less than 3/4 of an inch with open sights at 50 yards. In theory, that translates to 1.5 MOA. That's pretty damn good, and really its all the accuracy I'm looking for. I just want to reproduce what I can do with the Hornady Whitetail ammo with reloads.

Gadawg - I would love to load some Hornady interlock bullets except I can't seem to find them anywhere. Do you know of source for them?

[WIL TERRY]

IMR3031 and WW748 have been excellent in all of my 30-30 carbines. The SPEER and HORNADY bullets all shot very well indeed.

[riverratt]

Wil terry hit it on the nose. 29gr of IMR 3031 under 170gr sierra bullet has produced near MOA from all three 30-30s ive shot it in. Use caution with this load it is near or over max load (depending on where you get the data) so reduce 10% and work up cairfuly

[Clark]

ckpj99
Developing a load for my Marlin 336 (actually a Western Field) is slowly driving me insane.

Anyone who can write that well and document a problem that well is a first born nerd with enough money to buy a 270.

[Slamfire]

Anyone who can write that well and document a problem that well is a first born nerd with enough money to buy a 270.

There are always dragons to slay, and if you are that type of person, you must slay this dragon before moving on to the next.

I don’t believe in three shot groups. I shot enough ammunition through my Marlin that I found five shot groups were misleading. I shot five shot groups, redid the best loads with ten shot groups, and at least one load that I thought had promise, turned out to be absolutely horrible in a ten shot group. This is the problem with small sample size, sometimes you can have a run of sevens, you will start to think you’re a genius, have a “method”, but it is a statistical fluke that will become apparent with a large enough sample size.

Like all humans, I see patterns where none exist. But, I am of the opinion that powders that provide low extreme spreads and low standard deviations shoot better in my Marlin. For me, N135 was the best with 170’s. I thought case fulls of IMR 4350 and AA2700 had accuracy promise, just the velocity was too slow with jacketed bullets.

I am also of the opinion that Marlin 336’s are not capable of target accuracy, there is just too much hanging off the barrel, the whole system is too sensitive to little changes in ammunition, and I really doubt Marlin ever intended to build a target rifle. I talked to the Marlin guys back in the late 90’s, I wanted a better barrel for my M1894, while late 90’s barrels were better than 80’s barrels, the expressed accuracy expectations for their rifles from the factory representatives were not that high.

[Clark]

Slamfire
I don’t believe in three shot groups. I shot enough ammunition through my Marlin that I found five shot groups were misleading.

I have been resisting Bart Bobbitt's argument for 20 shot group for 20 years.
I have been doing 5 shots for varmint guns and 3 shots for big game guns.

But recently while trying to account for an unknown number of out of control variables in accuracy, I figured out that small improvements in accuracy will not be detectable with small groups.
The thought experiment that revealed this to me was:
Imagine flipping a coin 100 times and turning the elevation knob right one moa for every heads and left for ever tails. Flip the coin 100 times and turn the windage knob right for every heads and left for every tails.
Then shoot. Flip the coin 200 times for every shot.
With a perfect rifle, this could produce a 100 moa group, but much more likely is a 5.5 moa group.
Then eliminate one of the variables by only flipping the coin 198 times. The accuracy is potentially improved by 1 moa, but it is not. No improvement can be seen. With many millions of shots in one group, the difference could be detected. 100 moa would shrink to 99 moa.

And this is probably how I have tricked myself into bypassing many of the accuracy rituals. "I tried it. Shot some 3 shot groups... and no improvement."

[ckpj99]

Clark - that's the best compliment I've gotten in a long time. I am totally a nerd. I probably have enough money for a 270, however, I've never gotten too excited about bolt guns. First off, I have this aversion to scopes. I've owned and used them, but they just aren't as fun to shoot with. Related to this, most bolt guns come with no iron sights or really bad iron sights with the rear sight mounted halfway up the barrel. I'm really considering saving my pennies for a Sharps or other single shot rolling block type target gun.

River - I'll pick up some 3031 as soon as find some. If anything I'll use it with my 170 grain.

Slamfire - My whole thought on the number of shots in a group is this. I've found that the 336 is really sensitive to heat. A 10 shot group is bound to open up. Also, it's a hunting gun, so really I should only be testing cold bore accuracy with three shot groups, but this is really inconvenient, so I just try to keep the bore at a constant and sort of cool temperature. When shooting the 336 practically, I'm never going to need more than three shots, so I choose to do many three shot groups spaced apart instead of fewer 10 shot groups. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just explaining why I go with three shot groups.

Also, I'm convinced I can get 2" groups from a cold gun at 100 yards (I may be wrong, but that's what I'm working toward).

[Dr. A]

It's very clear from this that you should be using at least the Hornady 150gr. Might try 748 or 335 if the Leverevolution does not work. I bet it does with that bullet.

[McShooty]

ckpj99: Many have reported troubles getting Marlins to shoot cast - some have attributed that to micro-groove rifling. I don't know, but you are on the right track with trying to get good three shot groups from a cool gun. If you can get good, repeatable results doing that, you will be doing about as well as most. If getting good 3-shot groups with a 336 drives you insane, trying to get good ten-shot groups will cause your brain to putrefy inside your head.

If you wish to try to tune a bit, try to eliminate all communication between the barrel and the magazine tube. This can be done by working on the barrel bands and the channels in the foreend. Also, the foreend should not put pressure on the front of the action.

[zeke]

While it may not be relevant, have taken to not resting the fore end of a lever on sand bags. Started keeping a grip on the fore end and rest hand on front bag. Seems to help.

Would also check the muzzle for any nicks, etc.

[Rifletom]

As for powders, do you have, or can you get RL#15 or Win 748? These are very good powders for the 30-30/170gr bullets. One small tip: Look at your manual and see where you need a magnum primer. This helps improve accuracy once you have the rifle settled on proper rests as others have mentioned.
BTW, the magnum primer should ONLY be used with 748. Research this.

[McShooty]

I second the tips here for powder and method of resting the gun. Some folks, when shooting a lever, have the front rest right under the front of the action! That seems to work with my 94 but I also use light hand support on the foreend.