A Tale of Three .30 Carbine Blackhawks

By Joe Berk

We’ve written a lot about .30 Carbine Ruger Blackhawks here on ExhaustNotes, and with some justification:  I’ve owned three of the things.  I still have two; one went back to Ruger and stayed there, a victim of my own stupidity.  I’ll get to that a few paragraphs down.

.30 Carbine Blackhawk No. 1

My first .30 Carbine Blackhawk is one of the earliest ones ever made; a three digit, three screw Old Model.  It is unfired (other than test firing at the factory), it has a very low non-prefix three-digit serial number, and it has the original box and all of the original paperwork. It’s one of the coolest Rugers I’ve ever owned.  It will be one of the guns my heirs will have to sell (or keep; it will be their call) when I go to that big server in the sky and my blogging days are over.  I spotted this one on Gunbroker, I bought it, and I’ve had no regrets.

Well, almost no regrets.  When I bought that first .30 Carbine I had it shipped to my FFL buddy Bryan, and when he saw it, he spoke at length at how cool it was and how much fun it was to shoot a .30 Carbine revolver.  I had never done so, and this one will remain in its unfired condition for as long as I own it.

.30 Carbine Blackhawk No. 2

Bryan’s comments got me thinking that I needed another .30 Carbine Blackhawk I could shoot, and a week or two later, .30 Carbine Blackhawk No. 2 (also an Old Model), came floating in from another Gunbroker ad.  The thought was a good one, but the reality was not.  That second .30 Carbine Blackhawk was anything but fun to shoot.  Every cartridge case stuck in the cylinder (they were extremely difficult to eject), and the cases of my reloaded ammo dragged on the revolver’s backplate.

I doped out the cylinder drag issue fairly quickly.  I had to trim the brass after nearly ever firing, and I had to make absolutely certain the primer was below flush after seating.  .30 Carbine cases shrink in length when fired, and they grow in length when resized.   The cartridge headspaces on the case mouth, so case length is critical.

To address the extraction issue, I tried polishing the chambers and I swabbed them with alcohol to remove any traces of oil, but I still had the problem.  So I tried lighter loads with Trail Boss (a powder known for working well with lighter loads), and that’s how I got in trouble.  The Trail Boss guidance is to load to the base of the bullet for a max load, and not less than 70% of that amount as a minimum load.  I loaded at just under the max load and I thought I was doing well when I fired the first Trail Boss load.  The case extracted easily.  This is progress, I remember thinking, and I fired four more rounds.  They all felt okay, with essentially no recoil (that should have been a clue).

I had stuck a bullet in the bore with that first shot and I didn’t realize it.  Then I had fired another, and another, and another, and another.  I felt even worse when I ran my fingers along the length of the barrel.  I could feel the swells along the barrel from each bullet.  I didn’t recognize what was happening.  Stupid is as stupid does (Forrest Gump, 1994).

.30 Carbine Blackhawk No. 3

After the above debacle, I called Ruger.  I told them my story and the nice lady on the other end told me I wasn’t the first one to call with stuck bullets.  I asked if they could re-barrel my Blackhawk.  Sure, she said, and off the revolver went, on its way back to the mothership.

A few days later Ruger called.  A new barrel would be $400.48, they told me, but they weren’t too sure about the gun’s structural integrity.  Or, they could sell me a new Blackhawk.  How much would that be, I asked.  $400.48, she said.  Ah, I understood.  What they were really telling me is to buy the new gun at the steeply-discounted price (MSRP on a new .30 Carbine Blackhawk at the time was $669; it’s more today).  I was in.  It wouldn’t be an Old Model, but by that time I didn’t care.

When I received the new Blackhawk, I loaded ammo in different flavors to test what worked best.  How did it go?  In a word, the new .30 Carbine Blackhawk is awesome.  Take a look:

This new .30 Carbine Ruger Blackhawk revolver liked every load I tested.  One was exceptional:

Shooting a .30 Carbine Blackhawk is fun.  It’s 7 1/2-inch barrel and long sight radius make for great accuracy. There’s massive muzzle blast, a huge muzzle flash, and major noise (hey, 40,000 psi is 40,000 psi), but little recoil.  As mentioned above, it’s accurate.  The spent brass practically fell out of the cylinder.  This New Model Blackhawk is a honey.

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A bit about the gear I use in my .30 Carbine reloading activities.  I use Lee dies, although just about .30 Carbine reloading dies will do the trick.  I normally stick with RCBS reloading gear, but I could get the Lee dies quicker so that’s what I bought.   I like them.  Most of my other reloading gear is RCBS, including the RCBS powder dispenser, the RCBS Rockchucker press, and the scale.  Again, any brand will work.  In looking at the prices for RCBS gear, I notice that it has become fairly expensive.  If you want to get into reloading for a lot less, you might take a look at this LEE PRECISION Anniversary Challenger Kit.  It contains most of what you need except for the dies.  Knowing what I know after having been a reloader for 50 years, it’s what I would buy if I was starting out all over again.

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Keep us in components!

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More Tales of the Gun?  You bet!