Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Full Length vs Neck Sizing

Mule Deer, thats a mouthful...!
Thanks for the reply, I may have learned something.
I have been thinking about reloading as I have a couple of rifles that I believe I could improve accuracy over off the shelf ammo, which in today's world might be wishful thinking.
After reading your comprehensive reply I wonder if I want to breach the handloading rabbit hole.

Barrel life is not of great concern these days as I am at the point there is more in the mirror then in the windshield and am looking forward to wearing schit out.

Boattails and accuracy, still trying to understand how a bullet can stabilize at longer distances. In my mind it strikes me a wobbling bullet will continue wobbling in continuously bigger cycles, maybe shows my lack of knowledge regarding physics.

Boattails and barrel/throat erosion, I can picture what you are saying in regards to pressure on the side of the bullet compared to a "sealed" cup and core, analyzing this minuscule detail is well beyond my pay grade and obviously you have researched this in depth, and shared that without opinion, what is your opinion on the matter?

Krags, the US was slow at figuring out spitzer bullets, and Teddy was pizzed at being outgunned. I wonder how the Krags would have performed if they had loaded 160 G pointy bullets, or for that matter just used 6.5 x 55s.
They were stuck on 30 cal and heavy bullets much to their detriment.

What an informative article! The content is like a doctoral dissertation but it reads like Louis L'Amour Thanks for posting it. I learned a bunch.

All elongated bullets "wobble" slightly as they leave the muzzle, due to the powder gas blasting the base of the bullet--but boattails tend to wobble more than flat-bases for the reason stated in the essay. But if the bullet spin from the rifling is sufficient to stabilize the bullet, the wobble dissipates.

Some shooters call this the bullet going "to sleep." It generally takes longer for boattails to go to sleep than flat-based bullets, due to the powder gas causing more muzzle-exit wobble--but at longer ranges they don't drift as much in the wind, so tend to group better than flat-bases.

MD, all very interesting. thanks

Essay indeed! Thanks for your time JB.

Thanks, but all I had to do was copy and paste the article/chapter!

Which is one reason we started publishing the Gun Gack series of books in 2015: They look more closely at many aspects of rifles, handloading and shooting than the typical Internet forum post, sometimes with more technical details. But apparently many shooters/hunters still prefer shorter Internet "sound bites," mostly because they're free.

But the first GG book is now in its 5th printing, and the 4th (which appeared a month ago) is well on its way to selling out its first printing. This seems to indicate at least some shooters prefer more detailed "essays."