Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Bullet seating/ fact or fiction?

We seem to have this obsession to get an exacting seating depth, jump to the lands etc for perfection.
.001 off the lands or .050 can make be all I need and it must be precise. ( or devastating)
Oh yes, and the powder charge measured on a high quality digital scale.
Could these accuracy issues simply be a case of the case being out of alignment. Runnout?
I fussed like seating depths myself late into the night, using micrometer seating dies. I thought rocket science was like that until I stumbled onto the GS Custom site and its owner. They make CNC , land riding bullets that are seated to the drive band and load development was quick and easy.
Maybe this super uniform bullets should be started in a super uniform case?
Most handloader's speed case prep, it can be a blurr and slow down to seat the bullet perfectly.
I use a case gauge these days during the process now during case prep.
Any thought about bullet runnout as the primary culprit?

Accuracy for what purpose? Competition? Hunting? Or "just because"? Bragging rights maybe?

Not judging, just asking.

Bob

www.bigbores.ca

Hi Bob, I am a hunter and shoot positions but the question goes beyond that and my skills.
I just wonder about our obsession with the bullet seating is overdone a little, and dismissing the thing that holds it straight.

Can’t get the exact bullet distance to lands unless bullets are sorted by ogival length.

Slight variations in ogive are probably part of the reason so many newer bullets (and not just monolithics but lead-cored high-BC bullets) shoot very well when seated well off the lands. That, and tighter-diameter throats in many newer rifles, including factory rifles.

Obsession is a condition known only to a few in the US anymore. Shooting Loonies are on that short list. Every gun and every trick we use to make them rise to our goals is subject to modification. Is a perfect way to keep fertile minds occupied.

FWIW, I have found that seemingly minor things (Infinite Menu) are surprisingly influential in our undertaking. Don't knock .001" until you beat it to death.

If you can afford to shoot GS-Customs.
You should have someone else load your ammo....
I have shot them and I didnt think they were anything special accuracy wise..

From a standpoint of accuracy.
Bench rest accuracy.
Everything you listed and I few you didnt come into play.
Run out is just one issue of many.
dave

Runout is definitely a culprit, much more than small variations in powder charges. (That's assuming a well developed load to begin with.)

A while back I demonstrated this to a friend who had a couple of 308 rifles known to be good shooters with handloads I had assembled. My friend's grandfather-in-law had given him a large quantity of Lake City Match ammunition. I measured and segregated a bunch by runout and got him to shoot it, but I didn't tell him the details of what I'd done. Just shoot batch A on target A, batch B on target B, yadda yadda. The effects of runout were clear.

Brass prep is important for accuracy, up to a point. Making your brass a nice shiny color by putting it in a polishing thing overnight...not important. Neck turning, not important, so long as you have sufficient clearance, no donuts, etc; otherwise neck uniforming could be very important, and so long as you can sort for neck thickness abnormality. Primer pocket, flash holes, etc etc probably not that important. A concentricity gauge will tell you a lot about your technique and results.

Seating depth is important for accuracy. Some bullets don't seem to mind, others seem to really feel their feels if you don't seat them at a depth they like.

I think that we often make things much more complicated than is necessary. (But that is part of the fun, I guess.) I also think that we often fool ourselves into thinking that the issue upon which we are concentrating is having more effect than it actually is having, given all of the factors (those involving the production of the round, those that are environmental, those that have to do with the firearm, those that have to do with the shooter) that go into where the bullet actually winds up.

I do not believe that is so. If you restrict the conversation to mechanisms, it's in there, but the problem with accuracy today is almost completely the fault of the Internets.

We have better rifles, components and powders today, but humans are always are the weak link that fails the most. Both a shooter's skills and his mindset.

For hunting, people think every rifle should be capable of 1/2 groups or less. Their expectations are too high, and come, in large part, from the Internets. More to the point, they are upset when their latest Cabelas purchase, a Remington 700 for example, cannot group as well as some of the target pix posted here and other boards. The majority shoot factory actions with factory barrels, cradled by factory plastic stocks with canted scopes. And factory ammunition.

Some shooter's have questionable shooting skills. They scrunch up behind their rifle, and look like " a dog f*cking a football". There are people who give golf lessons, dance lessons, driving lessons, etc., but not many shooting instructors. And of them, most are handgun instructors.

Bullet seating is just one thing in a list of things that make groups smaller. The most important way to shrink your groups is to practise shooting.

Bullets made now days are not as temperamental about seating depth, but still like to be seated straight. Minimum run out is always key to helping attain good consistent accuracy. Regular ol die sets can be adjusted for minimum run out. My standard RCBS dies produce less than .003" TIR

I discovered by accident that bullet seating depth sometimes influences accuracy. I was working up a 30-06 load of 180 grain Swift A-frames for hunting, using never fired cases. I knew nothing about seating depth and had the bullets seated well off the lands, all the same depth of course. With the powder used I started having compressed loads before I got to the max recommended so I seated the bullets out a bit for the last couple of half grain increments. I'd been getting quite poor groups, mostly 2 ½ or larger and one 2 inch. With the bullets seated out a bit, suddenly the groups dropped to ¾ and ½ inch. I backed down the load 3 half grain steps for my hunting load, and the groups stayed under an inch, The only change that I know about was seating depth.

That was in a skinny barreled Remington 700 mountain rifle. My guess is that the difference in seating depth produced a different harmonic in the barrel. All I know for sure was that seating the bullets farther out, in that case, resulted in much tighter groups – consistently for the next ten years of shooting them in that rifle.

I seen bullet runout screw with accuracy. Most guys never check it, I have the hornady gauge and I will periodically check runout. If you have the tool to check runout a lot of you will be real surprised.

I seat my bullets to the COAL specified in the bullet mfr's. manual and have never concerned myself with the distance from the lands nor adjusting seating depth in the search for an accurate load. I have used dies from most major manufacturers and have been able to produce loads that yield adequate hunting accuracy. Recently I bought a concentricity check gage and found that my loads were concentric to .003". Regarding cases I deprime and clean, trim to length and deburr, no attention to them other than that. When starting with new brass I uniform the primer pocket depth and deburr the flash hole.

I use Wilson hand dies or Redding and Forster bushing dies and micrometer style seaters almost exclusively. Those Whidden dies look great too but have yet to try them.

I check all reloads for run-out, hunting and target, on my Jones Custom Products concentricity gauge that I've had for about thirty years. Very seldom get run-out of more than .002" mostly .0005"-0015". Obviously for target shooting, rifle accuracy and your own shooting ability are paramount. However, does it really matter for hunting? Not at the short to medium ranges I shoot deer, but I can't help myself and still check every round for run-out.

Bullet seating depth regarding accuracy, is dependant on the particular rifle, the particular bullet, the powder charge and probably the type of powder and of course magazine length if you're using one. Nothing is set in concrete. Being reloaders and particularly if you've done bench rest or other precision shooting, it's generally deeply ingrained to try and get the absolute most accuracy out of your reloads, whether needed or not.

You set your dies up right and the need to check every round is pointless.... no longer needed. Especially with those fancy type dies you have. I get .003" and less TIR with my regular ol RCBS dies. The proof is always on the target too.. . Some guys put far too much time and effort and money into this chit and then still end up sub par..

Well, you may be right about that but I'm semi retired so I have plenty of time. Also, my 6.5 Creedmoor Tikka T3x will do better than the group of your 338 WM and my new Sako Finnlight II .308 will too with it's preferred load. So maybe, I'm not wasting my time after all and besides it's winter here and I don't feel like going deer hunting.

I have rifles capable of shooting far better then I can. Sometimes I futz around with micro tuning a load but most of the time I just load to known specs shoot a couple for groups and velocity and then go hunting. Many of the operations I do are just for my own satisfaction and to be good enough to eliminate unexpected flyers. Consistency and good set up are usually enough to do this. If the loaded rounds don't wobble around like Mexican jumping beans when rolled across a sheet of glass I call it good enough and don't even measure run out.