.308 Reloading help

[Porter24]

Im justing starting to reload my 308, I have been reloading .223 for about a year now. My question is I am reloading 178g hornady, and .180g midway seconds. The COAL in my speer manual is 2.800, but I have been reloading them to the same length as my 150g factory loads 2.725 will this cause any problem. At 2.800 the round in my savage model 10tr seems very tight like the bolt does not want to close but at 2.725 it chambers a lot better. Also what bullets do you guys recommend out of the savage model 10tr or something with a similar twist, for coyote hunting and punching paper.

 

[mb3]

There are a couple of things I would look for: Loading short could cause higher pressure, so I would start with minimum loads, check for pressure and decide what is a good load and length for that rifle. If the longer rounds are difficult to chamber I would check the ogive of the bullet for kiss marks from the lands. You may what to measure your chamber and load a somewhere sort of the dimension you measure (rule of thumb is work long to short- minimum charge- checking for pressure). There are some posts in this forum that explain this process very well. I load a little long, usually .002 short of the lands, but finding the sweet spot was a process.
http://www.snipershide.com/shooting...d-loading-long-range-3-finding-start-oal.html

 

[bruddah]

You need to get the Hornady gage and find out the measurement to the lands with whatever particular bullet you are going to be using (different bullets will give different readings).