Rick,

Evidently I'm not saying this very clearly and have mixed in a good helping of confusion. Let me try this again. First, don't get hung up on the fact that I prefer to start my test loads with the bullet touching the lands. Just look at methodology.

First, I've been loading for close to 55 years. Now when I say that I'm aware that I may have had one years experience, fifty-five times. Or fifty-five years of evolving, expanding experience. Since I have no control over what you will decide, I'll just let you make your own decision.

Now to start. I start from the basis that all rifles are individuals and will require different strokes for differents rifles. At one time , I had rifles that had never fired factory ammo, and was kind of proud of that fact. Now one of the first things I buy is a box of factory ammo. Once the rifle has been tuned, without ever having been fired, and a scope mounted it's time for that trip to the range. Tuning consist of a trigger adjustment and glass bedding of the stock in the action area and the chamber area of the barrel. The rest of the barrel is free floated. All twenty rounds are fired and the results logged in the steno pad I've bought just for that rifle. Velocities, group size and measurements of fired cases compared to unfired cases are logged. Velocity differences obtained from a clean and dirty are noted and the rifle is cleaned at least twice during the outing. The fired cases will also give me the headspace of my new rifle chamber.Now I have a starting point for reloading.
The fired cases tell me if I have a tight chamber or a large chamber. A chamber length gage from Sinclair will give me the exact length of the neck length of the chamber. If all indications of the chamber is that it's a tight chamber, then I'll try factory cases. If the chamber is on the large side then I will modify cases for other cartridges to the cartridge I'll be loading. One of the cases I use quite a bit for the .30-06 is the . 280 Remington case. Since the shoulder of the .280 is .050" longer than the '06 they give me a lot of room to full length resize the .280 case to the exact headspace of my rifle. This eliminates excessive case stretch when the cases are fireformed. Case necks are trimmed to a length .005" shorter than the actual chamber length. Since I already know what the headspace is going to be, and the diameter of the chamber neck, I like to turn the outside of the case necks to a thickness where the case neck, with a bullet seated, is .002" smaller than the chamber. This will allow the neck, during firing, to expand and release the bullet. Primer pockets are uniformed and flash holes deburred. before firing, cases are culled by weight. I usually start with 150 cases in the hopes of ending up with 50 to 60 cases.

Fireforming consist of a middle of the book charge, usually with H-4895 and bullets that were culled because they didn't meet weight restrictions.

Now to reloading. I like a powder to fill a case, without being compressed. In the .30-06, H-4350 works nicely. I view all the current manuals I have, which are several. In the case of the 150 grain bullet, there are huge difference. I attempt to use data from manuals that used a rifle close too mine in working up their data. It the books show loads from 54.0 grains to 62.0 grains, I will usually start at 56.0 grains and load three rounds per load all the way up to 63.0 grains. Loads are in half grain increments. At the range I start with the lowest loads and chonograph all loads. Every case is miked. If a case expands .0005" in the extractorgroove, I stop. My max pressure has been reached. I also visually check every case for pressure signs. If I have visual indications of pressure, I also stop. My goal is accuracy, tiny group. A half grain increase in powder usually results in a velocity increase of about 25 fps. I believe it is much more important to place a bullet where I want it, than to get an additional 25 fps of velocity. I pull a lot of bullets and flush a lot of powder, and I don't mind that a bit. Having to follow up an animal that didn't drop at the shot, that I mind a bunch.

Well that is how I do it. If you don't approve, don't do it that way.
I've started a lot of new poeple into hand loading. One thing I have never done is to use more powder to make the bullet go faster.