Lee Loader

• Once fired Winchester brass from my rifle hand picked at 2.030" +/- 0.005".
• Cases lubed with Lee liquid Alox + alcohol mix
• Neck sized with Redding die
• Expanded with NOE 0.310-.314 expander plug inside a Lee .32-20 die with brass plumbing ferule seals as spacers (universal rifle expanding die on the way).
• TLC311165GC Old School Marlin mold, half-length sized at 0.310", Gator check, BLL lube after half of the micro grooves filled with my Lube-a-matic lube , my mostly wheel weight alloy with some solder added.
• Final weight 175.5 gr average
• Seated with Redding die.
• Lee Factory Crimp Die crimped.
• Winchester WLR primers
• 10.0 grains Unique

They ended up "short" at 2.485"

Purdy!

those are nice looking bullets .... rest of the cartridge ain't bad either.

Some day I'll work up the nerve, and get the proper flaring tool, to load cast for my 30-30.




jd

How did we get past how many times can a .30-30 cartridge be reloaded?

Dang y'all now I have to have a.30-30.

One summer, many many summers ago, I had a small pile of brass, boxes of primers, cans of powder, a small stash of linotype, a whole bunch of free wheel weights, a couple of boxes of Lyman gas checks and a lot of free time. On Monday I would start casting up a bunch of bullets and by Friday I would have all of them loaded (about 300 or so). Then on Saturday we would go out and shoot all of them. Almost every weekend of that spring and summer. Now the brass wasn't new when I started and I suspect the reason that I rarely had any of them split (only 6 or 7 of them that summer) was how I had my sizing die set up. I don't know if the problem was with the chamber of my Marlin or the RCBS re-sizing die that I had back then or a combination of the two but something was not right. I thought it would be cool to reload just one round so I set up the dies and went through and got everything adjusted. Set the newly reloaded round on the bench next to one of the empties and made discovery, something was wrong. The shoulder was different between the two. Not just slightly or noticeable but measurable, like with a tape measure measurable. The difference between the two was not quite an 1/8 of an inch. I took both the empty and the freshly reloaded round with the dies to a friend's house and showed him. He showed me how to mark up the neck and adjust the die so that it would just start into the shoulder and stop, that way it wouldn't push the shoulder down any more. I never had an issue with chambering rounds, feeding or ejection. I think it was this reason that the brass wasn't getting worked that much that it survived for so long. When I ended up selling my Marlin, the new owner got all of the brass as well as the dies so I have no idea how long or even if they ever got reloaded again. Thinking back, I don't ever recall comparing one of the reloads to a new round. Another thing that just now came to mind, my friend was a bench rest shooter. He shot a 7mm of some sort using cast bullets. He was also one of the ones that helped me get my mix on my alloy set up and helped me tune my load so it was accurate and very consistent.

Poppop wrote:How did we get past how many times can a .30-30 cartridge be reloaded?

Well, I guess the answer is that we are working on it. I'm up to nine times with full length sizing with a Lee Pacesetter die and annealing every third cycle. I think I will keep this one where it is and get two others caught up with it. One cartridge that is never annealed and full sized with the Pacesetter die and another cartridge that is that is put to the Colle die with the annealing every three cycles and only sees the Pacesetter (full) die when it doesn't fit.

Poppop wrote:How did we get past how many times can a .30-30 cartridge be reloaded?

I think it may be because it's one of those depends on answers:

1) age of brass - some cases get brittle with age
2) rifle chamber size
3) FL die size - a max chamber and a minimum sizing die short case life
4) rifle style - I suspect that head space and chamber being equal you'll get longer life from a bolt action with front locking lugs, followed by a modern single shot followed by a lever action of nearly any style. I believe the Winchester 88 and the Savage 99 had rotating forward locking bolts.
5) brand of brass
6) how hot you load it
7) anneal or not
8) maybe how you clean it

These just come to mind today re-reading the thread and considering how I used and abused brass of the past 50 years that I've been a hand loader. I'm certain others could add to the list or even remove a few.

Make smoke,

You are right O3W and I was thinking the same as I was working on some more 30-30 ammo this morning. The answer is that it just depends on everything you just stated so a trial of one lot of brass really doesn't answer the question and there really will never be a definite answer.