mjw176

New to reloading,I reloaded some 30/06 rifle Brass, The over all length with bullet according to the diagram in the Nosler handbook. When I inserted the loaded shell into the Rifle The bolt did not close. With Some pressure the bolt did close but I noticed the bullet was seated further into the casing. Now does that mean that this the perfect bullet seating depth? By adding this pressure I hope it didn't damage anything in the rifle.

Big Uncle

Your loads are somehow too long for your rifle. It may be a measurement issue or it may be your rifle's chamber, but the result is still that these cartridges are loaded too long for your rifle. Jamming the bullet into the lands should give you abnormally high pressure.

A bullet with a bit of jump before it hits the lands is a good thing in a hunting rifle. I would make another pass at them with the press in your situation. Keep in mind that bullets from different manufacturers have slightly different shapes and may require different seating depths.

If you fire the rounds that you recently loaded you may experience a harder than normal bolt lift upon extraction. Look for pressure signs on the fired cases and primers.

mjw176

Thank you, I am looking at a Hornady length guage device to measure overall length and I guess I can just replace bullets back in press and seat them a little deeper.

davidg

you probably notice rifling marks on that bullet .. yeah this is really common .. you have to experiment w/ distance from the lands .. you will get lots and lots of advise . sometime people say they load .005 into the lands and some people want .100 off the lands go figure .. I have 2- 243's .. ruger m77 and rem 788. the bullets for the ruger are too long for the 788 the ruger likes em up close to the lands and the 788 don't matter but it has an extremely short throat .. ha .. have fun and play w/it

davidg

that's a good idea .. I have reseated before .. or you could just keep pressing it in until it's off your lands , measure , then you'll know max oal for that bullet .. next brand of bullet will be different oal .. whatever . i'm sure you'll benefit from the oal gauge

mjw176

Thanks, the Rifle that I am reloading for happens to be a ruger Ftw.

davidg

that's what my ruger is .. if it's a ftw you might have a hard time w/ it .. it took me about 40+ attempts / recipes to finally find what it would shoot .. l-o-o-ong story but that whippy barrel is persnikedy.. I also have a win. mod 70 ftw in 30-06 .., took 50 recipes to finally get a good one .. 180 gr. was all she liked , I could tell you the whole recipe but it wouldn't matter ..I have a tikka t3 in 260 that'll shoot anything .. my rem 788 I was bragging about will shoot anything ..it honestly took about a year for ea.of the ftw's .. also it reall y all depends on what you're trying to achieve .. I assume you're reloading to achieve accuracy .. I was looking for at least 1" moa .. not really necessary that's just what I was trying .. if you're happy with less that's okay .. that'll be easy

wild bill g

A tip I learned with FTW is to rest front of rifle close to the mag and some times hold fore end to keep muzzle jump under control.It seems like more bullets like some jump to the lands these days. Do you have acaliper of any kind if not you should pick one up. A lot of companies are recomending their bullets be started at .050 off the lands. Give it a try it made a big difference with my Mod 70 Win FTW. That and keeping the front of the on the bag near the mag finally got a group under an inch.

bronko22000

There are more expensive tools out there for this purpose but to get my seating depth for a particular bullet I would take a wooden dowel of approximate bore size. (use a 1/4" for your 06). With the bolt closed place the dowel down the bore until it contacts the bolt face and then mark with a pen or use tape to mark it. Next, remove the bolt and drop a bullet into the chamber and hold it in place with a pencil or similar. Then slide the dowel down the muzzle again and mark it at the muzzle when it touches the bullet tip. Measure the distance between the two marks and subtract .050". This will give you a good starting point for bullet length.
Once you've found your rifle's favorite load you can then adjust your seating depth in or out until you reach the best accuracy. The only drawback to this is that some rifle magazine limit the overall length.

Mr. Slim

something else you might check is the trim length of your casings. make sure they are not too long. another thing i do is take a casing without a primer or powder and make sure the casing will chamber in the rifle without a bullet on it. after setting the seating die for that caliber, i seat a bullet and chamber the round. if it doesnt chamber easily i adjust the die down a little at a time until the round chambers without any undo pressure on the bolt. once the round chambers without any problems i keep that in the die box so i can recheck the seating die if ever needed. hope this suggestion helps.