Ring marks = bad?

[Prc329]

I was loading some 155g lapua for this weekend to try in my savage. I upped the max load by 1 grain and I got a ring on the bullet when seating it. I thought that might not be good so i disassembled the cartridge and backed the charge down by .5. No more ring.

Am i right to assume ring = bad?

[Jicko]

Originally when I was facing the "ring mark" problem, I thought it was "compressed powder".... but then later on, the problem was actually caused by "mis-sized" cases.

So, you should shake your round and make sure that you hear "nothing", if you are hearing "anything", the powder wasn't "compressed".

You shouldn't get a ring mark from powder, if the powder wasn't compressed.

And then for my problem, once the sizing problem is fixed, the "ring" is much less pronounced, but I *still* have a light ring.

Finally, I have to use a dremmel to smooth out the seating stem in order to "fix" my "ring" problem. Go to my mk262 thread to see the details regarding "smoothing" the seating stem.

[rksimple]

A little more seating pressure may be necessary for a compressed load. Sometimes, the little stem that seats the bullet will have a sharp edge on it. You can take it out and polish it a little and the problem should go away.

[awheelman357]

the reason for the ring is you are starting to compress the powder in the case so the is more resistience on the bullet when you are seating it. just make sure you watch out for pressure when shooting those. a little ring is not going to hurt anythingit is the base of the bullet that most important