There was an older thread on the 300 Savage Superformance ammunition, but I thought I would start a new one, as I have some load data and a different twist to add at the end for 303 Savage possibilities.

Anyhow I tried the Superformance (SPF) ammo in my Grandpa's 1949 vintage 300 EG with 24" barrel, and was impressed with the velocity and accuracy. I had to adjust the Redfield 70 receiver sight 10 mil to get the point of impact right at 100 yds, a significant change in trajectory compared to my preferred load, 39.5 gr IMR 4350 with 150 gr Sierra spitzers, velocity @ 2350 fps. While the most accurate of 5 powders tried, this load left me wishing for more for my WYO hunting purposes - either open ground/longer ranges or big timber/big critters. Note: At my shooting range, +/- a mile high in elevation, most loads fail to meet the velocities listed in reloading books, sometimes by a lot. I think the thinner air has something to do with that, decreasing burn rate/temp. We see power loss in vehicles up here as well for the same reason.

I came across an article online (http://ataleoftwothirties.com/?p=1026) where the author concluded that the powder used in the 300 Sav SPF ammo was Hornady's Leverevolution (LE) powder. He used up to 43.5 gr of powder to achieve over 2700 fps without signs of pressure. I decided to try to follow his work and duplicate the SPF ammo as follows.

My test was done yesterday on a typical Wyoming spring day, 6" new snow, 40 degrees F. SPF clocked an average of 2640 fps compared to 2670 fps on a warm day last fall (SF is advertised at 2700 fps, see above about elevation effect). Here are my loads and results. All used 150 gr Sierra spitzers, CCI 200 primers, Hornady brass from first box of SPF (incidentally old WIN brass and new HORN brass has same case thickness at neck):

41.0 gr LE: V avg = 2532 fps
42.0 gr LE: V avg = 2657 fps
42.5 gr LE: V avg = 2662 fps
43.0 gr LE: V avg = 2730 fps
43.5 gr LE: V avg = 2742 fps

These results are about as close as you can ask for the 300 Savage to get to original 30-06 performance. One thing I noticed was the variation between group velocities increased rapidly with increased charges. There was a particularly large jump in variation from the 42.0 gr charge to the 42.5 gr charge, variation of 23 fps up to 45 fps or nearly double. Variation on the 43.5 gr load was 54 fps. This, along with the 42.0 gr charge coming the closest to matching the SPF velocity, without running the risk of overpressure (trusting Hornady's engineering) caused me to select the 42.0 gr charge. I loaded up 2 full boxes of WIN brass as above. When I get time to do some accuracy testing I will post some results.

Even though I picked the 42.0 gr charge, I did not see any signs of excess pressure even on the 43.5 gr LE charge, although a hot day might change that. I could barely detect a little more swelling of the base of the case by running my finger along the edge with the higher charges than the lower charges. FWIW, higher charges of IMR 4895 than 39.5 gr gave much more case swelling than the LE loads, as well as other powders tried such as IMR 4064, 3031, etc. Factory 180 gr loads are a big NO in my mind in this gun - primers back out, cases swell excessively, etc. Ken Waters recommends heavy bullets not be used in the 99 as well, due to twist, strength of the action, etc. Anyhow I don't hunt much brush here, so I am not interested in heavy bullets at low velocity.

If I do have any complaints about Leverevolution, it is that it smells funny and is dirty. Other than that it seems to really chuck them out there without undue pressure.

I promised a new twist as reason for a new thread: Anyone tried LE in a 303 Savage? My current load is 33.5 gr of IMR 4895, 150 gr RN, V avg = 2160 fps with 24" barrel Model 1895, about 2050 fps in 22" barrel 99G. BTW killed one deer with this load with the 1895, about 150 yds. Worked OK. For 30-30, Hodgdon recommends 35 to 38.5 gr LE with 150 gr RN, with stated velocity 2300 to 2500 fps. Any experience / words of wisdom? My real question is this: Are all Savages equal, i.e. is a 1949 300 EG built to take more pressure than a 1928 99G or an 1895? While the internal actions look very similar and operation is near identical, should I factor in the improvements in steel technology, etc over the long period of time 1899's and 99's were made? I don't want to assume my 1895 can take 303 cartridges making 2500 fps just because the 300 99EG can handle that plus more before I sit down at the bench to work up some 303 LE loads. Thanks for any thoughts.

Interesting results. I would've thought that the rarified air at high altitude would allow for higher velocitiy (less resistance). Never having experimented at elevations much above sea level, I have no frame of reference and quite frankly never pondered it.

I certainly wouldn't try pushing an 1895 too hard. Of course, I don't push anything hard.

Your assumption on altitude and muzzle velocity is wrong.

Thanks for the write up!

Thanks for your info on LVR and the 300 Savage. Sounds like they are made for each other.

I haven't shot anything but light to medium cast bullets loads in my 303, but if I did load jacketed I would use LVR because my best 30/30 hunting load uses the hornady 170 grain with 36 grains LVR for about 2350 fps from a 24" bbl. My PRVI 303 brass holds 1 grain less of the LVR than my 30/30 WW brass, so I would expect pretty similar loads would be suitable.

I did find that applying a firm "factory" crimp via Lee's Factory Crimp die did lower extreme spreads and improve accuracy with the LVR in the 30/30 -- one of the few times the Lee die has proved decisively advantageous for me.

Tag for late summer reference, and deer season loading process! I'm looking forward to hearing the 303 results.

Thanks for the write-up!!

in what way?

It is not related to the phenomenon with the piston engine in a car. Having a thinner atmosphere to draw from, the automotive engine cannot generate the same cylinder pressure at high altitude that in can at lower altitude. It therefore produces less power.

The cartridge is not a piston engine having to draw in air/fuel from a thinner atmosphere. Furthermore, smokeless powder carries its own oxygen. Also, the outside atmosphere never interacts with the combustion products while the bullet is in the barrel anyway.

Mathman -

With carburated vehicles we have to advance the timing 10 to 12 degrees over the sea level settings, and use smaller jets to lean out the fuel mixture to get engines to run right. The leaner fuel mix is related to reduced oxygen content.

For the ammunition, that makes sense regarding the lack of interaction of the firing case and the atmosphere. So the question is: is my belief that cartridges do not perform as well at elevation as they do at sea level true, or just my perception? There are plenty of other factors that could account for velocity discrepancies including barrel length, bore diameter/wear, etc.

Your perception is wrong.

All things being equal, you will have less drop at high altitudes, but as I already stated, elevation and sea level have nothing to do with what is going in the the 'bang' part of this equation.

In every way, but I see mathman has already covered it.

If Manual ABC lists bullet Y doing 2800 fps with 40grs of H666 as their max load, from a 22 inch barrel and you get 2500fps with that same load, bullet etc from the same length barrel, it's usually fairly easy to fix.

You add more powder till you get close to the listed velocity.

Actually, pretty sure that's technically not right. Drop is dependent on time in flight. You'll have less drop for a given distance at higher elevations because the air is thinner and it won't slow the bullet down as much as lower elevations. So a bullet will arrive at a given distance faster. Faster equals less time to drop.

But the bullet falls just as fast at higher elevations as lower, so the drop is the same rate. The bullets are just at different distances.

What, you mean to tell me gravity isn't stronger at sea level?!

Don't load the 1895 hot. Savage changed the bolt/receiver mating surface from flat to slightly curved about 1909. This was due to the corners of the earlier design developing cracks occasionally. When the 250-3000 came out about 1914 the receivers of rifles chambered in that cartridge were strengthened. The same thing when the 300 Savage came out about 1920. After about the mid 1920's the actions of all calibers were strengthened to handle the 300 Savage pressures. Under no circumstances should you try to load the 303 1895 to 300 Savage velocities and the resulting pressures. David

Go shoot in a vacuum, I'll stick with my statement.

Something like .1% or .2%.

One of my pet peeves. This bullet drops less than your bullet, or this cartridge doesn't drop as much as that cartridge. Bull pucky. Fire an arrow, a 22LR, a 300 Savage and a 300 Mag. horizontally at the same height and they all hit the ground at the same time. Drop doesn't vary, velocity and the ability to retain velocity varies (spire bullets versus roundnose, etc).

Good info on strength by age of our 99's, David. I'm thinking NorthwestHunter is talking about using LVR powder to get the extra couple hundred fps it is capable of producing in 30/30 sized cases using 30/30 level pressures (around 40K psi) rather than ramping up to 300 Savage level pressures (around 53K psi). I'd think he'll be OK there, won't he? Even with an 1890's aged rifle?

I bought three boxes of 300 Savage Superformance ammo hoping that it would give me a significant increase in velocity. I shot it in my 20" barreled Savage 99E and got a velocity of 2,600 fps, 140 fps lower than Hornady's listing. I broke a round down and found 44.5 grains of what I assume to be Leverevolution powder. The ammo wasn't very accurate, at least in that rifle. I have two other 99s in 300 Savage with barrels of 22" and 24". I haven't tried the Superformance ammo in them yet. I bought the component bullets which Hornady uses in the ammo from Midway and use a Lee Factory Crimp die, but I haven't loaded them yet.

The Hodgdon magazine-style loading manual sold on newsstands is full of great info, loads on many chamberings including the new Induron powders. However, Hodgdon has left out load data for the 300 Savage, sad to say.

Wait a minute. I thought all Savage receivers were made with the same steel in any given era, ie: when better alloys/heat treatment was adopted for the .250-3000, all 1899's got them so as to avoid the need to segregate receivers in the manufacturing process. A .30-30 would've had the same receiver as a .250 and vice versa and remained as such forever, right up until the end , encompassing all alloy specification changes. Having different alloyed receivers for different cartridges would've been a logistical nightmare.

Some testing I did a couple of years ago:



For a '99 you'll need to seat them shorter at 2.6" or so.

In my 700 even the top load wasn't hot, with easy bolt lift and extraction. Of course that's not a '99, so start low and work up.

This.

I use 180 grain Winchester silver tips and 32 grains of lever lotion powder for my 303 s. As they are old, and very very nice. I would like to keep them that way.

The bulk of my shooting in all my .30's is with pistol powders pushing bullets weighing 150-200 grains at 1200-1600 fps. I personally don't give a fig whether I can achieve an inch or two less drop at 200 yards with the latest greatest powder. I guess I'm in the minority, but my eyes glaze over when I start reading about higher velocity with less pressure and the exercise of making a cartridge into something it ain't. I'll continue chuckling to myself as I shoot ammo that costs me about 10¢/round to punch holes in paper.

The opportunities for exploring the world of handloading/load development are far greater at the lower end of the spectrum than at the higher end, IMO.

The info I posted yesterday concerning receiver strength was posted on here in the past. It sounds like a logistical nightmare but Savage was possibly using up older receivers and the older weaker steel. If someone has one of the older rifles it would be better to err on the side of caution as opposed to damaging the receiver and maybe even the shooter.
David

David, please stop referring to 'weaker steel' as to me it is misleading.

As Gary posted above and I have done in other threads, the change was in the heat treatment applied to the receiver for higher pressure cartridges.

Mark Benenson had the details on that but I haven't located them yet.

You can make low carbon steel perform as well as high carbon alloy steel for our purposes. The difference is in the heat treatment. Low carbon steel if properly case hardened can be very serviceable. Note the key words "properly case hardened". Witness the early M1903 Springfields, made of low carbon steel and functioned just fine with 50,000psi ammo. Where they got in trouble was non-uniform adherence to protocols in the heat treating process which led to catastrophic failures in a small percentage of rifles- enough so that the whole lot of them are tainted to this day. The whole subject of ductility, compressability, shear strength, etc. is a far too complicated subject for a short-ish comment here. "Strength" is a very subjective thing.

The above is true, but if you go on-line to to their reloading data section you can get .300 Savage data, unfortunately no LVR powder has been tested.

David,
Thanks for the direct answer to my question about the design changes which may affect strength of the actions in 1895's, 1899's, and 99's.

Earlmck is correct, I am not wanting to get the 303 to run 2600 fps or more. What I am thinking is that LVR might let me slide up from 2100 fps to 2300 fps without undue pressure, which would be more in line with 30-30 performance than what I am currently getting, and not be harmful to my rifles. I am not interested in hot rodding the loads, just getting them to work a little better for deer in open country. My current load begins to show pressure signs over 2100 fps, with primers backing out a little, which is a lower velocity than I believe the original 303 factory ammo would develop.

Relative to the Superperformance cartridges for the .300 Savage, in a 99, I have shot this in several 99's, and the accuracy is terrible. Those same guns shoot very well with my hand loads btw, so its the ammo.
I had high hopes in gaining 200 fps in performance for my 300's but I just can't bring myself to shoot a rifle that is not accurate, and a 5" group at 200 yards won't cut it.
Just my 2 cents.

Sorry about the "weaker steel" thing Mike. I am not a gunsmith, machinist or metallurgist and that was the term that seemed to fit. The more recent posts have educated me some on the subject. I also heard once that the metal in the 99's was improved due to advances in metallurgy during WWII. When I mentioned this in a post here several years ago, several people said that that wasn't so. It seems as though the composition of metal should have been improved over the 100 plus year run of the 99. David

David, it's too bad you never got to know Mark Benenson. He was a New York lawyer of the first degree but was a very, very knowledgeable Collector and made a lot of contributions while he was with us.

I know nothing of metals but would also be surprised if some degree of improvement in quality wasn't realized over the years.

I found some interesting info on another thread about "less springy actions" that says that Savage would not convert actions with S/N lower than 90000 to 250 or 300 Savage - that would also be a good argument not to try too much with the 1895, but my other 303's are later vintage. Particularly the 1928 vintage 99G should have the same metallurgy as an action destined for a 300 Savage. Maybe not the 1919 vintage 1899A, as it is pre-1920, although S/N is over 200K.

Bottom line, I intend to do some serious hunting with the 300, where power and trajectory count. I will probably just use the 303's for doe deer, etc where a missed opportunity is not the end of the season.

The difference in killing power and trajectory of a couple hundred fps isn't anything to write home to Mom about. What's a couple inches at 300 yards? The animal surely won't walk away scratching at a wound that would have killed him outright if inflicted by a bullet moving a little faster.

How on earth did all those guys circa 1895-1915 kill so much stuff with woebegone .303's, .30-30's, .38-55's, etc., etc.?

Sometimes I think we mind-f*ck this crap to death.

U nailed it gnoahhh. Accuracy is the key, I have found on my ol girls, I load em til they get sticky then back off. I back off a grain or so.....maybe 1.5. I have found them sons a beaches about all shoot lights out. Enjoy!

I have very limited experience with LVR powder (in only one of my 30/30's, but it is my favorite 30/30). This rifle didn't appear to like LVR until I worked up to Hodgdon's max recommended load. Then with the powder slightly compressed, and with the addition of a real firm "factory crimp" via the Lee FC die, it became that rifle's favorite full-power load. This produces right at 2400 fps with the Horndady 170 grain bullet.
Like others on this forum 99% of my shooting is plinking with cast bullets (my 30/30's all enjoy my 117 grain Ranch Dog 32/20 bullet sized down to .309 pushed by 10 grains of Green Dot). I used to use Unique but ran out of it and still had a keg of the Green Dot to use up from my shotgun reloading days...
Thanks to NorthWest Hunter's stimulus I am at least going to give it a try in my 300 Savages.

I find the LVR powder shines in carbine length barrels.

Thus, you have to compensate for more or less drop, depending on the situation. Thus, my turrets are in MOA or MIL and not FPS.



And yes, drop does very.

You're not getting why it's my pet peeve.

By talking about how much a bullet drops, too many idiots then think that it's possible that some bullets won't drop. They think some magical ingredient or shape or powder keeps it from dropping more or less than something else.

Bull.

It's simple to understand. The time to target determines the drop. Bullets which leave the muzzle faster or retain their velocity better get to the target faster than ones that don't. So, they drop less at a given distance. Because they get there faster.

Chuckling at this post, 30 30's were once considered brown bear medicine by many, and 303's killed whales while 22 HP's destroyed tigers. It's all about the size of the box you're in when you do the measurin'!!! I think you have it right Gnoahhh.

And again, I'm compensating for the drop difference. I don't care about what idiot friends you hang out with.

I also don't agree with your '300 Mag, Arrow etc' drop theory. Again, the real world ain't a vacuum.

Hey, I applaud the OP for taking the time to write up his experiment. Everyone should work so hard at posting their work and then sit back and watch the "shots" come in. I may not duplicate his work but I still find it interesting to read. There should be more posts like this one on the forum.

I promised shooting results with the loads. Snuck out after work Friday and plinked for an hour. Shot the Superformance factory loads off hand at a target I made of cardboard, then shot my handloads with Leverevolution powder off hand and from a seated position. Both were fired at 100 yards. It was a rare calm day, so I can't blame any of my results on wind, but it was hard to see my marker drawn cross hair and center, they were a little small at 100 yards. Anyhow, had a couple touching at 2" left of center and about 1.5" high and a third about 2.5" right and 1" low offhand with the Superformance. My offhand shots with my hand loads were 4-5" right and 1-2" low, not too great. So I sat down with elbows on knees and make a little better showing, all within 2" of center and about 1" low with the handloads. I am using a Redfield 70LH receiver sight without screw in aperature (because my screw in aperature is too small to see anything through), but the open aperature on the Redfield is HUGE, so it makes very accurate shooting tough. I think I will drill out my aperature just a bit to make it useful. Anyhow, not too bad, "Minute of Deer" accuracy to be sure.

For the weekend I went to a friend's ranch, shot a nice turkey with a 9" beard, helped brand 300 calves, and plinked at a couple prairie dogs with my handloads. Hit one at about 50 yards and another at 100 yards. More or less split them from stem to stern. Cowboy buddy thought that was decent shooting. Good enough for me.