I would tend to agree; 10 thousandths variation in COAL, which is typically a primarily lot of tip variation, doesn’t TERRIBLY impact accuracy potential. I’ve sorted bullets by tip length and have trimmed meplats and pointed bullets, but rarely did it make a significant impact to the raw precision potential of the bullet lot.
BUT - if I ever did see 10 thousandths variation in my loads - a huge variability - I would expect something is terribly amiss. Maybe it’s something as simple as mixing lots of bullets. Maybe as simple as using low cost bullets with high variability - which, if I’m measuring COAL’s or BTO’s at all, it typically means I’m shooting precision SOMETHING, and low cost, high variability bullets is “something terribly amiss.” I do shoot cheap bullets sometimes, but not in a precision application where I would be measuring each round for variability.
So really - if I’m measuring for consistency and find 1/100” variation, SOMETHING is broken. Either I’m not running the ram consistently (broken operator), or there’s something terribly wrong with my press or dies - I’d expect a trend through a batch here, either a step change or a ramp, maybe a die or seater stem coming loose, or maybe gunk building up behind a sliding seating stem (Hornady style), or on the stem, or maybe a compressed load with variable neck tension or charge weight/orientation. Usually the only real-world factor is the operator error, short stroking the ram, failing to cam over the same every time.
We’re seating against the ogive, so it stands to reason that the variable tips standing above the ogive might yield variability, but the BTO lengths should be very consistent. If a guy sees 10 thousandths variability in BTO, something went wrong. Even in tips, that’s a ton of variability.
If I ran down to my ammo cabinet and found 10 thousandths variability in any of my match loads, I would think something went terribly wrong.