A little on his pressure.
The 30-30 simply makes the most energy with the least powder of just about any cartridge. If you look in all of the Speer reloading manuals, they mention that many reloaders have asked if they could boost the pressure of the 30-30 if they use it in a bolt gun. They say absolutely not, that the case is too thin and lacks the strength necessary for high pressure loads. This is actually far from the truth. In fact, the 30-30 case handles pressure better than most cases. This is because of the rim. The rim does more than just add extra diameter around the primer. After all, the magnum cases have extra diameter also, but that is not the only key to handling the high pressure. The other component is greater work hardening of the brass in the rim area. This happens when the rim is forged to a greater diameter than the case body. This can increase the yield strength of the case head considerably. I find that even the lower strength alloys such as 80-20 used by Federal and Remington, still handle pressures far in excess of a typical 308 case made from the same alloy. Lapua used to make 30-30 brass, but stopped a while back, because the mainstream 30-30 brass that is available to most shooters is more than adequate for the typical lever gun. The Lapua 70-30 alloy coupled with the extra work hardening of the rim would have proven exceptional, not to mention the quality. The brass used for this testing is made by Starline, and is a 70-30 alloy. I can't guarantee that it is the strongest 30-30 brass available, but it has proven to be extremely tough brass. After 24 years of playing with the 30-30 using extremely high pressure loads, I have never had a primer leak or soot the bolt face. According to Quickload, my pressures have reached as high as 93,000, but I don't put a lot of faith in those numbers. My guess is closer to 80 to 85,000 PSI. I can't be certain of the pressures, but have to believe they are way up there when the energy levels duplicate a 30-06 with 20 grains less powder. I have not done any testing of light weight bullets in the 28" plus barrel lengths, but I have pushed a 118 gr. bullet at 3400 fps from a 23" barrel. Soon I will test a 125 gr bullet from a 28" barrel, and see if I can reach somewhere around 3400 fps. That would put me around 3200 foot pounds of energy. I may be asking too much at that point. All of my loads with the 168 gr. - 250 gr. have at this point been limited to 3000 foot pounds, or basically the same as a 30-06 pushing a 150 gr. bullet at 3000 fps.
I believe on of the real concerns that the people from Speer have is that one of these loads could wind up in a lever action. There are two reasons that this is not too likely. One is that most people know not to use pointed bullets in tubular magazines. The other it that they could only be singly loaded, because their OAL is too long to feed through a lever action.
I do need to do more testing with the Nosler brass to see if it will handle the pressures as well as the Starline. If so, it will make the most velocity, because the Nosler brass holds 2 grains more powder than the Starline. From what I understand, the Nosler brass may be made by Norma. All I know is it may very well be the highest quality 30-30 brass I've ever used. Another possibility is the PPU brass. It is basically the hardness of military brass, and I have no idea what kind of pressures it would take to loosen a primer. I have never checked it for capacity.
For short range BR shooting little of this matters, because I normally shoot it closer to typical 30 BR velocities. Sometimes I will shoot it one or two nodes above the 30 BR at 200 yards.
Michael
