Milady decided that she wanted to mop the kitchen floors and banished me to the reloading bench until the floors dried. Oh, No! While I was there, I decided to peruse my Nosler manual to get ideas for some bullets I got from the UPS man earlier this week, and I decided to use Junior's method of jamming a bullet into the lands to get an idea of the length I should load.
My Savage 110 in .30-06 is my go-to rifle for most hunting tasks. The SAAMI overall length for the .30-06 Springfield cartridge is 3.340 inches. I partially sized a case and started a 150 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip into the case neck, then got out my Savage and chambered that round. Then I measured the COAL of the round. 3.328", shorter than the SAAMI max. Interesting. I made up another case, and jammed it again. Still 3.328. Very interesting. It must be something about my particular rifle and the ogive on that Nosler bullet.
The Nosler manual tells me that Reloder 19 powder is the most accurate they tested with that particular bullet, so I loaded some ammo and seated the bullets so they would be 0.010 off the lands.
Aren't they pretty? I loaded nine rounds, in three half-grain steps under the Nosler maximum load. Early next week I'll see how they shoot.
Re: Nosler maximum load.
ReplyDeleteFor 7x57, the Nosler manual minimum load is above the maxium load in the Hodgdon manual. Hodgdon is probably being careful due to old Mausers like mine but still. . . .
I checked it against three books, Lee's Modern Reloading, The Alliant handbook and the Nosler manual. I'm good. The Lee Manual had it about two grains over what the Nosler manual said was max. Funny thing, as I approached Nosler max, I started getting compressed charges. I don't know how I would have put two more grains of powder in that brass.
ReplyDeleteLooks to me like your seating depth corresponds to the cannelure on the bullet, so I'm guessing that Nosler thinks that depth is OK.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm close to the compressed-powder limit, I vibrate the case with it's powder charge, and that usually gives me at least .10" more room.
I've been looking at that picture, Rivrdog, trying to figure out what that line is. It's not a cannelure. I trimmed and deburred the brass before I loaded those rounds, and that line you see is the top edge of the cartridge.
ReplyDelete