Uberti 1885 in .30-30

[Model 52]

I've been eyeing an Uberti clone of the Winchester 1885 High Wall Special Sporting Rifle in .30-30 in one of the local gun shops for a couple years now. Today, I decided to take it home, in part because I got it for $729 out the door, which isn't bad given that recent GB sales seem to be in the $800-$850 range, before transfer fees, shipping and taxes (if applicable) are considered.

I took it to the range to see how it would shoot. It's the single trigger model, but the trigger breaks crisp and clean at around 4 pounds. The action is smooth as silk and while the color case hardening is not quite as bright as my Sharps and the checkering is not as sharp as it could be, it's still quite pretty and the polish and bluing on the 30" octagon barrel is superb.

I had some 150 gr RN loads on hand that I developed for my Model 94's several years ago. They shot surprisingly well with 100 yard groups around an inch when I did my job with the open sights.

The rear notch is a bit wide and the front bead is a bit large, making precise horizontal and vertical alignment a bit difficult, but I was able to see enough potential in the rifle to justify ordering a Marbles Tang sight for it. I pulled a Lyman 17A Globe front sight off the shelf and installed it this afternoon, so in about a week when the tang sight arrives, I'll take it back out, zero it, and see what it''ll do with some loads tailored to the rifle.

To that end, I have a box of 500 150 gr plated bullets from Xtreme that I'm going to try as a low cost plinking load. I loaded 70 of them up with Red Dot and Reloader 7 (two powders that I have a lot of) with anticipated velocities from 1300 to 1900 fps, which should be fast enough to stabilize and slow enough not to rip the plating off the bullets.

But so far it's proving to be great fun with good accuracy potential:

[Archer]

Nice.
Wish Xtreme made a nice flat point .308 for the tube fed models.

I'd think you could get a bit faster without problems if the bore is smooth.
I've run some pretty fast loads in .44 with plated bullets out of my 94 with no problems.

[Model 52]

That's what I'm using - I originally bought them for my Model 94:



http://www.xtremebullets.com/308-150-FP ... -b0500.htm

They make a 110 gr RN, a 123 gr FP, and a 150 gr FP.

The 150 gr FP is oriented toward .30-30 lever actions, but seems to be popular in .300 Blackout at well.

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I agree that higher velocities might be possible, but I want to see if I can get decent accuracy with them at lower velocity first as a bench mark.

I've shot hard cast gas checked bullets at 2200 fps with good results in my .375 Win and .30-30 Model 94. Whether these plated bullets will do that or not will depend on the hardness of the swaged core and how thick the plating is, but if they do well at 1,800-1,900 fps, I'll push them a little faster and see if the accuracy holds up.

[Model 52]

Ok, I missed a week as I had to go TDY to Boston, then had to go do family stuff in Williamsburg, but I got out to shoot this afternoon.

During my absence the Marbles standard tang sight I ordered arrived as did the set of Lee Shaver inserts for a Lyman 17A front sight I had sitting on a shelf. With the loads I had made up before I left, i was ready to see what it would do with new sights.

I'm always looking for inexpensive bullets, especially now, that are reasonably accurate out to 200-300 yards for plinking and plate loads with my single shots, so I ordered some Xtreme 150 gr plated bullets. They recommend keeping the velocity at or below 1500 fps, and I used that as sort of a general guideline, keeping the velocities fairly low to start.

I have lots of Red Dot and Reloader 7 so those were two powders I used to develop the initial loads, given that the current powder shortage will probably continue, and a great load you can't get powder for is still a pretty useless load. I also wanted loads that I could crank out in quantity on my Dillon 550B, rather than precision loads on a single stage press, as quite frankly I like shooting more than reloading at this point in time, and since I no longer live out west and shoot at long distances, I have no real desire to spend time on uber accurate loads that are overkill at short ranges (and we're using a plated bullet here, not a match king).

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I started with 7.0 gr of Red Dot working up through 8.0 and 9.0 gr. Red Dot is a bulky flake powder that does not meter all that well, and the variation was +/- .1 grain on the scale, but historically I've found it does not matter much with Red Dot either, and it's always been one of my favorite powders.

All the Red Dot loads showed fair accuracy with 5 shot groups around 1.5-1.75" at 100 yards, which was encouraging given that I was not sure what the rifle was capable of, since the only previous range trip had been with the open sights that had been on it.

Charge, average velocity, SD:
7.0 ………1219 fps…………….22.62
8.0 ………1341 fps…………….31.36
9.0 ………1425 fps…………….23.25

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With RL-7 I started at 19.0 gr and worked up to 22.0 gr in 1.0 grain increments. Accuracy varied a lot more with this ladder. Accuracy peaked with 20.0 grs of RL-7 with a pair of 5 shot groups around 1.20" and combined 10 shot 1.49" group.



At 21.0 and 22.0 gr, the groups were even more impressive in the 0.8-0.9" range - if you exclude a flier in each group that opened them up to about 1.9"-2.0".



In one group the flier was 7.5"out from the rest of the group and showed an oval shaped hole. I suspected that the bullets were skidding into the rifling a bit and/or the higher pressure loads were cutting through the plating on some of the rounds. Sure enough, a tight patch through the bore brought out little bits of copper plating. I concluded that Xtreme is not far off in suggesting a slightly conservative 1,500 fps as a maximum, as there is no doubt some variation due to smoothness of the bore and pressure of the load that would set a limit for a particular load and rifle combination.

Charge, average velocity, SD:
19.0 ………1695 fps…………….40.57
20.0 ………1743 fps…………….20.76
21.0 ………1825 fps…………….22.18
22.0 ………1899 fps…………….42.48

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Give the decent accuracy at 20.0 grs/1750 fps and the continued low SD at 21.0 grs. I'll experiment a bit with loads in between 20 and 21 grains to see if I can find a sweet spot where i get consistent accuracy without a flier or indications of plating separation.

Also, I'll play with H335, IMR 4064 and BLC-(2) to see if the slower powders delay the onset of the plating separation issues. That might make something in the 1900-2100 fps range possible with these bullets.

But if not, it's no big deal as 1750 fps will be good enough for plate shooting purposes out to 300 yards and the 1.2 MOA accuracy and minimal heat generated by the load will work well.

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The good news here is that with decent sights, the rifle is displaying very good accuracy in the 1.0 to 1.2 MOA range, which is decent accuracy at 100 yards with iron sights. I used the Marbles Standard Tang sight with a Merit #4 Hunter adjustable aperture (which was great as the light kept changing from sunny to cloudy to overcast) with the Lyman 17A front sight and a round aperture insert large enough to leave a n even white ring between the bull and the insert. It's a pretty common set up on small bore rifles and allows the eye to very precisely align the front sight with the target, while the eye naturally centers the front sight picture in the rear aperture. And being middle aged, I've found the rear aperture increases the depth of field and allows me to sharpen my focus on the front sight. The 30" barrel helps a lot too…

[Archer]

I'm wondering how those 150s handle enough crimp to sustain a fully loaded magazine and recoil in a tube fed gun.

[Model 52]

Xtreme recommends using only a mild taper crimp.

On the other hand, the .30-30 has a long neck and adequate neck tension and I've never bothered to crimp bullets in .30-30 in a lever gun, bolt gun or single shot, and have never had any issues.