A salute to the 30 Remington

[earlmck]

If you are a fan of the 30/30, whose case capacity and neck length make it absolutely perfect for cast bullets, you've also got to be a fan of the 30 Remington. Here they are, side-by-side:

30Rema.jpg

As you can see, the 30 Remington is just a rimless 30/30, identical in length, diameter, and case capacity. With 30/30's readily available, why would we need to have 30 Remingtons? Well, if you are totally stuck on levers and only levers you will never need a 30 Remington. But if you like pumps -- and especially those slick old Remington 14s, you then end up with the 30 Remington cartridge. So there you go -- a pump 30/30! Life is good!

One leetle bitsy rub -- you can't pop into the local Wally World and get a box of ammo, or empty cases to make ammo. Nope, we are fairly dependent on the folks at Remington to turn out a run of the brass every few years. And the last run was several years ago and any you find remaining are rather closely and dearly held by a few horders.

One of my favorites of the old-time gun writers George Nonte' tells us, in his "Home Guide to Cartridge Conversions" that if we get desperate enough we can make 30 Remingtons out of 30/30s, via judicious use of a lathe. Fortunately for old fumble-fingers here,I was wary enough of shortages that I did manage to lay in a stash of 30 Rems from the last run of brass, so haven't needed to resort to this desperate amount of labor to get shootin' supples. Although I would explore the deal if I had to do so...

And there is another characteristic of the 30 Rem case I have not seen mentioned elsewhere: it takes the same shell holder as the 38 special/357 mag. And consequently for us fellows with a progressive loader with a shell plate for said 38s, we can easily screw in a different die set and change over to large primers and voila! progressive loading of 30 Remington!

30Remb.jpg

You'll notice I am not completing a loaded shell in this instance. These will be loaded with 9 grains of Green Dot behind a plain-based casty, and my auto-powder drop just does not meter out a consistent enough charge of the "dots" to make me happy. So I am just sizing, priming, and "M" die neck expanding in this operation, with the cases later to be charged by my trusty Herter's pistol measure. But processing these three steps through the progressive saves me quite a lot of time, especially since I am moping around with a wounded right arm that is not supposed to be used for anything for another three weeks.

And that's the earlmck look at the 30 Remington. And lump the 32 Remington right in there also as compared to the 32 Special. And the 25 Remington as compared to the 25/35? Hey, the 25 Remington is more like a 25/35 improved -- several grains more case capacity than the 25/35 because of much less taper in the case. Great cartridges all and you shoot them in slick-action pumps!

[tman]

Sounds like a great cartridge for a AR 15 platform

[earlmck]

Sounds like a great cartridge for a AR 15 platform

Heckuva fine idea, tman. Might have to shorten the case about .4" or so it's about the same length as a .223. And what if we necked it to .270? That'd blow people's minds!

[Bill in Oregon]

Earl, you surely have sorted out the old Remington rimless c'atridges. And you are right about that .25 having an advantage over the .25-35. It will be very close to the .25-35 Tomcat that John Taylor is building for me.

[Thunder50]

earlmck---look at the 6.8 spc. Pretty close IIRC

[M. M. Wright]

As I've said before, I've made 30 Rems from 30-30s. I deprime and place an appropriate drill blank in the case mouth. Chuck in a collet and use a live center in the primer pocket. Just turn off the rim and grind a tool to cut an extractor groove. Same tool works for both cuts. I usually make about 50 in an hour. For some dumb reason, I sold my model 14 with a 3X Weaver in Stith mounts. It was really a slick shooter.

[earlmck]

earlmck---look at the 6.8 spc. Pretty close IIRC

Well dang! And here I thought tman and I were inventing a new cartridge. Just shows to go ya'.

And this might be a time (since I'm kinda' bragging up those old Rem 14's/141's) -- although I have posted on this before I'll do it again---. Remington 14's and 141's have spiral-fluted magazines, designed to offset the noses of the cartridges enough that you do not have the nose of your bullet against the primer of the cartridge ahead of it in the magazine. You may have read that this was done so that the cartridges could be loaded with spitzer bullets. Nope, that is not so. It was purely a marketing thing so they could brag about noses not being against primers in the magazine: you still can't freely use pointy bullets in the dang things (much to my disappointment).

It turns out that when you try to push cartridges loaded with pointy bullets into these magazines, the spiral flutes offset the cartridge so much that the sharp nose jams into the little space between cartridge follower and the magazine, halting all forward progress. So as in many such cases, any gun writer who said the spiral flutes were designed to allow pointy bullets was blowing smoke out a different orifice.

The 35 Remington is a little different, in case you were wondering. With the 35 Remington the cases are enough fatter that -- if you hold your mouth just right -- with a little extra care you can get cartridges loaded with pointy bullets (such as the Hornady 180 spitzer) loaded into the magazine without jamming up the works. Anyway, that's how it works for all the 14's/141's in my collection.
If your experience is different I'd be interested to hear about it.

As I've said before, I've made 30 Rems from 30-30s. I deprime and place an appropriate drill blank in the case mouth. Chuck in a collet and use a live center in the primer pocket. Just turn off the rim and grind a tool to cut an extractor groove. Same tool works for both cuts. I usually make about 50 in an hour. For some dumb reason, I sold my model 14 with a 3X Weaver in Stith mounts. It was really a slick shooter.

Thanks, M. M. I kinda' remembered somebody had posted they had done this operation but couldn't remember who. Here is a pic of the Stith mounted Weaver on my 30 Rem in M141. This must be about how your old baby looked. And hey, you can still find these things for sale on the internet auction sites (and no doubt at those nifty "back east" auctions that Sixgun attends).

[Merle]

Sounds like a great cartridge for a AR 15 platform

Already been done. Look at the 30 Remington AR.

[jeepnik]

Hmm, I already have 30/30s. And I have .35 Remingtons. Why do I need a .30 Remington? Answer, because I can. I'll have to keep an eye open for one.

[kaschi]

I too am a fan of the Model 14 and its cartridges. That makes total sense about the spiral mag tube serving the purpose described above. But that gets me to wondering why Remington made a 150 grain PSP bullet for the 35 Remington?