bullet seating

A

awesomeame

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was just reading the hornady manual, and it says that the bullet is best placed so that it's "just touching the rifling." so umm, how do i measure this? it would be different for different shaped bullets, right?

matt
 
Yes, it'll be different for differently shaped bullets and YOUR gun may have slightly shorter or longer chamber too.

Pull the barrel out if it's a pistol, seat the bullet longer that usual and start dropping it into chamber, seating shorter, back into chamber, and so on.

You'll have to adjust the die for every bullet shape for best results.
 
some throats are so worn you wont begin to touch the rifleing...

if you load say 9mm and have 3 gun's chamberd in 9mm and you tailor a bullet seating depth to one then you had best check that all will chamber the round and feed it from the magazine.

quick quiz... if you seat bullets too deep what happens to chamber pressure?
now if you dont seat them as deep as the spec's in the manual what happens?
 
it's a rifle in 30-06, bolt. i'll look into getting that gage...it sounds kind of cumbersome to be fitting and refitting until you get it right.

as for your quiz-if you're seated too far into the rifling, pressure increases, so you have to reduce powder approx 5-10% and go from there. if you've got the bullet seated far away from the rifling the bullet may enter the bore at a slight angle...not straight in any case, also pressures would be lower.

that's what i got out of the manual last night at least, hope i don't have it backwards lol.

Matt
 
Every rifle/barrel/bullet is different. Some shoot better touching the lands, some jammed into the rifling, some .020" off the lands, some .050" off the lands and some it doesn't matter.
 
As some have already mentioned, before deciding on an OAL, if your firearm is mag feed, check to make sure the round will still fit in the mag. My friend's mini 14 has such a long throat, that if he seats to the lands, the round will NOT fit the magazine! My Savage on the other hand allows me to seat right to the lands & still fits in the magazine.

George
 
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