CAUTION: The following post includes loading data beyond or not covered by currently published maximums for this cartridge. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. Neither the writer, The Firing Line, nor the staff of TFL assume any liability for any damage or injury resulting from use of this information.
3006loader said:
My goal is to load these bullets so they are moving at a higher velocity than the surplus ammo which is underpowered because it is made to be used in Garands without bending the op rod.
Military loads of .30-06, including those made with the slow lot of WC852 that was never certified for the Garand, but only for machine guns, are adjusted for matching velocity and ballistic coefficient to provide the military with a good match to the range graduations on their gun's sights. They don't want them either flatter shooting or more arched in trajectory than their sights work best with. Naturally, there are long range differences, but keeping sights timed is one of the general objectives.
As commented above, 168.5 -3.0 grs (165.5-168.5 grs) was the original official specified weight of .30-06 AP ammo (see, Hatcher's Book of the Garand, p. 125), at which time it had a 4% tungsten alloy core. But that was later (1941-42?) changed to manganese-molybdenum steel, likely for cost reasons. Manganese-molybdenum steels are typically about 2.5% less dense than 4% tungsten steel, and, allowing that copper and lead make up the rest of the bullet, that change seems to have been responsible for about 1.7% overall bullet weight reduction to the later specified 165.7 -3.0 grs (162.7-165.7 grs).
These bullets were popular with snipers in WWII, being considered more accurate than M2 ball. National Match ammo was best, when available, but the flat base and long body of the AP bullet apparently made it shoot pretty well, despite the complex 3-part construction.
Sectioned photos of these bullets show (there's one in a YouTube video somewhere that also mentions a specific core alloy) the copper jacket is very thick and is hard up against the sides of the steel core. That means these bullets should actually be harder than a copper solid is overall. But that assumes the same copper alloy is used in both and that may not be the case.
Playing around in QuickLOAD, I created a model of the 1.4" long AP bullet seating it to 3.330" COL and found that with IMR 4895 and RL17 it matched loads for the Speer 200 grain soft point seated at 2.295" pretty closely. So go to data for that bullet as a starting point, and do start at the bottom load and work up. One of the military tech manuals (not a reliable source of load data) claims 55 grains of WC852 was loaded behind this bullet at one time (1960-70's, probably for machine guns). From the size of the charge I surmise that was likely to have been the slow lot of WC852, not certified for Garands. H380 is canister grade fast lot WC852, for which 52 grains might be a more reasonable upper number if you want to try copying the AP load from the Vietnam era, but I won't guarantee anything about that. YMMV, as the source data isn't something I like starting from. So, again, start low and work up.
Finally, while it is fun to speed things up, with AP ammo, you may find not only accuracy deterioration due to increased in-flight wobble from the faster spin, but that penetration of some materials, like wood, is actually diminished due to increased propensity to tumble in thick target medium at higher speed. Indeed, you'll probably find best penetration of thick targets, even with the standard AP load, is happening out around 200 yards. That run gives the bullet time to settle out of initial yaw, so the tendency of the tip to divert in traveling through a high drag medium is reduced. Hatcher's Notebook has an illustration of this where the 150 grain M2 Ball bullet penetrates 30+ inches into oak at either 150 or 200 yards (I've forgotten which), but at 50 feet it only penetrated about 11 inches into the same medium as it had turned sideways after entry, greatly increasing the amount of wood it was trying to displace, and also presenting the more blunt side profile to it.
