I can't imagine anyone can tell a difference in load development in a factory gun changing seating depth .001" at a time. You may be surprised if you actually measure a seated bullet to the ogive and not the tip of the bullet. Your seating die doesn't contact the bullet at the same place the bullet contacts the rifling. Buy yourself a Hornady bullet comparator and take 10 seated bullets and measure the actual ogive with the comparator, even in good match bullets you will see as much as .005" difference, you will end up driving yourself crazy. In match loads I'll seat all my bullets within .010" then with a comp seater die I go though and seat each one individually and measure off the comparator to be certain each bullet is seated off the rifling at the same distance. No way am i going to do that with my factory deer rifle, load development for that gun was find the right powder charge then play with seating depths in .010" increments. Any combination that shoots consistently within an inch at 100 yards is more than good enough to kill a deer out to 200 yards without much thought. With practice you can be lethal a lot further than that with a factory gun.

I think the most important factor to this method is using a case that is neck sized only and then cut your slits. I like to fire form a case twice so that they grow about as much as they are going to. Not touching the shoulder or body while sizing allows for the most accurate measurement because your getting a better duplication of your chambers dimention. If the case is FL resized your actually putting the case back to the die dimentions and having to contend with shoulder set back. When I finally do have to FL size I set the shoulder back only .0005 and no more than .001. I don't like adding any more clearance than what the bolt headspace already gives you.

Any chance the .002 -.005 that your talking about is the headspace off the boltface? I can't imagine if the ojive is say .308 on the bullet and the chamber is the same that you can actually cram the bullet past that by simply closing the bolt with the reduced neck tention the slits give you.

I would think you would see that .002 -.005 differance when comparing against the Stonypoint OAL gage where the bolt is removed to use the gage. The exception would be on a magnum case of course because they headspace off the belt.

Just thinking out loud that's all

I use a Stoneypoint on all my "accurate" rifles and my IHSMA pistol in 7mmBR and thats what I use for my loads. I even took it to work and put it on my AI AWM in .338 Lapua just for S&G's and then loaded some handloads to see if I could find something better than factory in it. Not yet. I have used the split case design and did not have bad results, just thought I could achieve more consistent results with a tool designed just for it.

fishead,


1) Find the lands in your hunting rifle

2) Begin reloads for that bullet 25 to 30 thousands back! (i.e. 0.025" to 0.030")

3) Go thru ladders with all powders your want to try at that COL with that bullet

4) Pick most accurate powder/charge combination

5) Test COL 0.015" to 0.020" longer (closer to lands)

6) Pick most accuratepowder/charge/COL conbination from above

... Usually start load workup at 0.020" off the lands. Split case method. Once a decent combo is found, you can play with adjusting the seating depth to see if it will tighten up some.