I am hoping one of you fellow shooters can help me find a load(s) for my 30-30 Ackley Imp. using the Lyman 311316 bullet. I have cast a bunch of them and haven't been able to find any loading data for that bullet. I would like to use IMR 4227, IMR 4759 or Accurate 5744, which are all in the same general burning rate according to the various charts. I also have 2400, IMR 4198, 3031, 4064 and H and IMR4895.

I have used Unigue but have never been able to get better than 6" groups with it in my 30-30 AI with the little bullet

I am hoping one of you who has one of the software programs like "Load Data" or "Quick Load" would help me out on this. I use a Mac instead of a PC running Windows, which means all of the available programs "don't work so very good".

I am looking for loads for my grandkids in the 1600 to 2000 fps with the little bullet.

The overall length loaded is 2.31". The cases are regular as can be at 2.010†after fire forming. My head to shoulder depth is a little deeper than is standard for the AI. The bullet length is .650" with gas check. .300" of the bullet is out of the case when crimped in the groove. The case volume is 49.5 grains of water. My barrel is the standard 20" from bolt face to muzzle. The barrel slugs .308. The bullets weigh 105 grains w/GC and lube. The alloy is: Tin-6.2%, Antimony-8.1% and Lead-85.7%.

The alloy I use is not as hard as it would appear. It is quite malleable and has a very small, tight grain structure. A 1/8" thick piece from the bottom of an ingot mold will bend in a complete "U" without breaking. It has a Brinell of only 20-21. I just let them cool on the big thick pad I drop them on from the mold.

I thank you all for your help.

Did you buy a copy of the Lyman cast bullet reloading book?

Steve,

I did and it doesn't list anything of use. I tried some of the loads but they are mostly fast powders and that gun does't like fast powders. The rifling strips the bullets. Slower acceleration does better. The gun is a Win 94 made in 1955 and chambered by Ackley himself.

My next question...have you thought about a harder alloy?

FB, Have you slugged the bbl.? If so, are you sizing the CB .001" -.002" over the groove dimension?

Paul,

The bore slugs .308 and the sizer I use gives me .3095. I have tried every alloy we could come up with at work in my former life and two other sizer dies. The rifling is so shallow nothing helped with the fast acceleration of fast powders. My fellow worker bees and I worked at the most technologically advanced metallurgical lab in the world and we had too much time on our hands at times and tended to play with our toys during these down periods. One of my fellow shooters at the lab and I tried everything we could think of and never got good results with the shallow rifling.

He owns a Win 94 made in 1954 that has the same shallow rifling. Both are half the depth of others we have both slugged and put under an optical comparator. Even Marlin micro-groove is deeper than our two older 94's. Both of these guns have excellent bores and have never been abused. My friend shoots the Lyman 31141, cast of linotype with little tin added in front of 16.5 grains of IMR4227. It is an extremely accurate and pleasant to shoot load. I don't know the fps, but I suspect it to be in the 1750 range. My younger grandkids don't like the recoil of the load. That is why I am working on using the 311316.

Mebbe some of the problems are caused by:

Small bullet, low pressures, no obturation.
Short bullet, small bearing surface, higher than expected velocities.
Alloys too soft.
Ackley wore it out before he sold it?

Try a bigger bullet(lead), harder alloy, or a jacketed bullet. Personally speaking, if I had one of Ackley's creations I would not be trying to make a pea shooter for the kids with it. If they can't take the recoil, find something else they can tolerate and use the Ackley gun for what it was intended for. There's a gaggle of leverguns out there chambered for the .357, and they will shoot very mild loads well.

quote:

Originally posted by ricciardelli:
My next question...have you thought about a harder alloy?

The alloy I use is very hard, just not brittle. It shoots as well or better than any alloy my fellow worker bees and I ever concocted for bullets shot at less than 2500 fps.

I would try shooting into a box of sawdust at 80 or so yards and inspect the bullets. Is the rifling sheared? Does it look like they are tumbling? Or are they going straight just not with any consistency? Have you tried increasing the powder charge with this bullet to see if it ever shoots well at a higher velocity?

Don't laugh, but have you thought about trying a half dozen rounds loaded with pyrodex to reduce the pressure spike?

Mark,

My fellow worker and I collected bullets from the ballistics lab's water trap. This thing was made to catch artillery rounds and is 100' long and 25' tall, which made our task interesting. The bullets accelerated by fast powders sheared the rifling grooves until the bullets were nearly smooth. Under the optical comparator, you could see where they had been. The bullets measured on average from both guns only .300" on the driving surfaces when recovered. The "sheared" lead was piled into the grease grooves and in some cases pushed the gas check nearly off the bullets. We found this to be very curious, but neither one of us being ballisticians, we had no clue as to the answer of how. We figured the gas pressure would have been sufficient to keep the check in place. The only thing we could figure is maybe the pressure had dropped enough toward the end of the barrel to allow the check to be shoved back by the sheared lead. This is strictly an un-educated guess. We hardly ever saw or talked to the ballistics folks as they had all been transferred to the Andover lab in the '70's. The capture tank was dismantled and the building torn down for a new building the year after I retired.

Now I use a neighbors swimming pool when his wife isn't home. She thinks I am going to put a hole in the bottom of the 16' deep area under the diving board. Not going to happen with anything I own. Only works in the summer, the rest of the year I shoot into the gooey clay on one part of my backstop.

My buddy just finished putting together a few rounds with Pyrodex. He lives up the hill and he brought it down after I read your reply and called him. He is into black powder and such and had all the info in his library for what we needed.

The hillside is good and gooey today because of snow melt and will trap bullets great without damage. They will only go in maybe 6"-8" and be easy to find, just messy. This damn clay around here makes great bricks but isn't worth much else. Thankfully, I only one area of it. The rest is decomposed granite. Thanks for the idea. Will let you know later about the results.

Mark,

Your idea worked like a champ. The Pyrodex rounds did not strip the rifling at all. Looked the same as ones using 4895, only no great amount of unburned powder. Only thing I didn't like was the smoke and the messier clean-up.

Shot some my granddaughter put together with 19.5gr. of SR4759. No stripping and accuracy was great, 1 1/2" at 75yd. Not to bad for these old eyes. I bet my granddaughter will do better. Don't know the fps because I didn't bother to set up the chronograph. The 5744 loads left a bunch of unburned powder and weren't very accurate, 5"+. The 4227 bunch is for later today.

Digging bullets out of the clay was all kinds of fun yesterday, but I did get the results I was after. Both the Pyrodex and SR4759 bullets showed no stripping.

I was down in Denver earlier today and stopped off at my favorite gunshop to pickup some powder and one of the guys who works there has an uncle who worked for Ackley. He had talked to his uncle on Sunday and got some interesting info from him as to why the rifling in my barrel is so shallow. Seems Ackley would sometimes remove some of the rifling so that he could gain an additional 100fps or so from a particular gun. Donny didn't find out how he did it, just that it was done and mostly to Win 94's in the 50's. His uncle was a stockmaker, not a "metal man" as he called the gunsmiths. Makes a guy wonder.