So, I recently have switched to measuring OAL by the ogive instead of the tip of the bullet and just have a couple of questions. First off, my rifle I am using is a rem 700 that was blueprinted by LRI, and a new bartlein barrel also chambered and done by LRI. When I use the Hornady OAL gauge with the sierra 168s, I come to 2.194" to the ogive. Thats not bumping forwards or setting back. This rifle shoots this really well with 45.4 of varget behind it.
Where this gets complicated, is that in reading here, and from my brother's experience with his GAP 308, a lot of people seem to do very well just seating the bullets to max mag length. For me, that comes to 2.255" to the ogive. Also, this rifle shoots FGMM 168s very well, so when I measured all 20 in a box of FGMM, the avg OAL to ogive was 2.215.
So I just felt like my head was caving in on itself a little over the past week while I have been messing with all of this. I was always taught growing up, that you use the OAL gauge to seat the bullet at the lands/grooves, and measure that, then back off a couple thousandths. This has been the formula that I have used my whole life, and I feel like it has worked fine. I have never loaded anything jammed into the lands, however, as you can see, My method is a full 0.063" shorter than "mag length" (2.255-2.192= 0.063), and 0.023 shorter than FGMM. I did load up what was shooting well for me at 2.192 OAL, and shot it against 10 rounds at both the other two depths today, and the FGMM length shot better than the other two.
So, sorry for the long write up, but I guess my real question, is have I been doing this "wrong" all this time, and is that normal to load the bullet 0.023" into the lands?
Thanks in advance for the input.
Where this gets complicated, is that in reading here, and from my brother's experience with his GAP 308, a lot of people seem to do very well just seating the bullets to max mag length. For me, that comes to 2.255" to the ogive. Also, this rifle shoots FGMM 168s very well, so when I measured all 20 in a box of FGMM, the avg OAL to ogive was 2.215.
So I just felt like my head was caving in on itself a little over the past week while I have been messing with all of this. I was always taught growing up, that you use the OAL gauge to seat the bullet at the lands/grooves, and measure that, then back off a couple thousandths. This has been the formula that I have used my whole life, and I feel like it has worked fine. I have never loaded anything jammed into the lands, however, as you can see, My method is a full 0.063" shorter than "mag length" (2.255-2.192= 0.063), and 0.023 shorter than FGMM. I did load up what was shooting well for me at 2.192 OAL, and shot it against 10 rounds at both the other two depths today, and the FGMM length shot better than the other two.
So, sorry for the long write up, but I guess my real question, is have I been doing this "wrong" all this time, and is that normal to load the bullet 0.023" into the lands?
Thanks in advance for the input.
