Hi All! I cast up about 200 near perfect 30 TL bullets 2 days ago, applied lube to dry and loaded them today. With my favorite light load of a popular winchester shotshell powder, we grouped them at 20 yds. We didn't have access to a bench so we leaned up against a tree and shot a group in the Marlin 30/30 and the winchecter 30/30. The Marlin (peep sights) made a tight triangle with all the holes almost touching... The Winchester made a .40 hole ( regular iron sights) .

We then took 50 rounds of the 30TL and 50 rounds of the old standby- 311410..to the leverfun silhouette range to contrast and compare. The targets were chickens, pigs, turkeys, and rams of 1/2" plate steel...Both loads did their part if we did ours... The 30TL semed to hit harder up close...( both had the same powder charge) I would guess the 130 grain bullet at 1200 fps and the 30 TL at 900-1000 fps. Both were more accurate than I could hold offhand. The first outing of the 30TL is an unqualified success.

Notes...I did not think I would like the flat base but it isn't as bad as I imagined. I would still have preferred the bevel base on this plinker bullet but this flat base is completely usuable. I doubt I would run this mold on my automated machine though...too much chance for damage to the base when the bullets drop together.... The fact that I don't have to run them thru the sizer is negated by the fact I can't run the mold automatically...

I was concerned with the base band (.314) being larger than the TL bands (.312). So far, this hasn't been a problem. It may, in fact, let me use this slug in larger bores. Time will tell. Let us hope it doesn't cause troubles in standard 30 bores.

Dale

Sounds good,I shot my 30 TL in my REM 700-Synth. 22" bll.
Blue Dot-17.0gr-1810 avg--
" " -18.0gr-1850 avg--
These were unsized 312 bottom band-.311 body-Terrible leading these would not group at 50 yds more like patterns .Will have to size them to .309 and go from there.
Sean

Hi 475/480! Hmmm... I've had only a little success with plain base bullets at that velocity/pressure. I've also never sized TL bullets & would be interested in how that works. Your mold is the dimensions I wanted ( almost) Sell it to me if you ever want to get rid of it. Almost time for work... Dale

I shot the 30-TL-160 over the weekend.Cast up a batch of 8 BHN boolits and cast a second batch of the same alloy but water dropped them. Those came out at 17 BHN. The harder ones leaded, but the softer ones shot clean. Softer is better with these. My mold produced .3124" boolits and they were cast of half jacketed core material (which is about like factory 38 WC) and half wheelweights. All were sized to .311" and loaded in 30-30 cases with 8.4 gr. Unique. They shot into a 2.25" 100 yard groups that strung vertically. Tried 9 gr. Unique but groups opened up. Somewhere btween 8.4 and 9 gr Unique should shoot well. All were tried in a Savage gun and the Win 94.