OAL Question

[divingin]

Seating stem is hollow; it hits the bullet at the ogive (or thereabouts.)

Using the Hornady tool, you get an OAL length for a specific bullet that touches the lands. So you seat a round by trial and error until you get to the OAL length the tool said (or however much shorter or longer you're looking for.) Assuming the bullets are all identical, all's good. In reality, there will be some variation due to differences in bullet base to ogive measurement, but it should remain pretty close.

[westcoastr]

I have a Hornady curved OAL length gauge, and found the design lacking. The largest cause of variability is the over sized bore the flexible rod rides in. You need to use the exact same pressure when pushing the bullet into the lands. If you push too hard, the rod will flex to the outside radius of the tool bore and add 20+ thousands easily. Even if you use consistent pressure, the rod can be in a slightly place every time.

[boyguan]

I just got a set of lee dies. The stem is hollow but when you adjust the depth it pushes on the tip to get it where it needs to go. The hollow part is adjusted by turning the entire die and not the fine tuning knob