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Is this normal?
hadjii
Member Posts: 976 ✭✭
So, I am reloading for a new Winchester 70 in 25-06. Looking at several different reloading manuals, for 115-120 grain bullets, a lot of them are listing an OAL of anywhere from 3.155 to 3.250. Specifically, for a 120 grain flat base, Spitzer bullet, the OAL is 3.250. Using my hornady OAL guage, I'm getting a max OAL of 3.130 to the lands. My question is whether more rifles than not are short throated like this. If I'm not mistaken, this throws the reloading manuals off, because pushing the bullet deeper than the manual gives will increase pressure. I experienced this doing my load work up. I'm seating this particular bullet .025 off the lands for an OAL of 3.105, and at 48.0 grains of R-17, that is 2 grains under their given max load, my primers are way flat, definitely showing signs of high pressure. If I could get some opinions or insight into this, it would be appreciated. Thank You
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Comments
To me it sounds like you're measuring Base-to-Ogive, NOT OAL. But I could be wrong...
OAL can be measured with calipers from the base of the case to the very tip of the bullet.
BTO is measure using an adapter on your calipers to go over the nose and rest on the Ogive just above the full diameter of the bullet. This automatically gives you a shorter measurement because the tip of the bullet is inside the adapter and the calipers measure from the point of contact on the Ogive.
If you decide to use OAL just use the regular caliper blades and set your length to the book length.
Best.
The 4 powders I've tried so far are ramshot magnum, H4831SC, Reloader 17, and IMR4831. The 4 bullets are 117 gr Sierra gameking, speer 120 gr hot cor, Remington 115 gr ultra-bonded, and just starting to work with 110 gr nosler accubonds. The best load I've had was 59.5 gr of ramshot magnum behind the 115 gr Remington @ .875" for a 3 shot group, but the primers were so flattened that they were mushrooming, and I thought the heck with that. Way too much pressure for me. I've had several groups that had 2 of 3 shots @ .5-.75", but inevitably 1 shot was anywhere from 1" to 2.5" away. I'm not getting that figured out very well. The simple answer is shooter error, but I doubt that's the answer when I can take cheapo federal blue box factory ammo and put 3 shots into a .75" @ 100 way more times than not.
Some folks do that BUT it violates several rules of reloading.