format_quoteIn 1976, Winchester standardized the 7-30 Waters. Handloading guru and all-around firearms authority, Ken Waters, designed and promoted the 7-30 chambering. His goal was to offer deer hunters a superior alternative to the 30-30, with a round that generated sufficient energy and a flatter trajectory but with significantly less recoil.
His design used a slightly sharper shoulder and a shorter neck than the parent 30-30 case. This gave it a bit more usable capacity. It also utilized an almost 20% higher SAAMI working pressure. This latter allowed the 7-30 to generate significantly more energy than factory 30-30 loads of that era.
Despite these advantages, the 7-30 Waters never achieved any significant measure of success; due in no small part to an almost total lack of marketing effort by any gun-maker and a significant degree of disregard by gun-writers who, in that era, harbored an almost visceral distain of anything lever-action — both the rifles and the chamberings dedicated to those rifles.
This is too bad as the 7-30 had a lot to offer. It was an ideal choice for whitetail hunting where shots are held to about 300 yards or less.
As with all cartridges used in guns with a tubular magazine, a properly applied crimp can smooth and ease chambering and a crimp is critical to lock the case mouth into the cannelure and thereby prevent recoil and chambering forces from driving the bullet into the case. In some instances, a roll crimp might be the best option but the Lee Factory Crimp Die usually does a better job and the crimp it applies will not damage a cast bullet as chamber pressure drives that from the case.
Heritage of this case dates to 1879 with the introduction of the 38-50 Ballard case.
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