The Heavy Thirty Rides Again!

by AaronB, Wednesday, April 01, 2026, 19:57 (13 days ago)

After experiencing sticker shock over my recent purchase of garden-variety jacketed bullets for my .30-30, a good friend here pointed out that jacketed bullets still may turn out to be just a passing fad and at any rate I could cast my own.

That caused a light bulb to go on over my admittedly thick noggin. I have stored about five pounds of these bullets around two separate shops for over a decade now, maybe close on to two decades. The bullet in question is the Heavy Thirty, from a mold I spec'd out with Dan at Mountain Molds. It's poured of wheel weight alloy (with added tin) and water-dropped for hardness. It's a bore-rider design of .310 diameter, and it drops at 220 grains with a nice broad meplat. It was meant to be a hunting bullet design.

I looked up some Lyman Cast Bullet manual data for .30-06 using a Lyman 200-grain bullet, found a recipe using IMR 4198, and backed it off the max by two grains. I figure it may be good for 1800 fps. I function tested it into the woodpile through my old Springfield sporter, and it left the bore nice and clean while failing to blow the gun up. I consider that a bit of a win.

It cycles fine from the magazine of the Springfield, but the tube mag in my .30-30s is more of a challenge. In any event I think this would be a good design for .30-40 Krag. Maybe this weekend we'll see how it does for accuracy.

-AaronB