I've been on a quest to make a 120 grain PBFN (Lyman 3118) shoot accurately in my 30-30. It's a Model 94 20” barrel from the 1950's. I started out with some fairly fast powder, and have been moving down the burn rate chart. Here are my results so far, although the quest is not over. Everything was fired at 50 yards. Alloy is 50/50 COWW/PL, baked @430 for 45 minutes and quenched. (I've been given a suggestion by someone much smarter to bake it longer, and perhaps hotter.) A pattern that seems to be appearing is that as I try progressively slower powders among the assortment of fast powders I own, the differences between best and worst groups narrows. It also looks like the slower the powder I try, the better the larger charges do. I know three isn't a very large sample size to draw conclusions, but it's what I have so far.
The next three stops in powders I own are Herco, AA-5, and 2400. The loads I've tried so far don't seem to be position sensitive. I'm thinking that I'll soon run into a powder that will stop burning well at plain based pressures/velocities. Based on several older discussions in this forum on Bullseye and cast bullets, I really thought 700X would work out better. I suppose with a little harder bullet that could be the case. Oh well, I'm making progress, and it's been fun so far. That's the most important part.
Best for Each Powder Tried Worst for Each Powder Tried
2.0 gr 700X, 530 fps, 0.266" 3.5 gr 700X, 901 fps, 3.976"
5.0 gr Vectan 206V, 1043 fps, 1.263" 3.5 gr Vectan 206V, 803 fps, 3.551"
6.0 gr Unique, 1147 fps, 1.165" 5.5 gr Unique, 1026 fps, 2.187"
Here are some bullets I recovered this week after our snow melted. Snow really does seem to be a good recovery medium. It just takes awhile!
Reed