Originally Posted by
dig4gold
New to reloading. Have loaded and shot 20 rounds, I mean new . . .
All's well so far. But I'm confused about how deep to seat the bullet. Most all books recommend a 2.8" cartridge. But that would be .074 from the lands/grooves in my Savage 110. I put an empty round (no primer even) un seated in my rifle and close the bolt. It measured 2.874" and showed groove marks so I assume it was just touching.
Do I go by the book (2.8"), or is it O.K. to seat it as close to the lands as I can . . . say off by .005" (2.869")?
And how much poder? Low end or high when seating close?
The guide is just a guide. You can load all the way to the lands, just start off powder low and work up.
My rule of thumb is one caliber in the case at least. Unless its short necked like a 300win mag. so if your loading 30-06, there should be at least .3" of surface bearing bullet in the case. They just get to fragile if you don't.
You of course don't want to jam into the rifling. Its good to know where the rifling is relative to your round. You can modify a sized case with a dremel tool by splitting the neck, and adjusting the tension by squeezing, carefully place a bullet in the modified brass, and carefully closing the bolt, and extracting. Then measure. Or you can get a stoney point gauge. I rarely use the stoney point anymore.
Just taking a charged sized bullet seated case and putting in the gun to see marks is not a good procedure IMO. It won't show you precision measurements to setup your sizer.
Just search for split case bullet seating method.