This question of throwing the third shot out of a group was asked in a post a few years back. I don't remember the campfire member who offered a solution to this dilemma as he suggested seating the bullets a few thousands deeper. I do recall the original poster could offer a reason seating bullets deeper worked... but it did.
I was working up loads for a Savage 99 at the time that consistently threw the third shot out of a 3 shot group. For my next test loads I seated the bullets a few thousands
deeper and the 3rd shot issue out of group issue was gone. Over all the 3 shot group tightened up into a wonderful 3 shot clover leaf if I did my job with a typical Savage 99 trigger.
Your results may vary....just sharing mine.
That would be me.
I was shown this technique by bench rest shooters in the 80's. These guys never ever preloaded for any match shoot and were always seen walking around with trays of prepped cases before a shoot or at the range to work up loads for the range conditions prevalent. Traveled hunters may also note that their loads made at home range can often drift off in accuracy when they are far from home in different climates and altitudes so the point was how do you set up a load.
I do now, but never historically measured OAL as it did not matter. It was mroe fassiona statement to market handloading prowess by many as your own OAL is completely irrelevent to the next guy attempting to ape your "stated" results.
Fits in the magazine - Check 1.
Feeds perfectly - Check 2.
OAL- who cares (Except when you want to reset dies back to a chosen bullet at a later date to mark a starting point.)
Now to business.
When you have a 2 +1 group the OAL is too long. It needs to be seated deeper.
Begin with a 1/4 turn on your seating die for medium heavy profiled barrels and half that, 1/8 turns for light "whippy" barrels.
This will not work for everyone but it will work for many by the reports I get back from people who try it. You need to shoot say 3 groups to begin with to see what you have and learn how much "you", influence the group.
If the group is an equilateral triangle, go the other way and seat out further.
Because my main background was rifle testing and reviews, I had rifles, and sometimes multiple examples in the same chamberings to play with from never less than an month to sometimes up to 6 months to play with so I hammered these rifles every week for 6-8 hours a day testing loads and components. My reloading bench at the range was larger than some small gun shops carry in components so it was usual to take a dozen or more bullets and powders and repeat, repeat, repeat over weeks until the patterns shrank. I also took multiple rifles at a time so that teh swap-out time allowed for a break and also a cool down of the rifles tested.
A responsive barrel can come in nicely in a trip or 2. some never improved and that was simply the nature of that particular rifle.
By doing this for decades, I learned many things as evolutionary steps for example.
1. Some older rifles made around the time of our birth shot better over the years and not worse - why? because bullets became better balances, more concentric, cup and core match-up improved, ogive changes bases changed, metallurgy changes, the smoothness of jackets improved and that is before we look at primers and powder changes and choices.
Back to tuning the load, I also learned that lighter barrels were more fussy and some also likes a certain bullet weight range, meaning lighter end, medium weights or heavy weights for the caliber. Choose wrong, because you can't know until you try them all and it is easy to blame the rifle.
Scopes were a huge issue in previous decades. A brand new scope with a 4 digit price tag can be junk in a box. A commonly slandered el cheapo toss away scope can be terrific and last decades giving "never shift" dependability.
A lot of this is dependent on how much you shoot. How many of you have burned out a barrel, or 2 or 5 or more. The hands keep dropping. That's ok, this is not a contest is is a lesson on how to better understand what something can be manually changed in order to show a change that can be monitored.
Changing seating depth is one such activity and in more rifles than not, it will generate a manual change you can monitor. After saying this, also remember that bullet makers change the designs on their bullets and will never advertise that fact. You may have a load that will reliably head shoot sparrows all day every day as they sating goes and then a new load goes bad. If you keep a sampling of bullets on the shelf it is common to find a very subtle change in design such as bearing surface dimension, a change to the bullet heal or boat tail. (Some rifles hate BT;s and others love them) and ogive length or shortening or a core change that cannot be seen.
I had a web site in the 90's back before Al Gore invented the internet called Guns&Info.com. (Where I first met Fotis) and I answered all the technical questions.
One day I got a question from a guy who was using 100gn Barnes X bullets in his .25/06 and all of a sudden the rifle stared to lose accuracy. HE checked everything add was completely stuck. Well, it is very hard to diagnose any problems over the internet as you all know. Interestingly, I was contacted by Dan Pedersen, who I did not know at that time and he told me he was noting the same thing and wondered if it was the bullets. I went down to my bench and opened a stash of Barnes X's and looked them over. At some point I put a mic on them and noticed that some were .005" undersized.
I went through the lot and separated them by measurement and took my .custom match grade barrelled .25/06 to the range and bingo. The skinny bullets did not shoot as well as the fat ones. Imagine that. That is what I reported to those asking on my web site that night.
Since that time, Barnes bullets have gone through considerable changes that assure a very consistent product for today's shooters.
The lessons are:
You cannot know everything so expect to learn something new.
Someone else's success may not be your success or your easy way out.
Recommendation are just options, consider them more than you enact them.
The internet is both help and hindrance, as it provides a saturation of information and many contributions will be guesses not fact based so try and sift through them.
PS: I type off the top of my head and hate proof reading so apologies in advance for the rambling.
John
