RE: How much black powder in a 30/30 load?
 

Being the first smokeless powder SPORTING CARTRIDGE ever loaded with SMOKELESS POWDER in the U.S., no FACTORY 30/30 ammo was ever loaded with black powder. For use with black, Winchester created the .32 Win. Special, a .30/30 necked up to shoot .321" bullets from a rechambered .32/40 barrel. It used slower rifling than the .30/30, so it supposedly could use BP without crudding up the bore as much!

IF I were going to load BP in a .30/30 w/a cast bullet, (which I woudnb't!!) I would use a case full up to within 0.25" of the case mouth of FFg and a heavy crimp.

With BP, ytou will not get more than five shots from that gun before the bore fouls up so badly that accuracy has gone to hell!

RE: How much black powder in a 30/30 load?
 

No, it wasn't, Roskoe. They NEVER used BP in the .30/30! It was a smokeless powder load from day 1, as was the .30/40 Krag. The .30/30 used 30 grains of someearly smokeless powder, and the .30/40 used 40 grains of Pyro DG.

RE: How much black powder in a 30/30 load?
 

Thanks for all of the info eldequelo. You are always a wealth of knowledge and I appreciate all of it that you share with the rest of us.

RE: How much black powder in a 30/30 load?
 

You're quite welcome! If you want to know where a lot of this esoteric info comes from, read Hatcher's Notebookby MG Julian S. Hatcher, and The Complete Guide to Handloading by Phil Sharpe. This latter one has a lot of info in it on making powder, etc.

RE: How much black powder in a 30/30 load?
 

That's correct about the 30-30 never being loaded with blackpowder.The 32 Win Special was designed with both smokeless and blackpowder in mind but the engineers failed to realize that with a 1-16" twist it fouled like crazy with the blackpowder.

RE: How much black powder in a 30/30 load?
 

The reason for the 1/16" twist in the .32 Special was supposedly so it would not foul as badly as the .30/30's faster twist if BP was used. the 1/16" twist was the same as had been standard for the .32/40, a black powder target rifle cartridge originally developed by Ballard for use in Schutzen single-shot rifles and later adopted by both Winchester and marlin for their levr-action rifles. The first Model 94 barrels chambered for the .32 Win. Spec. were actually barrels that had been made originally to be chambered to .32/40. But after the .30/30 was introduced, hunters lost interest in the .32/40 chambering. However, if loaded with smokeless powder, the .32/40 can actually give about the same performance as the .32 Special or .30/30 - a 170-grain bullet at 2200 FPS.....

RE: How much black powder in a 30/30 load?
 

The 32-40 rifles were prone to blackpowder fouling and needed to be cleaned after every shot to give target grade accuracy.Fouling was so bad that they developed a duplex load with a few grains of smokeless placed in the case first followed by BP that in effect significantly reduced barrel fouling and eliminated the need to clean between shots.The 30-30 was originally loaded with IMR 171/2 smokeless powder which was replaced with todays IMR 3031.Point being a worn .32 Special 1-16 twist will give patterns instead of groups while a worn 30-30 with it's 1-12 twist will still shoot.Nothing personal against the .32 crowd it's fact.

The .30 WCF was one of the first modern firearm. Marlin adopted the caliber and as a marketing tool name it the .30-30, which fit the nomenclature of the day where the caliber was followed by the black powder charge propelling it. However being a modern firearm it was the first firearm to use modern smokeless powder not black powder. In which case the second 30 did not signify a black powder charge but rather a 30 grain charge of whatever smokeless powder was than in use. You should be able to read about this by looking up the history of the .30 WCF.

You don't stop hunting because you grow old. You grow old because you stop hunting.
- Gun Nut

If you're going to load with black powder you will need to fill the gap between the powder and the base of the bullet. You can make a drop tube easy enough with some 3/8" copper tubing, a couple eyelets and a 1x4" board. Look on YouTube for what they look like.
Also watch videos on loading black powder cartridges.
BTW you do know the 30-30 was the first smokeless cartridge?

CAUTION If you're going to load black powder into your 30-30 brass you must fill all the space between the powder and bullet.