Bullet batches diff oal

palmer_mike

Well-Known Member
Being fairly new to reloading I'm unsure of what to do....
I have worked up a good load for my .308 using hornady interlock sp bullets. I pretty much left the coal at book length and worked up the powder to find the most accurate load.

i have just opened a new box of bullets from a different batch and without touching the settings on the seating die the new bullet bath is approx 10thou shorter coal

i dont have a comparator, but reversed a sized case and slipped it over the seated bullets to give me something to measure close to the ogive. The different batches measured like this are actually almost the same.

should I reset the seater to give me the same coal or leave it as it is as it appears this is close to the same measurement from the head to ogive?
 
Another shooter was telling me last night of sigificent differences in bullet overall length issues with Hornady .308 168grn A-Max bullets when he opened a new batch of bullets.
 
Sp bullets will vary because of the lead tip being different on every one anyway, the die doesnt seat from tip anyway so leave the die and load them up, the comparator measure is a bit better but measuring is still inconsistent because each bullet still varies, ive have some 142gr smks that varied up to 10 fow
 
Being fairly new to reloading I'm unsure of what to do....
I have worked up a good load for my .308 using hornady interlock sp bullets. I pretty much left the coal at book length and worked up the powder to find the most accurate load.

i have just opened a new box of bullets from a different batch and without touching the settings on the seating die the new bullet bath is approx 10thou shorter coal

i dont have a comparator, but reversed a sized case and slipped it over the seated bullets to give me something to measure close to the ogive. The different batches measured like this are actually almost the same.

should I reset the seater to give me the same coal or leave it as it is as it appears this is close to the same measurement from the head to ogive?

I have loaded 400 of these bullets (in a 308 / IMR 4064) in the last two months and never did more than set the OAL. No change in accuracy but then, I load to spec OAL, not ogival anything.~Muir
 
All bullets vary, in recent checks I found berger hybrids were the most consistant measuring with comparator
 
I guess I have 2 options and I'm not certain which way to go. If I seat to spec oal I will in effect be reducing the jump to the lands by 10-20 thou. If I leave the seating die unchanged and keep the same jump to the lands I will have a shorter oal by 10-20 thou.:?:
 
I guess I have 2 options and I'm not certain which way to go. If I seat to spec oal I will in effect be reducing the jump to the lands by 10-20 thou. If I leave the seating die unchanged and keep the same jump to the lands I will have a shorter oal by 10-20 thou.:?:

Don't worry about the lands. Seat it to spec OAL.~Muir
 
Then don't! As long as it fits in the magazine you can just seat and shoot. It will probably work fine.~Muir

I've only loaded 5 of the new batch so far, so ill probably shoot them at a target to see how they compare.....
 
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