Bullet Seating Depth

[sakoshooter]

Looking for everyone's opinions on bullet seating depth. I normally seat just a few thousands off the lands but have been considering experimenting with some loads touching the lands. I'm looking for better accuracy. Not that any of it's bad, just curious and I'm never satisfied. What are you guys doing and what kind of accuracy are ya getting?

[JimmyHoffa]

Most of the hunting ammo I reload is with bullets with cannelures.  I will seat to the center or the cannelure and then crimp.  If it is target ammo without a cannelure, I'll make a dummy round with a neck resized case.  I'll barely put a bullet in the case, then close the bolt and let the lands basically seat the bullet.  Then cycle the dummy a time or two, so that the lands will seat from different points on the bullet.  Then try to match the reloads to the dummy, maybe giving an extra couple thousandths off the lands.  I figure this is good enough for centering since I don't have the tool to turn the necks or measure the runout.

[carpsniperg2]

I like to seat as close to the lands as possible. Each gun is diffrent in what it likes. Some bullets like Barnes, even say to back off more then you would think, so the bullet jumps a little. I bought some Barnes a long time ago and could not get them to shoot. But one of my friends told me. He had the same issues and I read on Barnes web site. That they said to seat them a little deeper. You can play with the loads and see what your rifles like. Either the groups will get smaller or bigger

[KillBilly]

Here is a link to some very good info on this subject. Please read it......

http://blog.sinclairintl.com/2009/03/26/determining-bullet-seating-depth/

[C-Money]

I just seat mine just under the cartridge max overall length listed in the reloading manual. Has worked great for me!

[RClare1223]

I measure my chamber with the bullet I am going to load.then starting at .015" back I load 5 round groups backing off the lands .005" at a time.then I go test them and see where the gun likes the bullet to be seated.every gun is different so there is no set measurement to use.my 06 likes them to be .040" off the lands while my 270 like .030".

[GregMcFadden]

You really do need to try out different seating depths.  I rather recently tried increasing the jump on my 30-06 load with bergers...   increasing the jump from a few thou to .029 thou cut the group size in half.

[MDGrand]

The only thing you have to remember when seating a bullet in the lands is to keep an eye on pressure problems. Working up a super hot load and placing the bullet in the lands, can cause problems to your bore over time.

[jaymark6655]

I sometimes seat my target loads just off the lands, but they don't fit in the magazine so anything for hunting gets sized down to either MOL or max length that will fit in my mag.

[whacker1]

max length that will fit in my mag

My desired seating depth is 3.71, but the magazine only goes out to 3.69, so I seat all my bullets to 3.67 giving enough room to move in the magazine.

300 RUM.  This is a common issue for the RUM from most folks that I have talked to.

[lokidog]

I sometimes seat my target loads just off the lands, but they don't fit in the magazine so anything for hunting gets sized down to either MOL or max length that will fit in my mag.

Same here for my -06.  Seat  a tiny bit off but the plastic tip on my ballistic tips flattens slightly from recoil in the mag.  Makes me worry a little about trying the longer Barnes like I would like to do as my powder charge is pretty full using 165 gr bullets.

[JKEEN33]

considering experimenting with some loads touching the lands. 

Everything I have read says you should back off a minimum. Touching or seated could create pressure issues. I bought an OAL guage and measured all of my rifles. I then found the OAL for the magazine and worked from there to find a length that works in each rifle.

[KillBilly]

I believe my books state that you should back off .010 - .015" ....

[Ray]

Most of the hunting ammo I reload is with bullets with cannelures.  I will seat to the center or the cannelure and then crimp.  If it is target ammo without a cannelure, I'll make a dummy round with a neck resized case.  I'll barely put a bullet in the case, then close the bolt and let the lands basically seat the bullet.  Then cycle the dummy a time or two, so that the lands will seat from different points on the bullet.  Then try to match the reloads to the dummy, maybe giving an extra couple thousandths off the lands.  I figure this is good enough for centering since I don't have the tool to turn the necks or measure the runout.

Good advice. I had to learn that the hard way but the way you wrote it seems fairly sound. I ise a slight variation of what you described.

[sakoshooter]

Thanx a lot guys for the opinions. That's what makes these forums great. Lots of info that is best shared.

I usually use a blk marker to color a band around the bullet where the ogive meets the shank, seat too far out so that the lands leave marks in the blk colored band, then slowly seat deeper untill no marks show while refreshing the blk band with the marker. I then make a 'dummy round' out of a sized case with no primer/powder, save it and label it for all future loadings with that bullet. This has served me very well over many years with many sub moa groupings with quite an assortment of bullets. I've never practiced seating touching the lands and am mainly curious if I could achieve a bit more accuracy this way. I'm aware that more pressure would be created with the bullet touching the lands so each established load would have to be reduced and work up again but if better accuracy could be achieved, it'd be worth it.
Keep in mind also that crimping creates more chamber pressure also.
Magazine length of course, is the deciding factor for loaded ammo used for hunting.