Seating depth?

[Casey Napier]

How much seating depth, in the neck, is required for a proper amount of neck tension. Excuse my lack of knowledge, proper terminology, and spelling. I am just an dumb ole hillbilly.
The gun that I am refering to, is a 6.5-06 that I had built a couple of years ago for 1000 yard praire dog shooting. I just purchased a Stoney Point seating gauge, and started looking for a magic load, starting with finding my length to the lands. I am shooting this rifle single shot, and had it perminatly fixed with a follower, so recoil effect on the rounds in the box, are of no concern.
I have heard that the old rule of thumb, is that the bullet should be seated in the neck, at least the diameter of the bullet. Is this a good rule of thumb, or is this mainly for repeater rifles?
The reason this subject came up is that I noticed in order for me to seat my 140Gr A-maxes to touch the lands, I would only have approx. .120 bearing surface. Is this sufficiant? I can not even use the 140VLD's as I would have far less bearing surface making contact. I was pretty upset in this finding, since I had invested a lot of money in this rifle, and I expected perfection. I forgot to add that I have only shot this rifle, maybe 250 rounds, so there should be no throat errosion.

RidgeRooster

 

[arthurj]

Feeding the cases into the chamber in a repeater can cause some runout in the cartridge when there is not enough bullet in the neck. It is not supported enough in that area and the junction can almost act as an elbow, but since you are feeding single shots it is fine. I asked this question a while back when my 175 matchkings were barely in the neck of my 308. The feedback that I got suggested that there were no safety concerns.

 

[CatShooter]

There are no "safety" concerns.

I have two accurate (close to benchrest grade) rifles that the bullet is seated in less than 0.10 in one case, and 0.070 in another.
They will both feed from the magazine.

 

[Buffalobob]

A couple of points of caution. If you have very little in the neck and actually jam the bullets into the lands you may not be able to extract them without a cleaning rod. I have a hunting rifle that I shoot with the bullets jammed and I always carry a cleaning rod.

Secondly, I would be careful transporting the bullets. Try to always keep them point up and maybe put a little foam rubber between the tips and the top of the case guard box so if it flops over the bullets are cushioned. Whether or not this is actually needed I don't know but I do it anyway.