Mr. Jim or anyone else. So I bought all the recommended equipment that Jim suggested. I am doing fairly well. I have the full case resize down to the.002 bump. I am curious on bullet depth. I am reloading 7prc. So I have measured a Hornady factory 175gr ELDX. The COL is 3.295. I have a Bullet Comparator so the factory load is 2.607 to the Ogive. I have a Modified Bullet depth device, and when I use it on my Fierce Mountain Reaper, I actually stick the bullet (not badly) and measure 2.677 to the Ogive on the Bullet Comparator. Quite a difference from the factory. Not sure if it was you or Eric Cortina, but someone said at the point the bullet comes in contact with the lands to back off 20/1000s or to 2.657 by my measurement to Ogive on the Bullet Comparator.
I’d recommend trying a few different seating depths. Jim has a video about it called “this gun can’t miss…” about his mountain reaper where he talks about loading different depths. I’ve also attached an article from Berger about it. I did this for my 6.5CM and found .09 jump worked best for me. After testing and seeing what jump was best I loaded some more and shot yesterday with 3 slightly different power charges to make sure I wasn’t close to a better node and had 2, 5 shot groups at .756 and one 5 shot group at .445 with the hottest load. SD on the small group was 5.1. Definitely a big difference from where it was shooting before. A few extra steps to develop a load but definitely worth it. Can’t wait to load more with that charge and stretch it out to distance!
It’s very normal to be over factory COAL, and OGIVE lengths when you are hand loading. It’s one of the biggest benefits we have… we can tailor the load to our exact gun dimensions. I’m almost always over factory COAL lengths when I reload for 308.
As long as it fits in your magazine / chamber, and it doesn’t sit directly against the lands, then you are good to go. You want to come off the lands .020 or more to not over pressure. There are lots of bench rest guys that leave it touching the lands or even jam a little into the lands, but I would not advise to do that unless you absolutely know what you are doing.
Some bullets are seating depth sensitive, some are not. When I last talked to Hornady about the eldx they said it was not particularly sensitive to changing seating depth. But the only way to know is to test in your particular rifle.
So I think I came up with a decent starting load. From the back of the cartridge to the Ogive was 2.67 to the lands. I backed off to 2.63 seating the bullets. I loaded with 67.1gr of H1000.
Average bullet speed was 2818 FPS.
Looks like you got some good answers from others who have posted. I usually try 30 60 and 90 thou off the lands to see what shoots best. With some bullets like a Berger VLD or some Barnes bullets, you may be more like 150 thou.
