30-06 Am I going about this right?

Does the bolt close easily on a sized case?

For my first loads, I always set the bullet "just off the rifling" and then make sure it feeds through the magazine just fine.

Keep in mind, changing to a different bullet or brand of bullet, will require you to check the seating depth for THAT bullet.

DM

I agree with DM. Seat the bullet just behind where the bullet hits the lands of the rifling. The upside is the bullet will hit the rifling more consistantly which should translate into a more accurate load... but this is really for tweaking that last .05" or so out of the group size on the target. If you seat the bullet actually touching the lands be careful about pressure... this will generally cause a pressure spike as the bullet tries to start moving against the extra resistance of the lands holding the bullet where it is.

I have seen MUCH bigger results in reducing the group by finding the powder charge the rifle likes. Zeroing in on the powder charge usually makes a noticable difference in group size.

For my target rifles I never full length size the cases. I neck size the cases and then only use the particular case in the particular rifle... here again not as noticable for me as finding the right powder charge.

For a hunting rifle I would stop at finding a good powder charge for the rifle. The other tweaks have very small returns for the extra effort... in my experence.

I use a simpler method. I load them just as long as possible that will still fit the magazine. If they fit in the chamber without jamming into the rifling then I'm good. If they hit the rifling, which almost never happens, then I seat them a bit deeper until they don't. Then I load up some and head to the range. 99% of the time I get the accuracy I want and I can't even tell you what my OAL is or how far off the lands I am.

In theory, yes. However, a slightly tight chamber or leade and a loose fit in the case could be pushing the bullet deeper than need be. While I admire your approach to accuracy, jmr40's advice above is quite helpful.In the majority of examples, magazine length will leave you nigh on the lands. If you're jamming back off until you aren't and then about 1/10". Best accuracy is rarely achieved by seating deeper, though you may give up a little velocity.

Good luck and enjoy!

Your technique is correct for finding approximate zero freebore. Write this number down in a data book, you may wish to revisit it in the future. As you're aware, there is some variance in COL vs ogive measurement, and as posted above zero freebore can cause pressure spikes. Some safety margin is desirable.

Depending on your magazine, your minimum possible freebore may be limited by max. mag length, it may not. For hunting ammunition where I am free to chase the rifling, I still like to leave at least .030", usually closer to .050", to allow for irregular bullets/loading, fouling, moisture, crud, and any of the other things that can end up in the chamber or magazine in the heat of the moment. I'd hate to have some balsam sap ruin the trophy of a lifetime when a follow up shot was needed and the bolt didn't want to close, especially if it was a trophy capable of goring or mauling me.

Also as posted above, I've found minimal jump to play a minor role in accuracy vs. finding the right bullet and powder combination for an individual rifle. Find a promising prospect there before you tweak bullet jump.

CKweigand said:

in theory, as I close the bolt the bullet being “pressed” back into the case by the rifling would give me my max seating depth for said specific bullet.

Click to expand...

This is absolutely not true, theory or otherwise.

CKweigand said:

Am I right in thinking this method is just fine? Is my logic sound??

Click to expand...

No, you are not right in thinking this method is fine, and no, your logic is not sound.

Neck tension will happily jam the bullet into the lands slightly, even if it does set the bullet back into the case, and equally, leade jam can pull the bullet from the case - even entirely - all of which completely negates this half baked method for determining proper coal for your rifle.

Multiple no cost, no special gear methods are known and readily available to you, and are outlined in every reloading manual on the market. You’d have to purposefully be ignoring them to overlook them, or taking a recklessly haphazard approach to reloading in general.

I spent time chasing bullet jump, trying to minimize bullet distance to the lands. I had all the fancy tools for the job. I ended up with .020 free travel. In my rifle (Remington Model 700 BDL in 30-06) it made absolutely no difference in accuracy. I'm not saying it won't work in other rifles. In my case the type of bullet made the accuracy difference. I have settled on a 150gr FMJ BT bullet as the most accurate so far. In reality all the bullets I've tried have had good enough accuracy for hunting. I just seat them to manufactures published recommended C.O.A.L. and they shoot fine and I don't have to worry about pressure problems. I am a firm believer that making all my rounds concentric is the best accuracy tool.

CKweigand said:

Am I right in thinking this method is just fine? Is my logic sound??

Click to expand...

You may want to lather-rinse-repeat a few times to make sure you get a consistent max COL. The issues @Varminterror brings up can occur so I usually repeat until the results are consistent. I also slot the neck with a Dremel cutoff tool, which helps to mitigate neck tension and rifling grab.
If you want a less accurate check, close the bolt on an empty chamber and insert a rod (maybe a cleaning rod) till it hits the bolt face and mark a known point like the crown. Chamber your very long COL test cartridge and insure the bullet is in the lands. Insert rod again until it contacts the bullet tip. The difference in marks on the rod should be very close to what you ascertain as the max COL.
Finding the optimum COL is a pain, but there is a school of thought that you should find the optimum charge before the optimum COL. Once you find the best charge weight, Berger had this interesting article about a lands test. I’ve tried it with moderate success.
https://bergerbullets.com/getting-the-best-precision-and-accuracy-from-vld-bullets-in-your-rifle/

With Sierra bullets, I find that the OAL they suggest is very close to what you want. Your OAL will more than likely be restricted to magazine length. What Varminterror says is true. He has posted a link several time on how to determine the Max OAL using your gun and no extra tools but you do need to remove the extractor from the bolt. This is pretty easy with with a Rem 700. From what I have heard over the years that Rem and others have made it hard to reach the lands and still magazine feed. Since your new to this, I would recommend setting the OAL as the book suggest (Sierra's since your using their bullet). Then mark up the bullet and chamber to make sure your not into the lands. If not load up some test rounds and start finding what your gun likes.

• Bolt lift method is free and is bar-none the most repeatable method out there. I mention everything below largely as a reflection of what you have likely read in your manuals - but obviously did not absorb - but do not recommend any of them, due to their inconsistencies.



Other methods:

• Smoking a bullet (magic marker KINDA works, sometimes, but it can refuse witness marks sometimes as well, so it is not reliable, in my experience). Soot a bullet you know to be seated too long for the leade with a match, chamber, and observe the witness marks on the soot. Measure the length of the witness mark if you like to determine your seating correction, seat deeper, and repeat until no witness mark is left. The largest challenge here is to determine if you really have a witness mark or not, which yields inconsistency when repeated. A guy has to crimp the heck out of these, lest the bullet get seated deeper or pull slightly during the process. The initial COAL used should close, but not close without obvious resistance from bullet jam.

• Cut case neck - aka no neck tension to promote a jam, and all of the problems I mentioned above. Size the case, strip your FPA and ejector, cut the case neck and slip fit a bullet into the neck. Close this adjustable dummy into the chamber, remove, and measure. I find this method difficult to perform consistently, because you’re prone to bump the bullet and change the length either during extraction or during your measurement. (Taking averages of multiple measurements is a BS shell game, for the record, as doing so is really just an acknowledgement that your process is flawed. If you aren’t hitting the same measurement every time, you’re doing something wrong. Period). I find this method to be the least repeatable of almost anything I have ever tried

• Cleaning rod method - close your bolt (FPA removed), run a rod with a blunt nosed jag down the barrel to dead length against the bolt face. Mark the rod at the muzzle. Remove the bolt, hold your desired bullet in the leade with a pencil, run the rod down the bore again to dead length against the bullet tip, and mark the rod again. Measure the distance between the two marks. Be careful to only hold the bullet against the leade, and not jam. It’s very easy to jam 5thou with very little pressure for many bullet designs. It helps to have an assistant when doing this method, because holding the bullet in the chamber, holding the rod pressed against it, and then accurately marking the rod can be a challenge. Mark either by wrapping tape or marking with a pen. It can be difficult to place the tape precisely, and pen marks always have dimension, so measuring between the marks (between the tip side edges off the marks, that is) down to the thousandths can be challenging.

At-Cost gear methods:

• Hornady/Stoney point spindle and modified case - there’s opportunity for too much pressure to jam the bullet 5-10 thou very easily when using this tool. Also, the modified cases they offer are minimum spec sized to fit all rifle chambers, such they may not actually match your headspace length. This tool dead lengths the shoulder and the bullet ogive, then instructs the user to measure from the base, which is really arbitrarily floating in space. A shooter should either make their own modified case with twice fired brass, or at least correct their measured COAL or BTO by calculating in the offset between twice fired brass and the modified case.

• RCBS Precision mic - the COAL portion of this tool is nearly worthless. Unless you modify your tool and take all of your measurements with your real bullet, the ogive of the tool does not match your real bullet, and thus, the BTO length is purely arbitrary. The headspace comparator portion of this tool is great, the seating depth method is garbage.

I may have missed something in your original post, I assumed you were doing this with an expanded neck, not a resized one. Usually the bullet will move freely in an expanded neck, you can run out your expander on most dies and do this without resizing the neck or use a fired case from your rifle. I use some heavy grease on the bullet to hold it on very light tension so it doesn't stay in the barrel. You will need a larger sample size due to the inconsistencies mentioned by VT. If you are doing this with a fully seated bullet under tension, no, this will not work. You can start long and shorten the depth incrementally until you find the range where no contact is made. I do use the sharpie the bullet method and incremental seating to find the max potential COL in K-31s which have a very short leade. It is readily apparent when you are contacting rifling, but that is a straight pull action with limited camming so any compression is easy to feel, then I back off a desired amount. Hodgeon data lists your specific bullet at a COL of 3.300". http://www.hodgdonreloading.com/data/rifle

Random 8 said:

Usually the bullet will move freely in an expanded neck

Click to expand...

Often in most factory rifle chambers, a bullet will drop freely into the case through an expanded/fired neck, so a guy usually has to size the neck to get any grip.

For Bug-hole loads:

1. Load a test cartridge long - and then chamber it. This will drive the bullet back on the lands for the initial seating length.
2. Reset your seating gauge to this cartridge Plus One Thread. (full turn)
3. Band that bullet w/ a sharpie marker and rechamber.
4. Check the bullet for scoring in the marker.
5. If it is scored - remark and Add One Thread.
6. Repeat 4/5 until you get little or no score marks in the marker.
7. Add One Thread/ remark/ rechamber.
8. If the marker is clean - Add One more Thread.

And you are done. (+/- One Thread off the lands)




GR

CKweigand said:

Varminterror, thank you for listing the methods above and explaining them. I feel I am better off with the bolt lift method and from here on out will do this said operation using that particular method...

Taking a measurement is not the same as getting an accurate measurement, repeatability gives you an accurate measurement and I feel your preferred method is the ticket I’m looking for.

Click to expand...

Now that is class.

Here’s an example of using a datum point until you buy the rest of your gear. That’s a 22lr case. Only example I could find at the moment. Look around and see what you can find and use the example. That was an example from rcmodel.

The case in the back ground with cut neck is what I used several years ago to experiment with that process. Squeezing the split neck together to get just the right bullet tension can be made to work. Finesse your technique until you can get repeatable results. Repeatable results only mean your in the ball park with this technique so give yourself more jump to allow for a safety margin.

I think it best to start with COL (not coal, that’s stuff you burn) suggested in your reloading manuals to find the bullet/powder combination your rifle shoots well and then try tweaking COL (not coal, that’s stuff you burn).

Keep in mind that hunting bullets in a hunting rifle will give you hunting accuracy. Nothing wrong with squeezing every bit out of your rifle as you can get, fun of reloading, just don’t expect every bullet/rifle combination is capable of one hole groups. Some times you get lucky early. You may get clover leafs on your target at two hundred yards. Some times (most times for me) it’s a lot of work and expense to shrink those groups. But it’s a lot of fun!

P.S. Case prep, case prep, case prep, and shoulder bump.

@CKweigand

You also do not want to force your bolt closed on tight fitting cartridge with a lot of resistance for fear of galling your bolt lugs.

I use the cut case method with the technique outlined in the video posted by @Varminterror

Very repeatable and cheap

I wouldn't try seating hunting bullets close to the lands. I'd start out loading at Sie's recommended overall length. Do load workups with your powder. You might be surprised and have a load in your workups that meets your goal. In my experiments when I got the best group I played with seating longer in .010" increments and in factory hunting rifles I did have one group that showed minor improvement seating .020" longer but still ..030" off the lands. Too many rifles with longer freebore and I'd rather have reliable feeding and chambering from a hunting rifle than seating long. Especially with any game that might hunt you back.