Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters .30-30 Powders

+10 it's the best I've ever used in the 30-30 accuracy and highest velocity. Mb

PSA on the Hodgdon website: When I navigate to it with the link above, it shows .30-30 data for the 160 FTX (as well as a bunch of other bullets) and a wide selection of powders. But when I navigate to it through a search, about half the time it doesn't show the 160, and it only shows a handful of powders depending on which link to the Hodgdon site I click on. When you search "hodgdon reloading," several different links come up.


Not sure what's up with that but the lesson is, if you don't see what you're looking for on their site, try a different link.


Justahunter, thanks again for posting the link.

smokepole;
Good morning again sir, I trust the day, week and year have been treating you well thus far.

Hopefully it's okay I drop in with an additional thought that just occurred to me which might be of use to you or someone out there.

If memory serves I've played with two different Marlin .30-30's with 20" barrels, a 340 Savage with what I want to say was a 22" barrel, two 94s with 20" barrels and a 26" barrel 94.

The 26" barrel gave higher velocities in the powders I tried with it back then, sorry I'd have to look in my notes for a bit to find them as it was 30 plus years back but I recall being somewhat satisfied that I finally achieved the velocities listed in the Hornady or Speer manuals I had then.

The 20" barrels in the 94s and 336s were usually at least 100fps slow - sometimes more than that - at max powder levels.

We fooled with a 94 Trapper with a 16" barrel too, but I don't recall if we ever chronographed it and want to say we didn't.

Hope that was useful again.

Good luck with the reloading and all the best in 2023.

Dwayne

Thanks Dwayne, so far 2023 is the best yesr ever, I haven't had to work yet!

Best to you and your family and good tip on the slower velocities in the shorter barrels. I'll take advantage of the newer powders and bullets as far as velocity, but as a few have noted these rifles weren't built for speed so it's all about accuracy.


I'm thinking I might even mount a scope (gasp!) on it. I have a .375 Ruger I'm thinking of selling and it has nice Leupold 1.5 X 4 on it that seems like just the ticket. At least for load development.

My 30-30 load for my Marlin 336a (1976 mfg, 24" bbl) is:

170 grain Speer JFP
32 grains WW748

I don't have a chrono, but supposed to be 2100++ fps.
Shoots 1.25 MOA with prepped, weight-sorted cases.

WW748 was much more accurate than 3031, 4895, or 4064. They ran about 2-3 moa. I have some Leverevolution powder, but have not done much testing with it.

My brother had similar results (500 miles away from me, same rifle and mfg year). He tried 3031, 4895, and 4064 -but with 170 grain JFP Hornady bullets. He got 3 +/- moa groups with them. I told him about my ww748 /170 Speer load, He tried it, and shot 1.5 -1.75 moa. He did not prep (ie flash hole uniforming) or weight-sort his brass. Even so, groups were reduced better than 35% with 32/ww748 and 170 grain Speer JFP bullets.

FWIW.

I hope a slight deviation from Smokepole's original post would not be taken as out of line. Any input on loads for the .32 Special? I just screwed a used 20" .32 Special barrel on a pre-64 model 94 with a seriously ruined barrel and am beginning to look at load development. Do cast bullets so that is an avenue for exploration in addition to jacketed.

You're outaline outahere!

Seriously though, no worries, I've gotten all the Info I need and then some.

Having said that, I bet you'd get more responses if you started a thread with "32 Special" in the title. People who have that data might not be reading this thread.

Good luck!!

Interesting thread here. Up until about 6 years ago my favorite 30-30 load was a 170 gr. Speer FN with 29 gr. of 3031 getting a little over 2000 FPS with great accuracy. Then I discovered 35.8 gr. of Leverevolution with a 170 gr. Hornady FP was even better with more velocity to boot, ( avg. 2260 FPS) and it's now my go-to load. 150 gr. load was a 150 gr. Sierra RN over 36.4 gr. of BL-C2 for about 2210 FPS which was about the best 150 gr. load in my Marlin 30-AS (economy model 336) but I don't even use that load anymore. My 30-30 only hunts the woods where I can rarely even see a deer past 100 yards. For more open areas I have suitably chambered bolt guns.. Although I did play around with the 160 gr. Hornady FTX's which were OK but not quite as accurate as I wanted and then figured why bother for the ranges I use a 30-30 at. The old school FP's and RN's work just fine up in the woods.

You're welcome

As a few other posters mentioned, Win 748 for my 150's and 170's in my Mod '94 Win. Mostly 170's. Works.

3031 and Benchmark

I have also joined this parade and found CFE223 gives better performance in the old workhorse. My hand cast, gas checked bullets drop at 180 gr after sizing and what I carry in a 16" Trapper barreled 94 in the Mountains.....