Ended up getting a new reloading toy for my birthday, a o.a.l. gage from Hornady, it works awesome now I can finally can play around with the bullet seating depth on my hunting rifles. The question I got is one of my rifles is a weatherby vanguard in a .257 caliber and when I checked the bullet seating depth with the o.a.l. gauge it showed that I could move my bullet out .360" from where I currently have the bullet seating to meet the recommended .020" - .040" for optimal performance from your reloads, but there is no way I can bring my bullet out .360" from where it is currently seated because then the bullet is going to be to long to fit into the magazine and there just isn't enough neck on the shell for the bullet to be hanging on to. Oh and how I came up with my current seating depth is from reloading books using there recommended overall bullet length. Has anybody else experienced this? I checked the bullet seating depth on my other high power center fire rifles and a couple of them I made some minor adjustments to the seating depth and the bullets were able to fit nicely into the magazine. With my weatherby vanguard that's a different story, would appreciate any feed back that I can get on this. I am using weatherby brass and I'm using Barnes 100 grain triple shock bullets.

Freebore, don't sweat it. I seat them at 3.195" or so in my Vanguard and it shoots fine.

Weatherby likes to throat em long(freebore) so you can get higher velocities without blowing primers. That's why aren't supposed to shoot weatherby factory loads in custom rifles. Try to calculate your bearing surface length to figure out a length that the bullet is still gripped in the neck by at least one caliber and fits in your magazine.

Actually you will find that many people shooting the vanguard and most rifles chambered in 257 wby in general get better accuracy by actually seating that bullet fairly deep and not worrying about getting close to the rifling of the barrel. many have experienced best accuracy with the 100 tsx at 3.120 to 3.190 or any where in between. I load that bullet at 3.170 and get sub moa groups at 3520 fps using 72 gr RL22 and fed 215M primer. This in a Rem 700 rifle. I have a vanguard sub moa and I shoot the 110 accubond seated at 3.250 with 73.5 gr of RL25. it shoots good too. As always start your charge weights lower and work your way up to what your gun tolerates best. The OAL's I have stated were measured simply with dial calipers from base of brass to tip of bullet, not using the Stoney point (hornady) OAL gauge. Be sure to check your bullets for straightness after you seat them. The 100gr tsx is pretty pointy and some seating dies don't do a good job of setting them real straight.

Dufur-
What's the velocity of your RL25 load?
Thx!

Go here if you need more info. http://weatherby.dk/

Thanks for the info guys, right now I'm seating my bullets at 3.160 for my overall length. For powder I'm using IMR 4831 66gr. and the groups that it shoots at 100 yards are pretty tight. So I probably won't change anything.

I have a Rem 700 in 257 WBY, it has a long mag box and the normal WBY freebore. I just seat the bullets one caliber depth in the case, seems to be working fine so far.
I'm loading 3.350" with 115gr Berger VLD's

I've seated most everything around 3.200" and shorter for best accuracy.

Good luck

I'm seating the the 100TSX at 3.190 in my Vanguard and getting sub .75 groups. Mine likes a little "jump"

3400 ish. Lot to lot consistency with RL 25 sucks though. So once you work up a load; stay with that lot of powder. Start on a new lot and you have to work up the load again. I had one lot that was good to go with 74.5 gr and (and more velocity) that was too hot for the next lot of powder I used. I have noticed this same thing while loading for my 7 and 300 ultras (I use RL25 quite a bit) Sometimes RL 25 seems fantastic, and then the next lot seems only barely slower than RL22. I just buy it in the bigger 5 lb jug to avoid this as much as possible. I always hope to get a slower burning lot.

Thanks Dufur, that's good to know!