Newbie reloader question - .308 OAL

zZ_denis

zZ_denis

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I recently bought my first reloading kit and loaded my first batch (20 pieces) of ammo to use in an M14.

I used once fired .308 brass (Remington), CCI large rifle primers, Winchester 150gr sp bullets and 42.0 grains of Hodgdon H4895 (as per Lyman and Hodgdon manuals).
The problem is that I messed up a little setting up the seater die, and the loaded rounds turned out to be 2.700"-2.720" in overall length. This is slightly less than the Lyman manual recommends for this bullet (2.735")

I was wondering if these loads will be SAFE to fire in the M14. I dont care about accuracy at this point.

Thanks in advance!
 
Obviously you want to be as close as possible to the recommended OAL, and honestly it would make me a little nervous to shoot ones that are 0.035" too short if I was loaded up at maximum. Generally, I personally will go for it even if I'm within 0.010" either way but that's getting a bit short.
I guess a good way of looking at this is: how much of a chance are you willing to take with YOUR fingers and face?
I would say there's a good chance you would get away with shooting them, but there are only 20 total right? It wouldn't be too hard to pull them out and re-seat the bullets at the recommended length. If you had a couple of hundred... that would be tragic.
 
Thanks for the replies, guys.

I dont have a bullet puller, so pulling out the bullets to re-seat them is not an option at this time.

I measured the length of the bullets used (Winchester 150gr sp), and the length varies from 1.025" all the way to 1.050". This makes me wonder, how can one get the OAL of a loaded round to be +/-0.010" ?!
 
This measuring of OAL precisely, is something that has apparently just showed up in fairly recent years.
My manual and sole source of instruction, when I started loading, was the Norma Gunbug's Guide. It gave complete instructions for reloading, including such things as Notes on brass handling, powder talk, checking free-boring of your rifle, bullet speeds, breech pressure and loading charts.
It did all this in a small size little book, consisting of 24 pages.
In the loading charts there was nothing about OAL, nor did they say which primer to use. Bullets were selected by weight, plus they gave the design of the Norma bullets.
Hence, OAL on all my loading has been a case of what length would feed through the magazine. For single shot firing I have often loaded great variations in length. In order to seat some bullets to touch the lands, I had to take the bolt out, fit the cartridge in the bolt face, then insert the bolt.
I can honestly state that I have never detected any difference in pressure in whether the bullet was seated well in the case, or far out!
I have also used any make of primer and can also state that I have never detected any difference in pressure, regardless what primer was in the cartridge. In the past I used a lot of RWS primers, which they tell us go off with more fire than any primer tested. My theory on primers is that the fire of the primer is so short lived, that it is long gone before the powder reaches maximum pressure.
 
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