Help me work up a load

[JMP]

JMP,

You are a wealth of information. The only brass I plan on using for this rifle is Lapua. The neck thickness is .016. Which neck sizer would you recommend? I just want to make sure I get the correct part.

Probably .336" or .337", depending on where you want your neck tension to be.

[Rbutler]

When measuring the lands with the Hornday gauge (don't quote me) it was about 2.35 at the lands. When I make any rounds longer than 2.29 it will not chamber so I have been loading them short.

i wanted to follow up on this. will not chamber or will not seat in the mags?

if its a chambering issue then its not a correct measurement. If you have a piece of scrap brass take a dremel and cut a slit in the neck drop a bullet in an place it in your chamber and close the bolt. when you extract the round be careful not to drop it and measure that round to the ogive. do this 3-4 more times and make sure the number is repeatable (each time remove the bullet and re-seat from a long bullet.) this will give you your distance to lands.

if its a mag issue does the SPS have a detachable mag?

[Rbutler]

Probably .336" or .337", depending on where you want your neck tension to be.

just for future reference to find the proper bushing, its a simple math problem,

(neck thickness *2 + bullet size) - .004 (or whatever neck tension you want. .004 is commonly used in the shooting world)

so
(.016 * 2) = .032
.032 + .308 =.34
.34 - .004 =.336

thats how he got those numbers just in case you decide to load for other calibers.

[sammy]

i wanted to follow up on this. will not chamber or will not seat in the mags?

if its a chambering issue then its not a correct measurement. If you have a piece of scrap brass take a dremel and cut a slit in the neck drop a bullet in an place it in your chamber and close the bolt. when you extract the round be careful not to drop it and measure that round to the ogive. do this 3-4 more times and make sure the number is repeatable (each time remove the bullet and re-seat from a long bullet.) this will give you your distance to lands.

if its a mag issue does the SPS have a detachable mag?

Tonight I remeasured the chamber and loaded up a dummy round. It worked great tonight. I was having runout problems which might have caused the problem. Anyway it seems to be working now. I loaded up my last 16 rounds 20 thousands off the lands and will shoot them tomorrow if the wind cooperates.

Thanks everyone!!

Sammy