"Bearded Phil I read your previous post. I see you ended up sending your 30 30win back to Henry. What if anything did they say was wrong with the gun?
Also saw where you installed the Skinner peep sight. Did you have to replace your front sight also?"
@larry7293
When I sent back my 30-30 to Henry they actually didn't call or check in they just replaced the barrel. I was having some issues with jacketed with mine too, wasn't just cast & coated rounds. I bought mine second hand in "like new" condition. Which for the most part it was except for a dirty bore and the crown felt a little strange. Whether the guy that had it before actually did something to it or not I'll never know but the barrel that Henry replaced it with has a crown that feels the way it should. No sharp edge where the bore transitions to the front end of the barrel. It shoots a lot better with the same jacketed rounds that were giving me trouble before, but I haven't shot any cast with it since it came back from warranty. The issues that I was having with .309" sized unchecked cast rounds wouldn't have been caused by the crown of the barrel being messed up (if it actually was). That was a matter of sizing.
I plan to get casting myself soon so I'm going to use some cerrosafe and take a casting of the bore & possibly the chamber/throat to see what dimensions I get. I've had varying results with the soft lead slug method (use a swaged pure lead muzzleloader round if you do). I get the feeling I'll find that a .310 or even .311 sized round will work best but since I'm going to cast myself soon I haven't bought any commercial to try them out. I'm also going to be gas checking my 30-30 rounds. I got a NOE 311-171-RF-I3, 4 cavity aluminum and gas check model mould to use.
As to the Skinner sights, when I put one on my Henry's I always get a new front sight because I don't like peeps with a bead front sight. It's worked out well with my 45-70 & 357 with Skinners 1/2" x .625" tall patridge blade front sights. I got the same for my 30-30 and I've found it may be a bit too tall for the breadth of shooting I'll do with the 30-30.
Right now I've been shooting Hornady 170gr FP Interlocks with max 22.2gr of I4198 and I have to crank my peep all the way down as low as it will go to be on POA at 50yrds. I never shoot closer than 50yrd for range plinking but if I ever switched to another powder that's slower and gave more velocity (22.2gr I4198 gives me about 1800FPS here in AZ in the summer) then I'll have to trim that front sight down.
With the cast rounds I shot (158gr & 165gr nominal, .309" no gas check) I had it turned up 2, maybe 3 full turns from where my peep is set at now for the jacketed rounds. That was with I4198 at max 14.0gr for around 1310FPS.
With I4227 I tested from 14.4gr to 16.0gr in .4gr increments and quickly found that even 14.4gr was still too fast for the undersized bullets. Those chronographed at around 1460 FPS and the grouping was bad. The more powder charges went up from there the worse the groups got.
