Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Berger VLDs and Weatherby long throats

Berger and many users advocate seating their VLD bullets to touch the lands. But I have a 257 WBY with the conventional Weatherby chamber with the really long throat/freebore which makes such long bullet seating impossible.

I was just hoping to get any reports from people who had shot VLDs in WBY chambers.

I haven't done the Weatherby deal, but Berger VLDs don't have to touch the rifling for sporting purpose accuracy. I shoot them in an unmodified (except for trigger adjustment) 700 Classic in 300 Savage. With a 6x scope 3/4 MOA to 300 yards is no problem.

If you do a little looking around on the net you'll find that Berger has noted length tuning VLD bullets away from the rifling often produces nice results.

For hunting loads, just load them out as far as your magazine will allow you to and work your COAL down in 10/1000th increments to find your rifle`s sweet spot for bullet jump.

Mathman is correct! Bergers do not need to be seated up to, or into the lands in order to be accurate. In fact, some rifles get better accuracy with a certain amount of bullet jump as Berger explains on their site.

I suggest you develop hunting loads using the above process and range loads as well. For range loads, (for loading one round at a time), you begin seating the bullet to touching the lands and working down shorter in COAL increments of 10/1000ths, to see which COAL groups best. Take it down to maybe 60/1000ths from the lands. Somewhere within that measurement, you`ll find the best "sweet spot" for accuracy in your rifle.

I understand the notion of tweaking COAL in search of accuracy. But this is way out of that league--I can seat a bullet to 3.52" and not touch the lands in this SAAMI chamber. The magazine length is more like 3.30". So the bullet jump for a magazine-suitable cartridge is at least .22"--damn near a quarter inch. That freebore, and its compatibility with VLDs, is the basis of my question.

So talking about a few thou here or there is off an order of magnitude and then some.

I jump them more than 1/8" in my main 308, no problems with good hunting accuracy. Easy sub-MOA for 5 shots.

The only way you're going to really know is to try them.

185 VLD's shoot extremely well in my .300 Weaherby Vanguard Sub-MOA.

I've shot some of the 180 VLD's through a 700 Sendero in 7 STW. Seated to mag length, they're about .210" off the lands, and accuracy is pretty good there - in the 3/4 MOA range.

I load the 115 gr VLD's in a Watherby Vanguard, OAL is 3.27" and I get 3 into about .7". I then decided to call it quits, I am not so anal and patient as I used to be.

A bullet can be seated to touch the lands, but I have never seen a reason that it had to be, to get the best accuracy. Of course, if getting the best accuracy demands the bullet touch the lands, then, that is what you are going to have to do, if you want the best accuracy. Often times, really good accuracy is as satisfactory as as the very best accuracy, when we are talking about 1/4 to 1/2 MOA.

And exception would be benchrest competition.

I have never thought much of the practice of seating bullets to touch the lands because of the pressure spike. With the bullet seated touching the lands, pressure builds immediately because the bullet has to start engraving the rifling the instant it starts to move. If there is some jump, even a little bit, there is kind of a 'jump start' or 'running start' where the bullet is moving with little or no resistance, and I know from experience that this tiny bit of running start can be the difference between a safe load and one with dangerously high pressures, with the same load.

I don't have access to pressure testing equipment, but my opinion is that a bullet with a small amount of movement will give slightly less pressures than the same load with the bullet touching the lands.

Also, if you had some really sensitive and accurate pressure testing equipment, it would not surprise me to see that it shows two distinct pressure peaks very close togather. One, when the bullet starts to move, then the pressure drops, then another, larger peak when the bullet engages the rifling.

The second one might not be a peak at that time, just a drop during bullet travel, then a noticable increase in pressure until peak pressure is reached when the bullet engages the rifling. IIRC, peak pressure is reached in about 1/2 to 1 inch of bullet travel.