A buddy that was attempting to make an affordable device that predicted neck tension well before the seating process, ran a year long test. I was part of the test. We tracked thousands of rounds using balances that were kernel accurate and procedures that ensued charge weights and ogive to base were consistent on seated water sorted, kiss turned brass.
In a nutshell, here is what we learned regaurding seating pressure:
- Soft seating <25lbs worked well on chambers were the lands created the final seating depth. (of course you'd never want this in a field gun) In a gun with jump SDs were very high - the worst of the bunch
- A lot of combinations non-turned brass run sized of seated round -.002-.003 could produce over 100lbs of seating force with higher SDs
- 55-35lbs seemed the sweet spot for normal custom chambers.
All that said, in a nut shell, I've won positional matches with factory ammo. I now minimally prep brass (will FL/Bushing and use a Trimiit to get both iinside and outside in one pass), do not sort, run a A&D with auto Trickler for super fast powder drops seat on an arbor. I do move any outliers off to the side and use to zero or foul, but other than that call it a day. For PRS/NRL most of the targets are large and fairly close.. It is the wind, time and wobble that make us miss... not a bit of imperfection in the ammo.
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