Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Seating Max Loads Into The Lands

Did you shoot those rounds with cracked necks?

Did you not inspect the completed rounds?

Just curious.

MM

The brittle lot of name brand brass that resulted in low neck tension wasn't immediately obvious. It was so bad I contacted their customer service and they readily replaced the faulty product.

Yes I inspect completed rounds.

You do know that for the most part, handloaders that intentionally load bullets than the bolt will cam into the lands with some significant force, almost never extract or expect, to do anything but fire those rounds.

Hunters that do it, mostly do it out of either ignorance or because they measured or loaded erroneously.

And as Beretzs so ably points out, a kiss is simply a touch, not jammed into the lands at all, & surely not enough to stick the bullet..............some people seem to have difficulty grasping that simple notion & many of those have about zero business reloading.

How did you measure distance to lands on that Rem 760 ?..............seems like you'd need some kind of curved wire, or similar to reach into the chamber with to hold a bullet in place to make the measurement.

MM

It’d have to be a helluva combo for the 7600 to Jam many bullets. Seems like the magazines on most of mine have been way shorter than the throats were. I’m sure it’s possible but you’d might have to work at it.

They did make a curved Hornady tool for that ya know.

The point I'm trying to make is that ammo should be loaded to specification. When loaded to specification it won't be in the lands. I've shot lots of dandy little groups with ammo loaded to specification. If you load so it kisses the lands in one rifle how do you know it's fine in another rifle?

I’d never try the same ammo in another without measuring it first myself.

I’m not debating if off the lands works, cause I load a bunch of stuff that’s pretty far away, but some stuff gets loaded close but I’ve never jammed and in 30+ years I’ve not lost a bullet to getting pulled from the neck.

I think I've done it once. Sort of a lessoned learned for me. Ever since I don't like anything touching the lands. It happened so long ago I don't remember the particulars as they would have been something unusual. Yes, careful measurements can be made and get them to just touch, but it requires alot of time for something that yields little benefit at least for my purposes. For some aspiring gold medalist maybe, but I'm more of an accurate hunter with a little recreational shooting under my belt. I like the product to function without any hang ups.

Surely you jest...............


With that comment, it's really hard to take you seriously.

It literally takes 3-5 minutes to check a gun & a given bullet, & no, not all loads set up for a given rifle will be at the same distance off the lands for another rifle..........even one of the same make. It may be short, it may be long & until you test, you don't know what is optimum for a given gun.

You can easily make "nominal" loads, but w/o testing, when doing that, you get what you get, if you're happy with that.

Each rifle is an entity unto itself, with dedicated ammo to get optimum resilts, so, rarely, will ammo loaded to function in more than one rifle, be fully optimal in both.

But maybe it's good enough form some reloaders.

The very 1st thing I do when acquiring a new rifle is measure the magazine length & the max loaded distance possible for all the bullets that I have for that gun & keep in it a notebook on a page for that rifle.

I may load to shorter COAL's than kissing, depending on testing, or just load to a safe distance off like .010 -.020", but I absolutely know what the max can be for a given rifle & a given bullet..................there is no guessing or just loading to a recommended book value for COAL. Besides, manufacturers have been know to change ogive's on bullet from time to time & you will never know unless you check.

In fact, I just had that happen in 2 different (older) lots of a Nosler bullet.

Like Beretzs, in all my reloading lifetime, I've NEVER pulled a bullet out of a case that was stuck in the rifling, nor have I EVER had a gun malfunction because of any type of handloaded ammunition, EVER.

There are reloaders who load to attempt to get the most out of their guns whether it be for hunting or punching paper, there are people who load to attempt to save money & people who load because they think it's cool.

But those in the latter 2 groups don't have much to offer to the 1st group.

MM

+1 beretzs

Likewise on observing ogive differences between boxes of the same bullets. Manufacturers don't always use the same tooling/setups.

It's difficult to thoroughly explain everything. Yes I check COAL vs land contact. I don't do it all the time, nor is it a 5 minute job for me. It requires setting up a dummy round with just the proper neck tension to sufficiently grip the bullet to hold it after making contact with the lands. It can't have too much tension either. Kudos to someone for making a tool to do this. I don't have it yet. I repeat the process above several times until I get consistent readings. Sometimes the lands can grip the bullet just enough to screw up readings.

I know where the lands are on my rifles. I've found I can hit my accuracy requirements for the duplicate chamberings that I have. My two 308's are very different. A custom Schultz and Larson bolt action and a semiautomatic. If the Schultz shoots them in the 3's (0.3"..), and the semi does 1" at 100 yds for a 5 shot group plus meets velocity requirements it's a good day and a good load. I'm unable to hold the Schultz still enough to exploit its full accuracy capability. It has a generous amount of free bore. I load the 308 to 2.81" OAL so they function in both actions and this generally works well.

I don't have immediate access to the 300 yd range. It's a 30min drive. Someday I shall have a portable reloading bench in the back of the jeep so load development can happen on site.

I have two jobs, so I don't have a ton of time for tweaking. Maybe someday.

I've not jammed one, but I have worked up loads for somebody's two .223 700 rifles and even though I clearly labeled each MTM box of ammo, the longer COAL rounds found their way into the short-throated rifle and jammed it up, dumping powder everywhere upon ejection.

This should help some of you guys with the difference between "jump," "in the lands," and "jam."

Love that vid.

Watched the video. I completely agree with him. I used to measure lands more when I was younger. I still watch out for them, but mostly now it's mag length provided a normal ogive bullet. Cast bullets are another matter. Great video. Thanks for posting Jordan!

Of course, there are 2 givens that must be adhered to that he mentions: Mag length constraints & that jamming is not good.

But he's really saying nothing different than what's been said here more than once, except that he using what he calls a jam point & moving back to find optimum seating depth............the only difference is the starting reference point. Kissing here has been used as the reference point, meaning touching, not being jammed with force. From the end result standpoint, I see no difference.

The other thing he's doing that's really immaterial also is that he's picking a starting point from his reference of -.020" & calling out his loaded round increments from his -.020" starting point & that also make no difference either vs calling out the points as starting point being zero (kissing) & calling out the (-) difference, such as -.010", .015" etc.

Either way, in the end, you find an optimum loaded round COAL............one referenced from a jam point, one referenced from a kiss. But if done correctly, in a given rifle, either way will result in exactly the same loaded COAL.

And he's using .003" increments on seating depths for testing..............I didn't mention that in any of my comments, but I use .005".

Some semantics differences, no real substantive differences; all the same in the end.

One point that he highlights is that "kissing," or what you are calling just touching, is extremely difficult to measure. When guys talk about a kiss, they are actually talking about seating the bullet into the lands by some small amount. Usually this small distance in which the bullet is engaging the lands is not going to cause problems, but as COAL increases, at some point it becomes a problem. It's not just semantics to point out that what actually causes accidental bullet pulling and powder spillage is a hard jam, not just lightly seating a bullet into the lands. I've fired thousands and thousands of rounds that were loaded in the lands by 0.010"+, unloaded many from the chamber, and never had a bullet pull or powder spill. I agree with you that a hard jam can cause problems, I've seen it, but loading in the lands can be done safely and is usually a good place to start load development.

I don't shoot any rifles with loads having a COAL of longer than with just a kiss, ie, the bullet is held lightly into the lands for the measurement.

So all my loads will be shorter, to some number, less that above. If they are loaded to the above max COAL, they will never stick in the lands with anything near normal neck tension.

So no issue, ever, with jamming into the lands.

This is not rocket science, just a simple matter of physical measurements & knowing what those measurements represent.

I'd also be willing to bet that Stick has also never stuck a bullet in the lands either.

MM

Pretty interesting article. Readers digest version if you seat close to the lands your distance is constantly changing due to throat erosion. They found accuracy was actually better at a pretty big jump as mentioned in the article. Of course these guys shoot a lot the average hunter might not shoot enough for it too as big a deal but good data none the less.

https://precisionrifleblog.com/2020/04/28/bullet-jump-research-and-load-development-tips/

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