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Your 30-30 may fail when you need it most

9K views 44 replies 16 participants last post by  Hummer 
#1 ·
Be careful when FL sizing 30-30 cases as you may well be inviting a failure to fire.

Background: About 18 months back I got a Marlin Texan model lever gun (stock has no pistol grip) that I had been wanting one for a number of years but had never even seen one and lo and behold found one at the local flea market and jumped on it.

Brought it home and gave it a good looksee with the bore scope and I would say it never digested over two boxes of ammo it's entire life and I knew it was going to get regular feeds from here on out. I had been laying in 30-30 brass for years and had a packed full 30 cal can of brass.

I loaded up some ammo and commenced to shoot it and had a failure to fire. Pulled the round out and the striker indent was centered well enough but not deep enough. FL sized the cases and shot another run and had another failure to fire. The second run was a different load and hotter and I noticed the primers had backed out. I knew then there was a problem with the rifle as 99.9% of the time if your primers have been cared for (mine are) and you have a failure to fire it is a problem with the striker energy, velocity or excessive headspace or crud in the striker channel and the backed out primers told the tale. I measured the height of the primers above the case head and knew I had to change the die position.

I backed off the die setting to leave a gap between the shell holder and bottom of the die. I kept backing the die up until the case shoulder contacted the chamber shoulder before the bolt went into battery and then reversed the movement about 1/8th turn downwards. The gap between the die and shell holder is now .027".

Basically what I did was change the head space from the rim to the shoulder and now the case primer is held closer to the bolt face and the problem appears to have gone away.

Even better the die in this position only reduced the case body .001" from the as fired condition thusly my case life was going to go up tremendously as there is generally no need to overwork your brass.

Starting back on my testing and had no more failures to fire until this week when I loaded up 10 cases I had previously FL sized, stainless steel tumble cleaned and stored away. Started shooting and had another failure to fire (one in 10) and the group on the target was vertically strung about four inches.
Bottom line with this rifle I am going to have to shoot reduced load cast bullets through all the remaining cases in the can to move the shoulders forward.

Thusly if you get a failure to fire with your lever gun you might back the FL die off the shell holder and hopefully eliminate the problem before it jumps up and shows it's head in a hunting situation or even worse when your rifle is needed for a emergency
 
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#2 ·
This is not a reloading problem, or an ammo problem. You have a defective gun. If the gun does not fire with rounds that are full-length resized (and therefore headspacing on the rim, as they are supposed to), it won't fire with factory ammo.
 
#3 ·
Alpo nailed it. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that is the reason why it appears the round count looks so low and why it was for sale.
Partially sizing the cases is only masking the real problem. I would take it to a competent gun smith and have it fixed properly.
 
#4 ·
Ditto 1000%

you have a gun with excessive head space!

You have tweaked it to work by changing it's headspace from the rim as designed tot he shoulder.

this is a bad situation.... get the gun fixed!

as others have said. it will be unreliable on factory ammo... which is why you found it for sale at the flea market and it was hardley shot!!!

And in fact.. the notion that you are saying the FL resizing a 30-30 case may cause a fail to fire makes me think that you might want to read ( re read? ) your relaoding manual again! For safety sake!
 
#6 ·
And I bet that Marlin will take care of it, even though you are not the original purchaser. No way would I put up with the problem you have Humpy, get it fixed!
 
#7 ·
Funny how the only two calibers of rifles I've ever owned with headspace problems have been .30-30 and .303 British. Both are 'low pressure rounds'. My first headspace issue was a .30-30 Winchester '94, and the others have been .303 SMLEs. I'd thought that higher pressure calibers would be more common for headspace issues hammering on the bolt or stretching the action. Could being rimmed bottle neck calibers have anything to do with the problem? Just curious. Humpy's rifle is reported as near new or hardly used, so that one would be a factory related defect.
 
#8 ·
I have several 30-30's and have never had a problem with headspace. But lever guns are not as robust as you might think. The receiver sides are thinned to make the guns light and handy. All it takes is a couple of over loads and the receiver can be stretched, increasing the headspace. You'll never have the problem with rounds loaded to be less than the manual maximums. It is a Marlin of which I have owned a couple and worked on a couple. They NEVER impressed me. In general, they can not hold a candle to a real Winchester or Browning Winchester clone. It does not surprise me that this gun's headspace may be wrong from the factory.

I would think a call to Marlin is in order to determine if they will fix it and for how much. A local gunsmith will have to either replace the barrel and chamber it correctly or try to thread the barrel in one more turn and then re-chamber it correctly. But then any part of the gun that is screwed or pin to the barrel will no longer fit right and might require shortening of things like the hand guard and the magazine tube. Modifying the exiting barrel is hard and it may come to replacing the barrel completely and re-chambering the new barrel (??). Sometime a bargain is not a bargain after all. I like new guns with warrantees. I have sent a few guns back to the manufacturer for repair, required because of their mistakes or lack of quality control.

The 303 Brit is an entirely different situation. They are meant for an Enfield, a battle gun that has to operate in inclement weather, soaked in mud, and not cleaned for days. The last thing they want is for the ammo to be hard going into the chamber so the chamber is ample. It is extra long (the case headspaces on the rim so that is not a headspace problem) and fired cases from the guns are stretched to fill the ample chamber. In the battlefield no one expects the cases to be re-loaded so their condition is irrelevant. But reloaders will find the stretched case will get re-sized back to the spec'ed size, over working the brass. The cases do not last but a couple of reloadings if they are full length sized for reloading them. Sizing them to not push back the shoulder more than a couple thousandths greatly increases their life but they may not fit any other gun.

LDBennett
 
#10 ·
I agree with LD's observations on 303 and lever guns... marlins in particular. I love both my 336's but their chambers are rather liberal.

For instance, I have a savage 340? bolt gun in 30-30 that will not chamber empties fired from ANY lever gun, including my winchester. my winchester will not chamber empties from my marlin. my marlin so far has swallowed anything.. She is good on headspace as evidenced looking at the primer and case head.. but her chamber, is, as said, 'roomy'.
 
#16 ·
This is actually a common problem with these rifles and it's not necessarily a headspace issue. Take a case that's been sized and start a used primer into the case, but leave it sticking out from the case head. Now seat the round into your chamber and close the lever using the bolt to finish seating the primer into the primer pocket, the primer will protrude. Measure the amount of protrusion and add the rim thickness to this number. This combined number will tell you the headspacing in your rifle. Allowable chamber headspacing is .063" - .070" , and allowable rim thickness is .053" - .063". It's common to see chambers that are cut near the maximum depth and cartridge rims that are on the thin side. Add to this the fact that most people never disassemble and clean the bolt, the cosmoline that Marlin uses gets very thick as it ages and it traps dirt over the years. Also some primers are harder to ignite than others due to cup thickness. I picked up some S&B primers really cheap a few years back. I will only load them for range use, I have Winchester primers that I use for hunting ammo.

Another potential problem is the two piece firing pin. The locking bolt raises the rear firing pin when the lever is closed, bringing it in alignment with the front firing pin. Sometimes the locking bolt lifts the rear firing pin too much, pinching it against the breech bolt. I have one rifle that bound up the firing pin so tight that it only fired about 25% of the time. I also had everyone telling me that my rifle had excessive headspace and it was dangerous to fire it. Five minutes with a dremmel tool relieved the pinching problem and my rifles been fine ever since.

I also adjust my sizing die like Humpy does, this way my cartridges headspace on the shoulder instead of the case rim. Case life is extended almost indefinitely, while insuring that the primer is held tight against the bolt face. Don't give up on this fine old rifle, I bet there's nothing wrong with it. Just learn how to properly clean and adjust it.
 
#17 ·
he saw protruding primer.. that's not a bound up fire pin!

the gun is made to headspace on the rim. anything else is a homegrown bandaid and is making the rifle function outside design paramaters.

Assuming his commercial ammo has in spec rims.. this is a clear headspace issue.. chamber dimension is irrelevant aside from sizing of brass to not overly exercise it, or from new, 1-shot, has to work consumer brass / saami spec
 
#18 · (Edited)
The picture below shows where the issue is. If a rimmed or belted case chamber is long, that won't cause the round to not fire. They can only go in the chamber as far as the rim or belt allows. Now, having too much space (headspace and head clearance) between the bolt face and the case head will cause an issue. The same issue the OP is experiencing. The gun in question needs to be looked at, either by the manufacturer or a 'smith before a carostrophic failure presents itself.

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#19 ·
Headspacing tolerances in the 30-30 allow for up to a .017" space between the case head and the bolt face, that's half the distance that the firing pin protrudes from the bolt face. Chamber pressures in the 30-30 are much lower than what's seen in other rifle calibers. It's very common to see raised primers since the chamber pressure isn't always high enough to stretch the brass and reseat the primer. We're not used to seeing raised primers and a protrusion of only .004" seems much larger than it is, but when you add that to the average 30-30 rim thickness, you would still be on the tight side of the headspace tolerance. It's easy enough to measure how far the primers are backed out of the case and add that number to the rim thickness. As long as that measurement doesn't exceed the maximum allowable headspace of .070", there isn't a problem. I shoot a lot of 30-30 rounds every week and the only round that doesn't leave the primers sticking out are the Hornady Leverevolution ammo. All other factory ammunition leaves the primers sticking up in all three of my lever guns. By all means take measurements and verify that there isn't a problem before firing another round, but there's no reason to jump to conclusions and send a rifle back to the Marlin without taking a few simple measurements.
 
#20 ·
It is a problem however when a case that has been full length resized won't fire, as the OP is experiencing. It's one thing to partially full length size or neck size a case to improve case life. It's another thing to have to do so to keep the case head against the bolt face so that the round will fire. The OP's gun has a problem that needs to be addressed.
 
#22 ·
The first thing that needs to happen is to fully disassemble and clean the bolt and firing pin. This will cure 9 out of 10 Marlins with light primer strikes. The stock should also be removed so the hammer spring can be inspected. The hammer spring is held in place with a piece of flat steel that has a couple of slight bends in it, this is called the Hammer Spring Adjusting Plate. There's a reason why Marlin calls this an adjusting plate, when you stack the machining tolerances of all the parts involved, adjustments to the plate may be necessary. With the stock off, cock the hammer and see if there are still any gaps between the coils of the hammer spring. If the spring isn't fully compressed when the hammer is cocked, remove the adjusting plate. Take the end of the adjusting plate that has the hole in it and place it in a vise all the way up to the bend. Now grab the opposite end of the plate with pliers, and lessen the amount of bend in the plate so that it is now straighter than before. I wrap the jaws of the pliers with electrical tape to protect the finish of the adjusting plate. Reinstall the adjusting plate and hammer spring, then like before cock the hammer and inspect the spring for gaps between the coils. If gaps still exist repeat the adjustments until they are gone. You can also place a small washer between the spring and the adjusting plate to increase the spring compression. Just make sure that the outside diameter of the washer is small enough to allow the stock to be reinstalled.
 
#23 ·
This thread makes me glad I don't own Marlins. What started out as "you have a defective gun" appears to be turning into "all Marlins are like this".
 
#25 ·
Marlin lever action rifles are by no means perfect. Their design dates back over 120 years, to a time before cnc machines and metal injection molding. Back then things had to be built with the ability to make adjustments. I personally don't mind tweaking an old rifle to keep it in good working order. Even people need repair as we age, I've got enough titanium bolted to my spine to make a new rifle.
 
#26 ·
Actually, way back then things were hand-fitted at the factory. By skilled tradesmen using a file.

And there is a major difference in "tweaking an old rifle to keep it in good working order" and having to modify a new gun to make it work correctly.
 
#27 ·
FIX THE GUN!!!! I've been shootin the .30-30 fer 18 years untill last year when I traded MY Marlin to my father fer my uncles Marlin i probably shot well over 500 rounds mostly factory NEVER had a ftf!!! My father and uncle have probably shot nigh onto 1000 through their Marlins again no problems.
 
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#28 ·
I look in on several forums daily, as it keeps me "in touch" with my guns/reloading/shooting when I can't reload or shoot. Each forum I've seen has it's own personality from the basic Reloading 101 questions ("my 45 ACP won't chamber my reloads", "what powder is best", etc.) to high tech bench rest type reloading. I saw the "30-30 Fail You" thread on three other forums and just mentioned it in passing. If the OP is wanting to cover all possible answers or if he is trying to inform the highest possible number of reloaders of a "situation", I don't know, but it does no harm...
 
#33 ·
I don't know, but it does no harm...
In this case probably not because it seems that each forum has a least a few good replies. But this kind of behavior has proven a big waste of time to me recently. I was searching for information on repairing a piece of electronics from the early 80's and no matter how I re-worded my search string nearly half the results were from this same dude plastering the same question across about two dozen forums and e-mail lists without a bit of helpful information to be found in the handful of replies that he elicited. The truly helpful information was pushed back a few pages in the results by the noise his plethora of posts created.

The proper behavior is to post once and gather feedback before posting again elsewhere, even in cases of public service announcements like this as you might be in error.
 
#29 ·
I have 3 30-30's.A win 94 and 2 Marlins.One of my Marlins has the same issue as the OP has.It started occasionally failing to fire with both reloads or factory rounds.I also noticed protruding primers.(The reloads are not at the upper charge range).I have no doubt that it has developed too much headspace so I put it back in it's case and put it up.It won't be fired anymore until I get the gun repaired.(It's not at the urgent point on my list).My Savage 110 also developed occasional light hammer srikes and sometimes a FTF. It is at the gunsmith's shop right now.Headspace on the Savage 30-06 is good using go-no go gauges but he seems to be having trouble getting the light hammer strike problem diagnosed and repaired.He's now looking at the firing pin and spring,and protrusion.(I wouldn't think this one would be so hard to troubleshoot).The point I'm getting at is that I think I'll find someone else to repair my Marlin's headspace issue.
 
#36 · (Edited)
It's like an epidemic.But it is really only 2.But it seems like more since it's the same 2 guns that have already made at least one trip to the gunsmith each and both still have the same problem after I got them back (from the gunsmith).The Savage 110 has been an ongoing problem since spring. The Marlin 336 that has the same symptoms as the OP. Then theres the 6.5 Rem Mag with the bulged cases we discussed at legnth. I've posted about all these so it likely seems that all my guns are broken.I still have a couple that work properly for deer season.I'll be carrying a different 30-30 or a Rem 788 .243.
 
#31 ·
yup.. just looked.

I wonder if 25 people tell him the rifle has (possibly dangerous ) headspace issues, if it will sink in?

I wonder what happens when it keeps growing to a point that there is a seperation, reciever or locking lug failure with catastrophic consequences. I've never though lever gun bolts and actions were the most robust. not that i don't like them.. i just don't feel they are up to bolt or break open actions.
Back in the day, when lever guns were first introduced, and still today, you can find results form shot offs between bolt guns, and lever guns. You might be surprised to know that a bolt gun can be run just as fast as a lever gun, in the right hands!
 
#32 ·
I recently went through this with an old 336T from 1961 that had a bad bore, with an intermittent fail to fire problem. Just taking the bolt apart and cleaning the firing pin and the hole it rides in cured the fail to fire issue. When I checked the headspace it measured right at the tight end of the tolerance, but when I fired the rifle it left the primers sticking out from the back of the case. Evidently the previous owner didn't believe in cleaning his gun, ever. The chamber had enough pitting to keep the brass from stretching and reseating the primer. Rather than fool around with an old barrel that had been abused, I bought a factory new 18 1/2" barrel and magazine tube from Numrich for $100. Now I have a beautiful old Texan that was built the year I was born.

 
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