measuring bullet seating depth

[Hunt]

new to this so I need to learn how to measure my bullet seating from the lands. I will try berger VLD and they recommend testing various distances to the lands, how is this measured?

[Mrskylinetou]

There is a tool on midway u can get. If u have a semi auto yr limited on yr magazine length and all bolt action that have a mag u push into there is a limit on the length. Single shot u can do what ever works for the gun. On my howa bolt the mag length is long than the seating length I want so it's not a problem. It can be a little complecated to get it right the first few time so load lots of different length. If u can't close the bolt don't force it.

What I did was took some brass I didn't care about and size it, press in a round waaaay far out and try it. Press in some more try again. When I got it to fit with the bolt closing without any problem I took measure ments set it aside. Then took the measurements with the tool and compaired. There are hundreds of tables online.

What gun do u have. Maybe someone already went through this and can help.

[Boots]

Mrskylinetou, thanks for the info on the Howa. I have a Howa .308 bolt as well and haven't gotten around to reloading for it... but real soon! So this helps me along.

Hunt, what I did (for my semi auto .223) was to take a fired brass, decap it, but don't resize it. Then take a bullet and insert it just enough so it doesn't fall out. Then carefully insert in and close the bolt all the way. For my AR, I used the forward assist to make sure the bolt was fully closed and the breach locked. Then I carefully pulled the bolt back while keeping my finger pressed on the bullet to prevent it from being flung out and carefully removed it... paying attention to nothing touching the bullet tip.
I then measured the overall length.

From what I understand, you then want to subtract .002 from that measurement and that's what you want to seat your bullet at. Now... you want to do this with every type of bullet you might be loading as the ogive (shape) can be different for each one and where it begins to touch the lands.

In the end, it doesn't really matter with a semi-auto .223 (AR) because like Mrskylinetou mentioned, the magazine limits the OAL and it just happened to be the case with mine.

[foxtrotuniformlima]

I use one of these: http://www.midwayusa.com/viewProduct...tNumber=570611

[Mrskylinetou]

The over all on an ar is 2.266 or really 2.260. 67 or 68 won't feed a full mag. I load mine to 2.264 and never have a miss feed. I load a ton of 223 all the best match grade. It take me well over 4 hours to make a hundred rounds and there all perfect to my standards. I'm sure it's simple to others. My last load I got it knock out in two but I think the tv next to the bench isn't helping. I'm starting to Molly coat all my rounds. I can help u out quit a bit on there if u like.

[Boots]

The over all on an ar is 2.266 or really 2.260. 67 or 68 won't feed a full mag. I load mine to 2.264 and never have a miss feed. I load a ton of 223 all the best match grade. It take me well over 4 hours to make a hundred rounds and there all perfect to my standards. I'm sure it's simple to others. My last load I got it knock out in two but I think the tv next to the bench isn't helping. I'm starting to Molly coat all my rounds. I can help u out quit a bit on there if u like.

I haven't checked the over all on my AR chambers, but when I used my technique with a Hornady V-Max 60 gr, I got a over all 2.384 on one AR and 2.375 on the other. But as it is, my mags top out at 2.26, so I'm basically loading between 2.55 and 2.60 with my ammo.

[Hunt]

I am shooting a Tikka T3 lite in 7mm-08, magazine fed, bolt action, it sure looks like there is plenty of room in the magazine for longer bullets. Thanks for the info will check into all of it