PaJack - Thanks that's a clever idea. An old buddy of mine who is now gone Bob Jacobs, taught me a similar method.

He'd partly neck size a case just enough to hold the bullet. Then just slightly seat the bullet of choice. (no power & no primer of course). With the bullet seated way out he'd blacken the bullet using a the smoke from a wax candle.

The round would be slowly chambered and the bolt closed. When the round is extracted the lands would leave a slight mark in the soot colored bullet. THis is the point of contact w/ the rifling. From there you back the round of .005 making sure in fits in the magazine and also that it doens't get caught in the rifiling (which it shouldn't if done carefully).

I'm slightly puzzled by the 2nd part of your method. Measuring to the ogive. Why not take the slotted case w/ the newly seated bullet and mark the bullet at the top of the case neck. Marking is to assure the seater doesn;t shove the bullet in deeper that you want it. Now can't you put this in your neck sizer die and slowly adjust to reproduce the desired seating depth? You may not derive an actual measurement but you will have the seating depth. And since the seater rides on the ogive and not the tip it should work out right?

On my Ruger .270 the long seated bullet points get deformed a tad from recoil/collision w/ the inside of the ammo sleve in the gun. You don't discover this while shooting off the bench as usuall you feed one round at a time. Anyway the slightly flattend tips had no real apparent effect on accuracy.