- Taper crimp. Any idea what is an appropriate case mouth OD with Winchester .308 brass?
Don't crimp, it will only hurt accuracy, and it certainly isn't necessary in a bolt gun.
- Belling the case prior to seating? I assume I'd minimize this, especially with boattails?
If you debur and chamfer the mouths, you don't need to bell them. It can be slightly helpfull with flatbased bullets though, I use a Lyman 'M' die for this.
- Any reasonably safe primer substitutions if I start 10% or so low. I've got standard WLR and CCI Large Rifle primers?
I use WLRs and federal 210s interchangebly, but I don't use maximum loading either.
- OAL: In general, is it save to assume, for most of the input posted, that OAL was 2.81" or so? I can chamber a dummy round, and see if any grooves are on the bullet. (Haven't loaded much rifle). My general pistol loading philosophy was to choose an OAL within MAX OAL, short of the lands, that was the longest which would feed reliably (and not below any min OAL load data).
If you force a bullet into the lands, it might pull back out of hte case when you extract it, giving you a false reading. In a lot of .308 short action rifles, the magazine length is too short to allow seating anywhere near the lands. If you want to single load the rifle, you will need to measure the distance to the lands. There are several methods, one involves marking and measuring a wooden dowel in the bore, I won't get into this one as I haven't used this method in 5 or 6 years and can't remember the specifics, the easy way is to get a Stoney Point tool with a matching .308 threaded case. Opinions will vary on this subject, but if I were going to use a progressive press, I would set the seating die to seat at least .020" off the lands, as there are tolerances in reloading and in the bullets themselves, and you don't want the bullets creeping too close to the lands.
- Does IMR 4064 and/or IMR 4895 meter well? After getting some, I heard tell that it doesn't meter well in a Dillon. Dunno if this was a specific case, but this will be the first time I've tried extruded cylinder powders. Worst come to worst, I can experiment with Varget first (which I hear isn't a bad thing).
IMR4895 meters poorly and IMR 4064 meters worse. They work fine for me as I reload the cartridges on a single stage press and have a lot of practice with a RCBS uniflo measure. You might want to try H-4895
as the grains are about 1/2 as long as in the IMR powders.
