Rossi Rifleman

Update time:

In researching a throating reamer I found some conflicting opinions about its use in a lever action: One line of thinking is that the chamber is cut that way for the use of jacketed bullets. They will touch the rifling while still being short enough to feed through the 94 action. Cutting a taper in the rifling will create a jump for the bullet that hurts accuracy and bullets can't be seated out and still feed through the action.

The bullet RD designed takes a taper into account, but I don't know if I want to hurt my accuracy with jacketed.

So, I stumbled on a deal on jacketed 170gr Hornady RN bullets and decided to do some experimenting.

My backdoor range is 55 yds, so all my shooting was done at that range.

It took 3 attempts, but I quickly found a load using IMR 3031 that produced about 1950fps and shot the Hornadys into a little less than 3/4" group. I'm sure I could tweak it for better accuracy, but this was good enough to eliminate my rifle as a variable.

But I really want to use a cast bullet and I wanted to try RD's design approach. I didn't have a mold cut, but I did modify a cheap Lee mold to incorporate those concepts - i.e. - a nose lightly engaging the rifling and a front driving band entering in the rifling.

So I cut the nose off a Lee mold. The resulting bullet is slightly under max COAL, feeds through the action, the nose lightly engraves the rifling, and the front driving band enters into the rifling. As a bonus I have a .250 meplat and a 163gr bullet.

It took a couple attempts, but I shot a .85" group at 1950fps. I did have to open the mold .003 to get the nose size up and the two halves are misaligned by about .001", but I think this proves the concept of RD's approach to designing a bullet for the 94 30-30. I'm going to do some more experimenting with this mold and then likely order a good one to RD's specs.

Thanks, Ranch Dog, for designing a great bullet and educating me about how it fits/works in my rifle.

Experimental Bullet:


Mold Mod:



Bullet size can be modified slightly by closing mold on a piece of paper and then moving bars together:


Resulting group. .085 @ 55 yds @ 1950fps. First two are touching. This rifle seems to keep the first two close with all of the cast loads I've tried.

Nice mod to the mold. Did you do on a Bridgeport ?

Some how missed this. That is very nice shooting and it looks like a bullet that would be great for hunting!

Zippidydoodah wrote:Nice mod to the mold. Did you do on a Bridgeport ?

I used a laminate trimmer with a 1/4" solid carbide spiral upcut bit. I clamped the mold upside down in a vise and carefully ran the router base over the bottom of the mold. (I added a piece of lexan to the base with a hole only big enough for the bit.) It's touchy going but possible if you take light cuts. I find it necessary to hold my mouth just right and squinch my butt cheeks together tightly when getting down to the final cut.

RD - Thanks. Guess where I got the idea for that big meplat...

But it's all going to be for naught if I can't get this stupid rifle to feed. I had been single loading while developing loads, but now I'm using the magazine and getting the round rim locked while going from the lifter to the cartridge guides.

nice looks like a thumper

Since you made the bullet about 1/8" shorter, try seating a dummy round 1/8" longer and see if that improves loading, good luck. Just trial and error.

Zippidydoodah wrote:Since you made the bullet about 1/8" shorter, try seating a dummy round 1/8" longer and see if that improves loading, good luck. Just trial and error.

I have. I've tried a variety of light, heavy, short, medium, long, etc and still get the same thing. The rim of the cartridge gets jammed at the lower part of the cartridge guides. It seems like the carrier is not firmly guiding the rim up the cartridge guide slots.

I bought a slightly different style carrier on ebay last night. Hopefully that will work.

Update: New carrier didn't fix the problem.

The final solution was to modify the cartridge guides slightly to let the rim enter the channels just a little bit higher. It works good now except for the 113 gr Lee soup can. That bullet is just too short to enter the chamber in time to guide the round in properly.

But it works perfectly with my hunting bullets. I just need to use it enough now to build some confidence in it.