Oh seasoned and wise ones should I crimp or not crimp my 30-30's.

Currently holding ~2.5" at 100 yards without crimp with the Win 94 Legacy tapered Octagon 26" 1980's.

F-Class says low standard deviation (FPS) reduces group size and this can be achieved, among other things, with consistent neck tension. I've seen that to be true.

I found that the lot of Starline brass purchased was +-.0005 so I did not neck turn.
I do neck size the cases with a Redding neck die and when necessary body size first.
Last stage of case prep is bell mouthing the case with a Lyman Neck Expanding "M-Inch"die 30-30

It's going to depend a lot on whether or not the bullets will stay at their seating depth when you load the magazine.
Just a touch of crimp doesn't seem to hurt much as far as hurting accuracy.

Assume you are a experienced loader...

If your trim length isn't consistent then your crimp isn't going to be consistent...

Inconsistent crimp will raise your SD...

If you are single loading, try both and see which you get better numbers with...

If you are loading 5 at a time, crimp.

+/- 2MOA with iron sights... about all you are going to get or really need.

What Emmett said.

But to put it quickly. Always, always always crimp 30/30. I use a Lee factory crimp die and I've never had a brass failure because of the crimp. It always splits down the neck or primer pockets stretch long before of a crimp fails. JMO

thanks!
Trimming with Trim IT system- good there.

If you crimp you will gain on average 50 fps in velocity. Comes in handy for those pesky rams

Al Foust

The idea of not crimping is ok in bolt guns as you can get the bullet az close to the lands as you want. A 30/30 has way to much freebore as you must load to a lenth that will feed from the mag.
And what Al said.

thanks all.
600 cases to load for Jr. and I
Really happy with Adam's Autotrickler system. Drops a precise load of powder every 10 seconds +-0.02 grain accuracy
Get one at https://www.autotrickler.com/autotrickler.html

I found crimping to be unnecessary and hard on the brass.

Proper neck tension and a great tip for an unconventional powder cut my groups in half and resulted in sub-moa groups. Velocities across the chronograph are SD of 8 and ES of less than 20 in multiple guns.