seating depth newbie question...

[hardly]

The gun is a Remington 700 vssf in 22-250.  I started reloading the first of the year and have some very accurate loads using the recommended col's.  I have all the length gauge and comparitor gear and have started to experiment with seating depth after reading about how it can increase accuracy and have the following and maybe/probably dumb questions.  First off, my routine has been to use the recommended col and vary powder charges to find an accurate load.  But if I use different seating depths as the variation, can select one powder charge and find my accuracy that way.  Second, I have experimented 52 gr. Amax bullets with loads starting with touching the lands and backing off in .005 increments.  I found that .025 off shot a very tight group but the bullet is just barely in the case and it seems a little fragile.  Is this the way they are suppose to be when you load them that close to the lands.  Am I doing this right, it seems wrong to me.

[KRP]

As long as the bullet is held straight and won't move with whatever type of abuse it may subjected to it is fine.  With a factory chamber and small bullets you may need to seat them a little deeper.

[PA-Joe]

You should have at least one body diameter inside the case mouth.

[beemanbeme]

 Exactly how much bullet do you have in the neck of the bullet?  And how do you fire the rifle?  I have a VS in 22-250 that has never had a cartridge in the magazine.
If you are using your rifle as a carry rifle and will have ammo in the magazine and the ammo will be fed from the magazine into the chamber and so forth, then PA Joe is correct.  You need about 1 calibre of neck grip to properly hold the bullet aligned. Two notable exceptions are the .300 Savage and the .300 Win Mag, both of whom do pretty well in the accuracy department. 
Will the ammo, as you load it now, fit in the magizine?  If so, the proof of the pie is in the eating. Load a couple of magazines full and shoot groups with the ammo being racked sharply from the magazine and see how that affects your groups. 

[LaOtto222]

beemanbeme answer is about as good as it gets.

Neck tension has a lot to do with accuracy. That is why many say to stay within 1 bullet diameter seating depth. You can get adequate neck tension with less than that if you have prepped your cases well. I have gotten very good groups with half a bullet diameter into the neck, but I shoot single shots so I do not have to worry about recoil setting the other bullets in the magazine out or not fitting the magazine or getting knocked out of alignment. The proof is as beemanbeme says.

I want to share some of my experiences with you. I do not have a magazine fed varmint center fire. I have converted all of mine to single shots. One of the reasons being, I do not have to worry about OAL. I am curious why you would start at the lands and work your way back, though. While many rifles shoot well into or just touching the lands, there are many more that do not. I have found that many guns shoot their best .040" to .020" OFF of the lands. I too was worried about touching the lands, and I was disappointed when I found that the throat was long, making it difficult to reach the lands, if at all. I spent considerable amount of time making sure I was into the lands and working up loads to be safe. Now, I start at a reasonable distance from the lands. Depending on the bullet/case I am using. In a 223 for instance, I start with the base of the bullet at the base of the neck, unless the bullet octave is into the neck and then I seat it out a little more. I then try to find a load that gives good accuracy as well as good velocity that is safe. I then start working out from there. If I approach the lands, I am looking for velocity changes (using a chronograph) being careful they do not start increasing. If it was a warm load before touching the lands, it probably will become a hot one when it comes close or touches. Load development has become much simpler for me since I have taken the away and work closer approach. While it is true that many bench rest shooters find their best loads touching the lands. The bench rest shooter is very meticulous in his case preparation, bullet seating, having a "tight" neck, turning necks to match and load development. More than a lot of folks want to mess with. I think for the average shooter, staying away from the lands is the best way to go. There are many things that effect accuracy. If you develop your load into the lands and then start backing off, you will need to increase the powder charge to reach the same velocities. Chances are good what worked well into the lands will not work well off of the lands. If you start away from the lands and develop your load, then work toward the lands, I think you will find you can find your most accurate load quicker. To simplify - I used to think OAL and develop my load for it. Now I develop the load and then think OAL. For a hunting rifle, reliability is paramount, so you usually do not want to come close the the lands. You want to make sure that the bullet fits the magazine, that the bullet will stay put under recoil (not good if it backs out) and it chambers easily. Good Luck and Good Shooting

[Grumulkin]

Neck tension has a lot to do with accuracy.

I have at least a couple of reasons to think this isn't as true as you think.

Some time back, I was loading Barnes TSX bullets for a 30/06.  Some of the bullets ended up being so loose in the case that I could easily move them in and out and turn them by hand while others were firmly seated in the case.  I took 3 cartridges with the loose bullets and 3 with the firmly seated bullets and, guess what, the cartridges with the loose bullets shot the tightest group.

Also, some years ago, I lived near a gun club that had periodic bench rest matches.  There was one guy there who was quite a bit more proficient than the rest of us.  He had great anxiety if his rifle (a 22-250 if I remember correctly) wasn't shooting one holers at 100 yards.  He came to the range and used the same 5 cartridge cases for each 5 shot string reloading them on the bench after each 5 shot string.  The bullets were so loose in the case that he seated them by hand.

When you consider 65,000 psi in a 300 Weatherby Mag. or even 25,000 psi in lower pressure cartridges, neck tension is a fairly small part of the forces involved.

[LaOtto222]

I never said that neck tension had to be great, I said it had a lot to do with accuracy. I even said that I have shot accurately with way less than 1 bullet length in the neck. More properly, neck tension has to be consistent. If you load your bullets with finger tension, they have to handled with GREAT care and most definitely shot one at a time. I have experimented with finger tension in the neck. I have even seated them out too far and let the lands push them back into the case. To do this you must have the neck turned to just the right thickness, so that went fired and the neck relaxes, it has just enough tension on the bullet to keep it from slipping from gravity. Then you do not have to resize the case or neck. Or you resize the neck using bushings to get the neck to just the right tension to push the bullet in with your fingers. These are bench rester techniques. They have special cut throats and chambers to allow this. If you have a special chamber (non-standard) and load the rounds at the shooting bench, you can get away with it. I load my rounds at a loading bench in my basement and transport them to where I shoot. I found I could not rely on the bullets staying put until I got them into the chamber and pulled the trigger. So, if you load up your rounds a head of time, this is not a good technique because there is too much chance of bumping a bullet in too far and not being able to get it back out (with out tools), or a bullet from falling out all together or bumped out of alignment, been there, done that. The main thing is consistency. Every load from the first to the last is as close to the same a possible. For most people having enough tension to firmly hold the bullet is best, but again, it needs to be consistent (the same from one shot to the next) with neck tension, OAL, concentric, constant powder weight/volume, etc. Books have been written about loading techniques for top performance (accuracy), and I do not have the time nor desire to write one here. I have found that load development is easier if you start well away from the lands and after you find your best load, start experimenting with OAL, if you want to. In many cases I find that I get good accuracy .040 - .020" off of the lands. It will not win bench rest competitions, but I get good accuracy, under .5 MOA with repeatability with standard chambers.   

[hardly]

beemanbeme  - single shots from a bench only, i don't know that i have ever had a cartridge in the magizine.

[LaOtto222]

Sorry if I got too long winded and off subject a little. I am not Bee Man, but if the bullet will stay in the case during your everyday use, it does not fall out or get "tipped" (not concentric) and you are getting good results, be happy, you found the magic combination. Who cares if the bullet sticks out a long way as long as it shoots well? You can try different bullets to reach the lands too. If your rifle will handle them, the 60 grain V Max is a long bullet for it's weight with a decent BC. If you have problems keeping the bullet in place, may I suggest you put it into the neck just far enough to keep it this way and then start working your way back into the neck until you find the OAL that shoots best? You may find that .050 into the neck is enough, it depends on your neck tension. Again who cares where the bullet sets as long as it shoots well and stays put? I suggested working from inside out because a lot of factory chambers can not be reached with a desired bullet. It is not unusual to have the lands far from the neck. Manufactures do this on purpose so there will not be an over pressure situation with any possible factory ammo you might put into it. It makes it difficult to reach the lands in some guns and impossible in others. That is why I suggested working from the inside out, but to each their own. Bench rest guns where this is common practice, the throats are custom cut for the bullets being used. If you are looking for bench rest groups, I suggest you get a quality barrel with a custom cut chamber and prep your cases for that chamber. Good Luck and Good Shooting.

[beemanbeme]

Trying to compare a factory rifle (like I shoot) with a one off bench rifle made by an elf under a hollow log somewhere is often like comparing apples to oranges.  We have to work to a whole different game plan, some of which is unknown unless we want to go to a whole lot of trouble. We don't know how long the leade in our rifle is, nor where the rifling starts. We have to go hunting it. We don't know if our chamber was cut with a new tool and is kinda loose or with one that is worn and near it's end and is gonna be kinda tight? We can buy all sorts of thingies to measure with or we can use empirical methods that are less than perfect but, by God, they work.  We can learn a great deal from the Bench Rest crowd but where we go wrong is to take a single facet from their entire regimen and make a doxology out of it. 
A classic example is this bullet jump thing. Somewhere along the line, it became "writ in stone" that if your bullet was nuzzled exactly xxx thousandths away from the lands or lightly touching the lands, it would turn any crappy pray and spray loading into a tight, bug-hole winner. Some folks believe in it so strongly that they suggest it as a starting point in load developing. The whole concept, of course, is the closer the bullet is to the lands, the less it can go awry but in the real world of normal people and factory rifles that doesn't compute. (Bench shooters practice pulling the trigger between heart beats ) I am in agreement with Laotto. It may or may not have an effect on your load but it will be one of the lesser contributors.  Depending on what sort of rifle I'm loading for, I like to know where the lands are but I don't even own one of those thingies to measure it with. For a target or varmint rifle, I use the blackened bullet and trial and error method.  Then I back off enough so if I try a different bullet with a different profile, I don't have to start all over again. Once I've found my super-duper load, I'll try a turn closer to the lands and a turn further away to see if that helps. If moving closer helps, I may try moving a little closer. You see where I'm going, right.  No Virginia, each time I change the bullet jump, I do not rework the load.  With hunting ammo, magazine length and absolute reliability are the first two items on my list.  Reasonable accuracy is good but there isn't any real world difference between a .5" load and a 1.5" load.  Especially if the fellow can shoot that 1.5" group each and every day from field positions.
And now we can talk about "free floating" being the be-all, do-all, end-all ................
In the FWIW dept, I had (still have) a 22-250 in a 700VS that I shot in factory matches and took to WY for Pdogs shoots and such.  It was a winner.  Each spring, to adjust for the eroding throat, I would reset the COL using my sloppy trial and error type of measuring and then run the results over a Chrony. I would then add enough H380 to bring the cartridge up to speed and continue to kill Pdogs and win factory matches. When I sent it back to Remington to be rebarreled, I daresay it would not have 1/8th inch of bullet in the neck of a finished cartridge.

[hardly]

thanks for the help.  I'm on a big learning curve and it seems the more i learn, the more i find that i need to learn.  sure is fun though, wish i had started this years ago.

[Tom W.]

I don't crimp anything except handgun loads, so my neck tension is whatever the sizer die makes it. I have some 30/30 cartridges loaded with 150 gr. GameKings that look like deformed .303 cartridges the bullets are seated out so far. But all I have are Single shot rifles. I've had the chance to tinker enough that they all shoot well.

[beemanbeme]

I had a friend back in Memphis that had a room full of rifles. They were all sporter weight rifles and he had never shot a single shot on game. He would buy a rifle and tinker with it, bedding and adjusting the trigger, etc.  And he would work on the loadings.  He would keep on keeping on until he felt he had squeezed the absolute Nth degree of accuracy out of that rifle. 
 
Then he would put it up and buy another one in a different calibre and start over. 

Don't get me wrong. Trying to get all you can get out of a rifle is where the fun is.  But don't get frustrated when you read someone in cyberspace say "I won't keep a hunting rifle that won't shoot .5 MOA", and you just can't seem to match it.  He may be selling a lot of rifles or he may be shooting one shot groups.   If you're really wanting to shoot little, bitty holes in paper, you do need to read a couple of articles (if you haven't already) on bench technique and wind flags. 

[GameHauler]

Good read for me
Thanks Guys for your posts
Mike

[Sweetwater]

In the "FWIW" department, I had a rifle (still have it) a long time ago that would not consistently shoot anywhere. Some days the groups were a couple inches, while other days I couldn't keep it on a pie plate. Frustrating! I tried different bullets, different primers, different powders, different pressure points, different sights. Nothing made a consistent difference. Note the word 'consistent'. Nothing done once makes it a keeper. It has to be repeatable, consistent. So far, nothing was repeatable. One day, just before that year's hunting season, I was reading my favorite gun rag and the particular article of interest was about sizing dies and the manufacturer's tolerances in their construction. I read the word 'inconsistent' and my heart jumped. I did a double-take." Due to case neck thickness being manufactured inconsistent and mfg tolerances in sizer dies, some sizer dies may not size some cases properly to maintain a consistent bullet pull so necessary to accuracy" is a reasonable paraphrase of what I read. The light bulb came on. It did not address how much bullet pull, simply consistent bullet pull. I went to my local trading post and procured a new sizer die to begin the experiment. My recently re-sized batch of mixed headstamped brass required considerable lube and pressure to navigate the new sizer die. I redid every case for that rifle that night and went hunting the next day. Hunting for consistent accuracy. Found it!! Load development was quick and rewarding. Not only would it group all day under 2inches, it put nearly all groups into that size hole, or less, and shot my favorite 150gr load and 175gr load to the same POI! Now, how often does that happen? This rifle has aways since that day been a totally 'consistent' performer.
YES, neck tenson is very instrumental to accuracy. It has to be 'consistent', even if it's absent!

Regards,
Sweetwater

[beemanbeme]

I totally agree with Sweetwater. Folks will tell you that neck turning will not help a factory rifle but I disagree.  It gives you a more consistant, even neck tension, ergo bullet pull. And the times I have used it, it has given me a measurable increase in accuracy.  In my case, not enough so that I neck turn hunting ammo but if I am shooting a factory match, I will probably be shooting neck turned brass.
I use one of those Forster neck turning gizzies and even tho you only do it once for the life of the case, IMO, it's one of the tedious little tasks like you don't look forward to.