Is monitoring seating force a rabbit hole worth going down?

[Wheres-Waldo]

I’ve been on an Eric Cortina YouTube video kick lately. One piece of gear he seems to use fairly frequently in analyzing his brass torching is an arbor press with a force indicator.

I could see this being useful analyzing consistent annealing as well as keeping tabs on consistent neck tension and seating force.

The conundrum lies in the question of whether or not the juice is worth the squeeze. For the cost and effort of maintaining an arbor press and Wilson die alongside a conventional press for sizing, and the wrapping around the axle of interpreting what a force gauge would show, will it give a performance gain on the range (for the purposes of practical precision rifle, not f-class or BR)?

For the same reason I got rid of my FX120i, sure it throws more accurate loads for me, but for the 3-5 FPS it trimmed off my ES, I’d rather invest that money elsewhere in precision rifle.

For anyone that has one and uses it, or used it and shoved it on a shelf... was it worth the time and associated ass-pain?

 

[nn8734]

I just use a fl sizing die (standard exp ball assembly), Forster micrometer seating die, chargemaster (uniflow for ball powders) and never had any problems developing a load that performs to my needs/expectations for any of my rifles.

Neck tension, seating force consistently, powder throwing consistency all drive muzzle velocity consistency. How consistent you need MV to be will be determined by what you need the target to look like after the shots are made.

for prs, id say it isn’t strictly necessary but def is for F class which is Cortina’s wheelhouse.

IMO most including me miss targets due to wind pattern interpreting and adjustment vs vertical dispersion driven by inconsistent MVs. Here im referring to a practical/tactical shooting environment. BR/Fclass, tight control over those load consistency variables are more critical thus require more investment in time and equipment all things equal.

 

[nn8734]

FYI

Arbor Press with gauge question

If you were sorting by seating pressure do you go by initial break over pressure or final seating pressure?

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