Has worked well for me also.I use the Hornday lock and load overall gauge to find max overall bullet length and buy a Hornday bullet comparator (which measures the ogive of bullet instead of to tip) . Measure The dummy round from oal length gauge and that length will be touching the lands. Now seat your bullet .010" shorter ,or whatever length you are wanting to be off the lands. Very accurate and simple way. I have tried many different ways and found this to be most simple and accurate.
Well luckily accurate determination of max oal really doesn't matter(or atleast half of us would be screwed). All that matters is that we find the BEST seating depth, and reproduce it.
This, even without knowing resultant distance to lands.
this works but two significant issues here the way it was explained.
1. this method does not measure where it touches. it measures the "jam" into the lands which is about .-040-.050 into the lands. does not it is a bad technique, you just need to remember where you are actually starting from, which is way into the lands.
2. You need a comparator to measure the ogive of the loaded bullet, and not the cartridge OAL. That can vary as much as .017 between bullets in the same box depending on that particular lot.
there are several technical articles on the reloading part of sinclair internationals website, giving very detailed instructions using several tools that they sell that work quite well.
BH
Well luckily accurate determination of max oal really doesn't matter(or atleast half of us would be screwed). All that matters is that we find the BEST seating depth, and reproduce it.
This, even without knowing resultant distance to lands.