Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Recoil seeting bullets deeper in magazine

Gents,
You've helped me a bunch in the past on my reloading questions and I'm hoping you can do so again. My friend and I have been loading some for his Rem 700 .30-06 and have a good load for it. The only problem is that in order to be near the lands the COAL must be very long (still fits in magazine) and when the rifle is fired the bullets in the cartidges in the magazine are being seated further into the case. We did check and there is more than .300'' of the bullet shank in the neck of the case. Any ideas what would cause this and how we can remedy it? Thanks in advance.

Sounds like the tip of the bullet is hitting the front of the magazine under recoil. You can make sure your expander ball is not opening up the inside of the neck too much and/or you can crimp using a Lee factory crimp die. You many try setting the bullet a little deeper too, maybe it won't effect your accuracy.

I've used a Lee factory crimp die in a couple of cartridges,it provides more neck tension

If it is a boattail bullet depending on the profile your .30" still might not be enough actual bearing surface to hold the bullet in place under recoil.

You can always try a crimp to deture the bullet from seating farther under recoil. If that don't work the bullet will need to be seated farther back.

The only other think I can think of is to measure your case neck to make sure it is at .307-.308 after sizing. your expander ball my be to large. I don't think this is very likely but you never know stranger things have happened.

Polish the expander ball in the sizing die down to 0.305"-0.306". May cause the case life to shorten up a bit, but you won't have to worry about cannelures.

Thanks for the idea. I have a Lee factory crimp die so may try that. Is the crimp strong enough that we need to re-work up the load? It's currently pretty close to a book max load although I haven't seen any pressure signs.

Try a light crimp, set it up per the instructions, and watch for signs in your load. I haven't seen signs that would require me to rework loads in my rifles although, when I work up a load toward a max load in my rifles I back off a couple of grains when I start seeing signs to get longer case life. Every rifle is different so you might have to experiment.