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Seating to Mag Length

AHart76

Private
Full Member
Minuteman
Feb 14, 2017
171
81
Haubstadt, Indiana
I am reloading for my first time. I finally have everything set up, all my brass prepped, and I am ready to start charging cases and seating bullets. I use this gun for PRS type matches and will obviously want these to feed flawlessly from a mag. I am currently using the PMag AICS mags in my 6.5 Creed in a Hunter 700 stock. My question is how many thousandths below mag length should I seat my bullets from base to Meplat? .015? .030? .060? They have to feed reliably. Thanks!
 
Measure your magazines and see what the internal length is. I would then recommend having at least 20 thousandths (.020") of clearance to leave space for meplat differences.

You can always start a little long and then seat the bullets back more and more until you get the results you want.

I have also considered grinding down the interior dimensions of my magazines to give me a little extra room to seat bullets longer but it hasn't been necessary yet so I haven't bothered.
 
See what works. HP's typically vary more than plastic tips. Sometimes cartridges will fit a few in a mag, but jam up at full capacity. Mags can vary, so check all that you plan to use.
 
I loaded up some dummy rounds I planned on running mostly through Pmags since they have a shorter COAL then my other mags...I learned that a solid .10 off was a must but it varied enough on the round. I couldn't risk it with what I was loading. Saved me a headache of loaded rounds that I couldn't mag load.