Best o.a.l.

[darrindlh]

I am staring my load development and was hoping to get some help. How do I find the best oal for my rifle using the 200 grn accubonds? Is there an easy way to find where I should seat my bullets?

Darrin

 

[LRSickle]

If you are asking how far to seat the bullet off the lands, then you'll have to experiment and see where the "sweet spot" is in your rifle. As long as the bullets aren't actually touching the rifling (may affect pressure) you can play around with seating depths. Many go down to .010" or .020" or closer, but if you're using Barnes bullets, they recommend not going any closer than .050". There's a sticky at the top of this reloading section on how to find the sweet spot for Bergers. Read that one. It works for most other bullets as well.

Most of the time I take the munufacture's recomendation and start moving closer to the lands. Sometimes it shoots good with a long jump too. I have a .257 wby that I think the bullet could eat a whole sandwich from the time it leaves the case until it hits the lands.

Just expeirment a little.
Chuck J

 

[Fitch]

I always begin my load development with the bullet seated about 0.020" off the lands. That's far enough back that I "know" it won't be touching and cause me pressure problems, and suprisingly often it turns out to be the best when all is done. I never load for less jump than that because I only load hunting rounds so I never load with the bullets jammed into the lands. I don't want the bullet pulling and dumping powder into the action when I unload it after not shooting (which happens more often than not).

I have found that I can choose the powder charge to minimize group size with the bullets set to 0.020" off the lands and then back off to .04, .06, and .08 which usually makes groups larger but on rare occasions makes a group smaller.

I've tried about every way there is to measure it and ended up with the method of choice for me being the Sinclair tool that looks like a rod with two locking collars on it.

Bullet Seating Depth Tools (OAL) - Sinclair Seating Depth Gauge

There are other tools but this one works best for me. Once I get the OAL figured out I use a tool that measures the base to Ogive distance.

Fitch