seating depth?

[matts318]

I have been reloading for some years now and have a savage 10 FP in .308 that i am now trying to reload for good accuracy, my question is how do you know if your .005 to .015 of the rifling? how do you measure that accuratly? Ive been reloading ever since i was old enough to work a press but im a little overwhelmed with the huge amount of reloading stuff and techniques for quality ammo so any advice from the veterans here would be much appreciated!

 

[Bigwheels]

The cheap way is to pinch a fired brass with your fingers 'till it will hold a new bullet in place by itself. use a magic marker to color the bullet,& insert it into the brass just far enough to hold. Caefully insert the dummy round into your breech,& slowly close the breech. Remove the dummy rnd,being carefull not to disturb it's length. Measure it,& remove the bullet from the brass,& double check the length with the scrape marks on the bullet.(Thats why you colored it).Replace the bullet into the brass,& double check the length.Do this with a few different bullet/brass combinations to get a good reading average.This is where your lands are.
Or you buy the guage that does it. Several companies make them.
Then back off .005"- .015" (by the book).This may be too long for the magazine.If so,then you have no choice than to seat the round to the max. magazine length,& go with it.OH,Yeah.Make sure you have at least a bullet diameter seated into the brass too.Good Luck. :grin: