30-30 bullets

I have been making Home Swaged 30 caliber bullets for a while now. and they are very accurate but I have noticed that when I Berm dive hoping to find a bullet all I find is pieces of Jacket. So that led me to believe that though the bullets are exceptionally accurate I am having Core separation on almost every shot. I know that I am getting my cores and Jackets clean and oil free because I wash them in MEK before I seat the cores... SO I decided to try something different for my Hunting bullets ... I did all the normal cleaning steps but I went to LOWES and got a "Snuff Can" of Soldering flux Used a Qtip and dipped the Flux into the Jacket then used my propane torch and melted "hopefully" soldering the lead to the jacket. Then I Core seated the melted (Hopefully soldered) core into the jacket and then point formed Then Cannelured then re-point formed and then ran it through the Lead tipping die to clean it up...
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The Jacket is mighty ugly from the Torch but I am hoping I can put them in my case tumbler and shine them up .... SO anyone have any Ideas?

I tried the very same thing, but on 45 cal bullets. I don't know if it helped or not. With very little or no tin or silver in the alloy mix it might not solder to the case like you think it should.

Maybe try a secondary cannelure to help keep the core in the the jacket.

Also, I have noticed while digging though the berms for bullets to recycle...it seems dirt and gravel cause the jackets to shred or peel off the core that might not actually happen while punching through the skin,meat and bones of a deer.

Maybe retest on a stack of wet phone books or catalogs or even water jugs for a more accurate conclusion.

Bullets look pretty good. You need to get some ballistic gellatin to really try those bullets. Does not cost a whole lot and you can cast it in a big enough chunk, you can pretty much see how your bullet is acting.

Another trick is using wet newspaper or phone books. My father had a wooden form that we stacked Boise phone books inside and then turned the hose on them for a couple of days.

I was bad mouthing the standard green tip SS109 round in the AR as pretty much useless unless your target is wearing body armor or in a vehicle behind auto glass.

We decided to shoot some into some ball gel we had at various ranges starting at 50 yards and working all the way out to 300 yards (the max distance of the range).

Up to about 250 yards the green tipped SS109 pretty much acted like a mini-armor piercing round and punched straight through.

However at 300 yards we had a lot of the rounds shatter, fragment and tumble. The steel tip almost always sheared off the lead base and the bullet tended to fragment into several small pieces.

Later after a couple trips to Afghanistan, we learned the SS109 round really becomes deadly past 300 yards. There was some debate over why the round performed so much better - most believed the bullet finally stabilized or bled enough energy.

well I tested some of the 30-30 Bullets I made ... On Core separation Issues SOLVED ... Plumbers flux and melt the core it did in fact solder to the jacket. I didnt use phone books or gelatin. The bullets still shreadded but there was no piece of jacket that didnt have a mass of lead stuck to it So I consider that a solved problem. Now I need to see whats up with my sites shooting open sites windage is close enough but at 100 yds im 3 ft. low I raised the site elevator to max and moved in to fifty yds and am still 6 inches low but its minute of deer as long as i,
I'm with in fifty .... gonna have to think about this one.

Home swaged bullet 170 gr 6S FN
28 gr IMR 3031
ww LR primer

Glad to hear that you got the core seperation problem solved.

Have you used this same load with factory 170 gr bullets?

No I haven't I used to load a load using 4350 but I have lost my notes. And I Cant find the refrerence material that I used to use. I had a bunch of 3031 so Its supposed to be a great 30 30 powder. . as Far as my bullets go I would blame them too if i was getting left right fliers .. but Im not they are grouped pretty good for open sites and off hand shooting ... Just Way low.

Not blaming the Load just yet ... The elevator came up missing on that rifle years ago and it became a safe queen because it was my grandpas Rifle. I finally found a replacement elevator .. but its shooting way Low. There are two screws on the back leaf I think I'm going to loosen them and see if I can raise it up a bunch.

I still cant imagine it shooting that low. I was going to blame my eyes .. But My son shot the same way. Its shooting LOW ...

Yeah, that is odd. Assuming that the replacement elevator is the same spec as the original, you may be able to put a shim under the rear leaf as a test.

An old trick is to cut a shim from a pop can and slide that under the sight.

Good to hear the core soldered to the jacket as you hoped. Now to find a way of doing this in large quantities, not torching them one at a time. maybe build some sort of kiln or heat treat oven?

I wonder if one of those production annealing machines like you see on some of the brass specialty places (like Jim D) would work for heating these bullets?

https://youtu.be/iy6OwiuWV7A

Just an update. I emailed R Corbin before I soldered the cores in. But He hadn't gotten back with me before I gave up and just did it. As I already knew he told me that it would work but he also told me something I hadn't thought of. The salts in the flux will rust the hell out of your dies. So its ok to do it just as i did but make sure you clean your dies really well and spray them down with WD40 or some other corrosion preventive even if your going to stop for only over night. I learned that the hard way. I didn't ruin my dies but did get them rusted pretty bad. I thank the good Lord I checked them after the email. Because I could have several hundred dollars of junk.

I made some more and went out today to test them I by the way found my old recipe.
170gr same bullet as above... 6s FN
37.5grC IMR4350
WWLRP

There are 2 screws holding the rear site on a stem loosened them up and slid my site up and bingo im back on target. I didn't do any real testing from a good solid rest so I didn't take any pictures but im holding about 2" off hand and open sites at 50yds elevation is good and windage is acceptable to me with open sites..definitely a dead deer.

Reckon we can mark this one solved

Glad to hear you got that one resolved. Sometimes it's the little things that will get ya -

Well the 30-30 bullets passed the ultimate test tonight Dropped a nice mature Doe!! Great expansion did the job nicely

Congrats Reload! Glad to hear that they are doing the job for ya.

Soup is on !!!

You can't ask for anything better than that.