7-30 Waters

[TC Reloader]

I have recently purchased a 7-30 Waters / JDJ barrel from a guy and every case that I have shot has split. They were reformed 30-30 cases, annealed and fire formed to the barrel. Does anyone know if this is a common? The brass cases came with the barrel and I have about 150 of them. But with the 20 I have shot 18 have split the case neck wall vertically. Load is well under max and no signs of over pressure in the primer. Not mashes or pinned through. Not sure i want to go through all the effort to fire form cases to only shoot them once and trash them. Any opinions would be welcome.

 

[KenLee]

I may have some casings from the factory federal Waters round I've used 20ish years.
If I find any, you can have em.

 

[TC Reloader]

Anything would help. This is a 7-30 JDJ so there is not much information out there about the fire forming process. Only a couple of loads given when contacting JD Jones directly. H4350 is definitely the most accurate powder I can find. Is this the norm for the 7-30?

 

[TC Reloader]

Let me know what you want for them KenLee.

 

[shtrbc]

I also shoot a 7-30 Waters in a 14" Contender. A couple things I would check. First if you have a loaded round of ammo, compare the OD measurement of the neck between a loaded round and a fired case. Will give you a idea how much the brass is being worked in the neck area. Also, if the fired case is say, over .008" larger than a loaded round, you may want to try and get a accurate measurement of the neck portion of the chamber. This is a lot easier than on a bolt gun with a action attached. What I am getting at is if the neck portion of the chamber is "large" or the sizing die is sizing "small", the brass may be work hardened enough to cause the cases to crack with even a load nowhere near max. The 7-30 Waters is a fine cartridge and very effective. In parts of MN they area legal in shotgun zones. The first time I showed up with 7-30 Waters Contender, I almost got laughed out of a deer camp. After dumping a nice buck at 180 paces from a sitting position and shooting sticks, not much was said. The next year, half the camp had some sort of "long range" pistol. LOL. Also, not sure if you are familiar with Mike Bellm. He sells a variety of T/C related components and services. After reading and understanding his concepts for reloading ammo for the T/C platforms, my life got WAY better and accuracy/reliability improved greatly. I highly recommend checking into the info section of his website. If you have any other specific questions, don't hesitate to PM me. Cheers!

 

[Goose71]

Are u sizing with out bumping shoulder back. If so size so it got a snap to close.

 

[Bluefish]

Seems odd to be splitting necks. In my experience it’s an easy case to make. You neck down the 30-30 brass and then shoot it. The shoulder gets blown out in the process. The rounds look a bit odd in the forming process as the shoulder moves a long way forward.

it’s a neck down, so brass should not split from thinning in the neck. Maybe old brass? Starline is taking back orders for 30-30 brass, so I expect it will be available this month.

 

[Goose71]

Hornady does make 7-30 brass

 

[nksmfamjp]

No answer in here, but my experience is that forming is best done using the COW method. I just did this with double annealed once fired Winchester with 5.5gr of titegroup. I would use 4.5 or 5.0 next time due to losing 6 of 80 cases. I think 6 is not bad. I read where a guy did this with bullets and lost 18 of 20.