Best recipes for the .30 Carbine Blackhawk

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jski

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Those of you who reload the .30 Carbine round for the Blackhawk, care to share your favorite recipes for your Blackhawk? Powder? Charge weight(s) for a given powder? Bullet(s)? Primers? Even cases?
For me it's:
  1. 115 gr. cast (Montana Bullet Works - Linotype) bullets,
  2. ~15 gr. of Hodgdon's H110,
  3. CCI Small Rifle Magnum primers,
  4. Starline brass.
 
For the cast bullet 12gr of #2400. Not the fastest, but accurate. My Saginaw Carbine shoots a Powder Coated Lee 93gr RN cast from 6-cavity mold over 12.7gr #2400 better than jacketed.

Of course, 15.0gr of H110/Win296 is the original factory load. Best price/source of 110gr RN FMJ bullets is RMR, using the THR discount. When he is out, Grafs. Best hunting bullet is the Sierra 110gr soft point. My BH likes the .312" Hornady 100gr XTP.

You can use the magnum primers, but not needed.
Starline brass is good but so is ArmscorUSA. Best of course is the old US GI brass.
 
Speer does in their manuals. I used mag primers years ago when I used W-296 in .44 Mag. Still have some left.
 
Hmm,
A small rifle primer is adequate for .223, .222 using 20-27gr of powder, but a .30 Carb with 12-15 needs a magnum? I think not.

The military used a standard primer from 1942 till production stopped in the '60's, and powder was always a spherical powder. It can be argued that the original Olin produced primer was a magnum level primer, but then Speer uses a CCI primer. I suspect they probably know what's in that primer.

I've used Winchester, CCI, Federal, Tula, Remington, Selier & Bellot, and Privi Partisan small rifle as well as CCI, Federal, and Winchester small rifle MAGNUM primers and neither I nor my chronograph can detect a significant difference. However, it seldom gets below 0degF in Georgia.

Neither my Speer #9, Hodgdon #24, Lee #2, Hornady #5, Hornady #8, Lyman #48, nor Sierra 1978, or 1984 specify a small rifle magnum primer.

If I was going to re-enact the battle for the Frozen Chosin, I'd be sure to use magnum primers.
I suppose primers aren't as strong, and powders harder to ignite than they used to be.

FWIW, I use a small pistol primer in my .22Hornet and .218Bee to get improved accuracy, and use Hod Lil'Gun and H110- spherical powders.
I use small rifle in the .30 Carbine as I also use same loads in the rifle to avoid cratered primers or slam-fires.
 
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I recently bought 3 lbs of Ramshot True Blue for my .45 Colt and was looking at Western Powders data sheet for the .30 Carbine. Nothing. It has other Western Powders but not True Blue.

So I went to my fallback, I looked up True Blue loads for the .357. As best as I can determine, a reasonable charge for the .30 Carbine would be ~10 gr. That's using my 115 gr. Linotype bullets.

Anyone with True Blue experience?

BTW, True Blue's my new "universal" powder in lieu of Unique. Meters much better for small weights.
 
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People always say to use magnum primers with H110, but in this case rifle primers are used, which are roughly equivalent to small magnum pistol primers.
 
Anyone with True Blue experience?

BTW, True Blue's my new "universal" powder
I really like True Blue as well, but do not load .30 Carbine. I did work up a .45 Colt load with it under a lead 265 Gr SWC. It's a bit slow for .30 C, but should make nice plinkers, and definitely won't need a mag primer.
 
True Blue in 30 carbine for a revolver would be an interesting experiment. Not having published load data for it, though, would make me very hesitant to try it.
 
Toprudder, start small and work your way up. 10 gr. of True Blue seems small?
 
Toprudder, start small and work your way up. 10 gr. of True Blue seems small?
Don't know. If I were to do it, I would start lower than 10. True Blue is a significantly faster burning powder than the typical powders used in 30carb. Please understand that I'm not going to give anyone a number for trying this. The liability would be all on you.
 
Toprudder, keep in mind we're talking about a Blackhawk here. It's a beast of a revolver. I don't think ~10 gr. of True Blue is going to blow the thing up.
 
Toprudder, keep in mind we're talking about a Blackhawk here. It's a beast of a revolver. I don't think ~10 gr. of True Blue is going to blow the thing up.
Yeah, I know it is for a Blackhawk, otherwise I would have simply said that True Blue is never seen in load data because it would not cycle the action of a M1 Carbine. :thumbup:

Think about this. Is there a round, with similar case volume and similar weight bullet, with load data for True Blue? How about 327 Fed Magnum. A little shorter than 30carb, but a little larger in diameter. Same weight range for bullets (100-115gn). Western load data shows min charges below 7.0gn, and max charges less than 8.0gn. But I am not sure just how much you can extrapolate from this.

As before, the liability is on you. I am not going to give you a number, I'm just trying to steer you away from your guess that 10gn is a good starting point.
 
The .30 Carbine cartridge is somewhere between the .327 and .357 Magnums. So when I try something for which there's no load data, I cut the difference in half.

327 FEDERAL MAGNUM
Barrel: 5” ¦ Twist: 1-16” ¦ Primer: WIN WSP ¦ Bullet Diameter: 0.312”
Case: FED ¦ Max Case Length: 1.200” ¦ Trim Length: 1.190”
RAMSHOT TRUE BLUE
115 (L) LC FP 6.3 1,209 7.0 1,343 41,330 1.500

357 MAGNUM
Barrel: 6” ¦ Twist: 1-18.75” ¦ Primer: WIN WSPM ¦ Bullet Diameter: 0.357”
Case: WIN ¦ Max Case Length: 1.290 “ ¦ Trim Length: 1.280”
RAMSHOT TRUE BLUE
110 HDY XTP 11.3 1,475 12.5 1,639 33,160 1.570
125 HDY XTP 10.4 1,325 11.5 1,472 30,750 1.580

So for my 115 gr. GC, Linotype bullets the answer's somewhere between 7.0 and ~12.5 gr. of True Blue.
 
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Just got back from shooting my "experimental" loads:
  1. 7.7 gr of Ramshot True Blue
  2. 115 gr GC, Linotype RN bullets
  3. CCI Small Rifle Magnum primers
The case capacity of the .30 Carbine is 21.050 gr H2O and 19.0 gr H2O for the .327 Magnum. Meaning the .30 Carbine has an 11% greater case capacity. The max load for a 115 gr bullet for the .327 is 7 gr of True Blue, so 7.7 gr for the .30 Carbine seemed reasonable.

The result from shooting 100 7.7 gr rounds: they were very pleasant cream puffs, much softer than my rounds loaded with 15 gr. of Hodgdon's H110. As a matter of fact, my wife tried them out in her M1 Carbine and they consistently failed to cycle. But for the Blackhawk, at 35 yds they were as accurate as the rounds with 15 gr of H110.
 
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