i was doing some further testing going and trying to work around the problems with seating depth variability found in this thread
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=768022
in short, my lee dies and hornady 178 bthp do not agree, giving me as much as .025" in OAL variation, i believe it was several things including the nose touching the seater stem. the variation was all over the boards and i could not get anything consistent. it was all over the place
round two: i use the RCBS seater die that came with my small base FL sizer.
i loaded up 40 rounds this evening over 44.5g of varget. about 18 of these were very consistent, 2.805"-2.809", i will take that.
another 22 were 2.831"-2.835" also very consistent. there was no in between.
also, the seater stem on my die left a nice ring around the nose, very consistently. this was not happening with the lee die.
so i took the long ones, adjusted the die and now i have 40rds with the same OAL so they will feed through my AR10. if the weather and other things cooperate i will see how they group tomorrow.
in the expert opinion of the THR, is this a bullet problem or a die problem, or a combination? there is up t .01" variation in the bullets length (1.343" to 1.353")
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=768022
in short, my lee dies and hornady 178 bthp do not agree, giving me as much as .025" in OAL variation, i believe it was several things including the nose touching the seater stem. the variation was all over the boards and i could not get anything consistent. it was all over the place
round two: i use the RCBS seater die that came with my small base FL sizer.
i loaded up 40 rounds this evening over 44.5g of varget. about 18 of these were very consistent, 2.805"-2.809", i will take that.
another 22 were 2.831"-2.835" also very consistent. there was no in between.
also, the seater stem on my die left a nice ring around the nose, very consistently. this was not happening with the lee die.
so i took the long ones, adjusted the die and now i have 40rds with the same OAL so they will feed through my AR10. if the weather and other things cooperate i will see how they group tomorrow.
in the expert opinion of the THR, is this a bullet problem or a die problem, or a combination? there is up t .01" variation in the bullets length (1.343" to 1.353")