Great series of threads. I have done all of this for a variety of rifles before coming to the conclusion that unless my rifle was capable of a very high level of accuracy a lot of this was a waste of time. Seating depth has proved to be a very important component of accuracy in any rifle I have messed with, as has powder charge. Weighing bullets and case prep I don't waste time with unless I have a rifle that can shoot at least 1/2 moa. When I find I have an accurate rifle I will measure case neck thickness and keep them all within .001. I have found this to make a small difference in some rifles. I am talking hunting rifles, even custom ones. I have yet to own a factory winremsav that could tell the difference in case prep. I am currently shooting a couple of Coopers and with a bit of load development, case neck trimming and weighing, primer pockets, essentially full bench rest treatment, my 22-250 shoots in the .3's. I used Norma cases to start with. my .270 uses Norma cases with no prep. With just a little load work the rifle was shooting 1/2 moa. I called Cooper and asked what they do for case prep. and the guy told me nothing. He said they use cases as they come out of the bag and their standard seating depth is .010 off the lands. My rifles both prefer .005 off the lands for best accuracy. The bench rifles I owned benefited from full benchrest case prep. but again it was such a small margin of improvement that it made no difference for the varmint hunting I used them for. Over 3 decades of reloading I have simplified things again. A well built or tuned rifle will shoot very accurately for varminting without going to the time and trouble of benchrest quality heroics, and a rifle that doesn't want to shoot... can't tell the difference anyway. I'm happy to let the benchrest guys attend to every tiny detail. I would rather spend my time shooting.
