Close to lands or not?
 

I' m fairly new to reloading and i' ve always been told that a rifle shoots better with the bullet seated close to the lands. I have a Rem 700 30.06 seated .010 off the lands and it shoots great. I recently bought a Rem 700 25.06 and i' ve been trying to work up a load for it seating the bullet the same way with no luck at all. I' ve tried several different bullets, powders, and primers with the same results, poor accuracy. Do i need to change my seating depth and how many of you guys seat close to the lands and does it really matter? Thank You!

RE: Close to lands or not?
 

Mykey, using nosler partitions or ballistic tips I usually seat .020 or so off the lands and have not had an accuracy issue with either bullet. Make sure you use a quality OAL gauge like something from Stoney Point or Sinclair. With some finicky calibers .010 could make a big difference. Only one way to find out and that is by experimenting ...load up 10 rounds at one OAL and try them and then if no go try a little farther away. Reloading bullets in a Browning A bolt I left the bullet at factory OAL and it made no difference in accuracy since I was using optimum powder for the bullet in question. I believe that Powder is the key component to accuracy. This is assuming that your cases are sized correctly with quality dies.. trimmed evenly..flash holes deburred(Unless Norma) ... same primers and proper primers for the caliber etc etc. Hope that helps

RE: Close to lands or not?
 

odelkhunter....thanks for your reply. I' m using a stoney point oal gage and rcbs dies and reloading equipment. All my cases are trimmed to length and deburred including flashholes. I' ll take your advise and seat .020 and just keep going in and see what happens. I' ll start with what nosler recommends as being their most accurate powder imr4350 but i also have some 7828 and 4831 that i can try. Again thanks!

RE: Close to lands or not?
 

Seating a bullet close to the lands is a good thing to do.....however please remember that this don' t guarantee accuracy alone. Weatherby rifles were (and still might be) " free bored" meaning the rifling was removed a ways ahead of most chambers and this allowed the bullet to get a jump and create more space to reduce pressures. Weatherby rifles typically shot well and this tends to disprove the theory about loading close to the lands. As far as I' m concerned, it' s just a finess thing and not a revelation to accuracy. Finding the well made bullet that you gun likes is the biggest key......no matter how precision your rifle or your reloads, if the bullet is not concentric, the groups will look like pie plates.

I' m in agreement about loading close to the lands.....but there' s much much more to it than that!

RE: Close to lands or not?
 

You guys are right and after pulling my hair out all day yesterday and talking to numerous people who have been reloading for years i' ve come to the conclusion that loading up to the lands is ok but not necessory for accuracy. Vapodog you' re right about the weatherby because one of the guys i talked with shoots one and he said that he never loads to the lands because of the freebore in his gun and he said he has some very accurate reloads. I was told that some bench shooters load next to the lands and some even on the lands but under a controlled enviroment what ever that means but it just wasn' t necessory for a sporter rifle used for hunting. I' m no competition shooter but i still want good accuracy. Looks like the accuracy comes more from juggling powders, primers, and components with seating depth being a part of it but not the deciding factor. My way was to find the oal for my gun and back out .010 and start there. I' ve been advised to start with the load manuals mfg bullet col for each chosen bullet and work from there. The only problem is that Nosler doesn' t give the oal for the bullets they' ve tested like other bullet mfg' s do they only give the SAAMI col of 3.250 which is to long for my rifle. I' m gonna start from scratch with the nosler' s and load some sets at .020,.030,.040 off the lands and see what happens. If i can' t find a sweet spot i' ll just start over and try another bullet. Like i said i' m fairly new to reloading so i' m open for suggestions. Thanks for the imput. God Bless!

RE: Close to lands or not?
 

Your just going to have to play with C.O.L. till you find the " sweet-spot" . With my 30-06 Sprg. I use Hornady 180 SP .005" form the rifling, and my three shot groups are .407" at 100 yds. Good luck.

RE: Close to lands or not?
 

What is " close to lands" ? What does lands mean. Also, what happens if you seat your bullet deeper than min OAL?

Thanks.

RE: Close to lands or not?
 

lands is a part of the rifleing. The raised part of the rifling. Seating deeper than min will cause pressure to shoot up. I did a cool test on my Chrony this weekend. I shot my 300RUM with a COL of 3.585" and got 3165fps on average with 94gr of H1000. I then shot some with a COL of 3.7" . Same powder load, and got 3120fps on average.

RE: Close to lands or not?
 

Thanks big country.

RE: Close to lands or not?
 

One of the finest comments I' ve ever read was by Layne Simpson about reloading. He said that a bunch of finess things such as turning necks, is only valuable to a shooter that is shooting under .500 inch " as is" ....that for those of us that are happy to get a 1.125" group with our " deer rifle" all those things are not going to be noticed at all.

Not to be misunderstood.....reloading is for precision nuts and we have every right to extract as much precision as we can. I personally include in Layne' s comments such things as trimming all cases to .001 inch, weighing cases, primer pocket uniforming, flash hole reaming. flashhole deburring, weighing all charges to .1 grain, and bullet seating depth.

Reloading for elk hunting is vastly different than reloading for long range varminting or benchrest competition, and the equipment is different too. If you' re a big game hunter, you need an accurate bullet that also has good terminal performance and they can be difficult to find. I assure you that you' re far better off finding bullets designed for big game and trying them for accuracy than trying all the finness things to make a bullet that grouped 3 inches start grouping 1" ....it' s just not going to happen. After you' ve settled in on a good shooting " game" bullet, you can spend all the time in case prep and load developemnet you want.

Just ask yourself what accuracy is necessary and what accuracy can you actually make use of?....Personally, I' m one very happy camper if I can get a .30-06 style gun to group 1.125" five shot groups with hunting style bullets. I' m also a fan of the Swift A-Frame, but there' s other good ones too.