Seating depth?

[Chris Burdett]

With "In the lands" seating with a 105 Berger VLD can be over .050-.070" before they come back in the case. The Shooting Bible says that you need to get square marks from the lands. None of my marks are square, they are all "jamed". So how do you set a seating depth?
Answers plz. as i,m sat here with 200 cases primed/full lovin, Camerons Scaners at 40 + show vertical (cheers mate a good start) Bergers VLD a bit like brows cows. Going to Canberra, but the show ,s a bit early on. Interseting way they are going to score there, could be the way of the future.

[RAVEN]

Hi Chris
seating depth set by bullet to lands (stoney point OAL gauge) then +10- 15 th
It has worked for me,
Cheers
RB

[johnk]

Chris,

Berger no longer considers jamming to be the only way to achieve accuracy with VLD projectiles - see the last section here: http://www.bergerbullets.com/Informatio ... 0Info.html

I came to the same conclusion some time ago with my 210 loads in my match rifle when I accidentally reindexed my seating die one complete turn short & found that it shot tighter. These days, my starting load in the match rifle is with an .030" jump. All my loads are moly or boron nitride coated.

Boots Obermeyer has said that he believes that jump is necessary to obtain consistency from molied projectiles. He believes that jamming coated projectiles caused inconsistent scraping of the coating shot to shot & consequential loss of uniform starting pressures.

Let's face it. The original basis for jamming was to counter poor assembly of ammunition (ie excessive runout) which in earlier times was exacerbated with VLD projectiles by poorly designed loading equipment. Loose chamber tolerances didn't help either.

John

John

[Chris Burdett]

Thanks John, on the ball as usual, before I type this they are loaded as in article. Don,t mention boron nitride, the F/S will want it banned, bless them.
Chris

[RAVEN]

That works fine until it’s out of the jump sweet spot got caught out once and never again.

I was told once by a very accomplished shooter If
"If I can’t get the bullet to shoot jammed I will change barrels"

But of cause do what ever the load and barrel prefer

[RDavies]

Chris, I have some boxes of 105gn berger VLDs I wont be using. If you will be at Canberra, I will take them along, you can have em. Neither my 6BR or 6x47 liked them, but they work well in other peoples rifles, so they might work in yours.
As for seating depth, my 6x47 shot best about .015" into the lands, that is after touching when using one of those Stoney Point guages.
My 7mm is loaded about 5mm off the lands (not a missprint) and 22BR always went best well off the lands as well, so as usual all guns are different.

[Woody_rod]

Yes, this is something worth looking into. I went the other way and fitted a barrel tuner (on FS rifle).

All loads I make now are 0.010" jump, and I work the tune from there. Now have our FS 223R rifle shooting AMAX @ 200 yards into 3/4". With some more tuning, hope to get better (1/4" would be nice - in my dreams!!). They (and the SMK) with the same load stated at around 2 inches, or about 1 MOA, before any tuning which is no good for competition.

Using a low neck tension, I would never get away with jamming the projie.

On something else with jump length: my Anschutz K Hornet has a big jump, has to be 0.150-0.200" = worn throat and short bullets (40gr AMAX), but it shoots an awesome group at 100 Yards. It is the first time I ever had to load at a max OAL...never had a magazine fed centerfire before

I suppose the moral here is to make sure the loads are the right length, have the same amount of powder and all made the same otherwise. Now having a runout indicator, I can see an average of around 0.003" runout on all of my TR loads, yet to check the FS loads. This is a shame when I spent so much time to get the chambers down to 0.0002" runout.

I also have issues with my seater marking the AMAX bullet.