On the approach to landing

[duey]

silentsoulsleave308holes

 

I was referring to foxing2nigts recommendation to load to touch the lands, if you are an inexperienced home loader and do this incorrectly then it can be dangerous as a lot of the target shooter that load Berger's into the lands soft seat them by reducing the neck tensions and usually have single shot actions which are stronger and take greater pressures than most 'standard' rifles.

 

I predominately reload to gain consistent accuracy for hunting, not target shooting, but i have spent many hours over many years developing my knowledge on my rifles as you have done

 

my four inch groups started with quality factory ammo 4-5 shots inside 1" then a flyer that put the group to 4" and that was why I started home loading. loading my own round to factory spec still did not resolve the problem, the problem improved when i pushed the seating forward to 0.020 off lands and increased powder charge to get the speed back up to 2800fps and was only solved when i went to 165gr bullet heads from 150gr after i found that i had a 1-10 twist and not a 1-12 which i believe is a more common .308 twist rate in factory rifles ( I may be wrong)

 

I have always used Lapua Brass batched by weight (.5gr batches) Nosler, Sierra or Lapua heads, Federal Match primers, N140 powder

Brass is all flash hole de-burred and primer pocket uniformed, neck turned and fire formed. It is only neck sized with RCBS comp dies and only has shoulders bumped when head space is an issue. each measure of powder is checked and each bullet is measured with comparator, probably the only thin that i do not do is check concentricity because as i said load for hunting and for the pleasure and satisfaction of doing so and not bench rest. perhaps I do too much for a hunting round but I enjoy it. they may not be perfect but they do their job and i believe that i know what i am doing

 

Ian

[silentsoulsleave308holes]

indeed quite right you are

 

seating to the lands can be dangerous

 

as a rough guide seating all the way back at saami produces a pressure almost the same as the spike experienced when seating to or near the lands

 

however when somebody starts loading out and out increasing in length then pressures drop because of the gained case volume so a shooter will increase the powder charge to up the pressues to gain speed but when they get close the the lands the pressure can suddenly rocket and what would be a charge of say 44gr varget 308 cal at seated 2810 or touching is now an increased charge of say 46gr because the reloader upted the charge when seating was done in the middle some where off the lands say 30thou back for example

 

thats when people run into problems