Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Best practices for loading bench rest grade ammo?

neck turning, square case mouth, primer pocket uniforming, primer pocket drilling to 3/32, primer flash hole deburring, weighing cases, adjusting OAL for specific rifle, match grade primers, match grade bullets. What'd I miss?

Buy in bulk!

A shooter who is never steady cause he puts more time into ammo than the range (grins)

Weight sorting bullets, sorting by base to ogive, sorting by bearing surface length, trimming meplats, re-pointing, loaded round concentricity, straightening rounds, annealing, de-burr and buff inside the necks, segregate rounds by seating force, weighing primers,(yup, I know one who does). Hell, we didn't even get into the various different "match" bullets, primers, or powders.

Only you know where to draw the line.......

I don't know about the rest of us, but I don't take a benchrest rifle hunting


Just load a lot of ammo with as little fuss as possible and spend as much time as you can at the range... I cull the high run-out stuff for offhand practice so I have an excuse for missing a gong once in a while Everything under .003 TIR is used 'for record'

Most of this work is of no use at all. Many benchrest shooters don't do all that. Tony Boyer doesn't weigh cases but he does use Lapua brass.

Here's a few things to do:

1. Make sure your rifle is capable of its best accuracy. If the barrel, bedding, etc. is mediocre nothing else matters.

2. Learn to tune your load. Pick a powder and load groups of 3 over a range of powder weights. Seat the bullet as long as the magazine will allow and shoot the range of loads.

3. You will notice (or should) that your groups will get smaller or larger with each load. Once you find the powder charge that gives the best accuracy do it again with a different powder.

4. After selecting the powder that gives the tightest groups then adjust your seating depth by .005 at a time. Usually you will get your best accuracy with the bullet touching the lands or even into the lands a smidgen.

5. After all this sit back and realize this: if you want to shoot groups then build you a group shooting rifle. If you intend to hunt all this effort and expense is only worthwhile if you want to really get an ego boost by having a super accurate hunting rifle. It won't amount to a hill of beans in practical hunting use.

#6 find a tape measure to keep in your backpack for impromptu penis measuring sessions...

Preferably metric, sounds bigger.

At the top of this web page, click on the icon, RELOADING, and read Barsness' two-part series on accurate reloading. It says it all.....

Buy Mike Rattigans benchrest shooting book and buy Tony Boyers book if he ever finishes writing it. Get a good benchrest rifle, learn to shoot it, get real benchrest bullets it likes, not store bought, tune your rifle to them then you can worry about all those little case prep tricks and see if they make any difference.

Dan,

When you take a 700 and lap, true, cut, and square one, or build off a clone, add a surface ground lug, Jewell trigger, Krieger barrel, bedded in a Mcm stock, it's a BR rifle in general terms, and still looking for the ultimate in accuracy.

BTW, if your gonna start measuring your Johnsons, you might wanna go by square inches. Keeps the cheaters at bay by not being able to hang a brick from a string.

PS, based on the original posters other thread, it's a Sendero in 300 Ultra he's dealing with.