.300 WinMag & Ruger M77 bullet seating

[PGJPJ]

Greetings all

I have a question about bullet seating. I read in the Nosler reloading manual (5th addition), that they don’t recommend seating their spitzer style bullets (I’m guessing this includes BT’s and AB’s) to the 3.340” maximum overall cartridge length, since the bullet would be seated too deeply. However, my Ruger M77 has a somewhat limited magazine length, and I’m concerned I won’t be able to exceed 3.340” by much, if at all.

I haven’t measured yet, and I will still do the procedure of finding the landings, then backing off about 0.020” from that, but what can I do if my magazine limits the cartridge length to 3.340”? Am I out of luck, and have to use a different style bullet? My Speer doesn’t mention anything about this, but some of their max load data is compressed.

Or what is the problem with just seating to 3.340” with the AccuBond bullets? I wish the manual would have elaborated on that a bit.

Anyway, I’m new to reloading. Most of my RCBS kit is still in the box unused. I just wanted to read up on everything first and get things clear in my head.

Thanks for the help!!!
Paul
:grin:

 

[old #7]

If you will be using your rifle for hunting and filling the magazine, your cartrige overall length (C.O.L) will be limited to the max functional length of your magazine. My experiences with Rugers have been that the "lead", "free bore" or "throat" is short and you won't be able to seat your bullets much longer than what will function properly in the magazine anyway.

 

[irocbarry]

I load my 300 mag Ruger M77 to the max for the magazine, which is like 3.345, so not much over saami max.
I get great velocity and acceptable hunting accuracy with the 180gr AB, consistently 1 moa with R22 in R-P brass.

I load my dads 300 mag to the same length with the 200gr AB because of the magazine and get 3/4 moa out of his M70 with H4831.

I'm sure I could get better results if I sat the bullet closer to the lands, but this is my hunting rifle, and 1moa is good enough for that.


Barry

 

[whiplash]

Fortunately my .300 Win is in a Ruger #1, so my OAL is WAY out there. But like you, my .308 Win is also limited to magazine clearance. Look at it this way, if you are limited to an OAL, that is one less variable that affects accuracy, and one less thing to worry about. Like you, in my .308, I dont have the option to seat closer to the lands. So you might just want to play with different powder charges and such.

 

[PGJPJ]

OK, so it’s not a safety related issue with bullet seating, more of an optimization issue? I don’t mind that, I was more concerned if it was safe to load Partition/AccuBond bullets to 3.340”.