Navigators say that it's harder to get where you want to go if you don't know where you are when you start. Same for load work up.
You say, ".............each 1 thou further off the lands. Man am I blown away. Group 1 is a sighted group and was old powder and seating depth was probably .015 off lands and head space was probably around 5 thou due to malfunction in my set up." I find these statements concerning. Here's why.
You're pretty close to what other folks, including me, use for 6mm BR loads, but you're far from finding Nirvana for your particular equipment.
Remember, you're trying to shoot very small groups by making appropriate changes in parameters, some of which will be different when you compare you're equipment with mine. And, since we do our testing by measuring bullet holes in a target by shooting a gun held by a human as the bullet travels through an unknown atmosphere, there is a large quantity of "noise" associated with data collection. Our job is to detect what we hope is meaningful data and filter it out of the "noise". With that in mind, you MUST control as many variables as possible as you test ONE parameter at a time.
Take seating depth, for example. Some folks experiment with seating depth first and some do charge weight testing first. Suit yourself, but I establish a reasonable starting seating depth first based purely on experience and try to discover a promising charge weight by measuring mean radius of my group sizes while also putting significant emphasis on muzzle velocity SD.
Then I load five or six 5-shot groups at that charge weight and test various seating depths, again searching for the best mean radius. Next I select the best seating depth and do fine tuning of the charge weight in small increments as I search for the lowest SD and smallest mean radius.
Other's use ladder testing or other methods. Suit yourself when it comes to testing procedure, but do it in a scientific way.
Mean radius is more meaningful than group size because group size only considers the two worst shots in the group. Few people calculate mean radius because it's so tedious, but I scan my targets and use On Target software to measure and catalog the groups. It automatically calculates mean radius and other important measurements. It's cheap and easy to use. Plus it will output your data to a spread sheet where you can study it in a meaningful way. I recommend it. What I don't recommend is trying to measure performance where a few thou one way or another makes the difference between good and not-so-good by using a coin or a carpenters tape.
Back to seating depth. Berger published a good article on seating for their VLD bullets. Read it here:
http://www.bergerbullets.com/getting-the-best-precision-and-accuracy-from-vld-bullets-in-your-rifle/
Some people find good results jamming the VLD's and some jump them a great deal further than I would imagine before I read the article. Certainly changing your seating depth by .001" during a preliminary work up session is a waste of time. You are WAY too early in your load work up process to be fine tuning seating depth in increments of .001". Your seating tests with VLD's should start out, at a minimum, with five 5-shot groups each separated by .015" or .010" at least. Zero in with finer testing later on. As others have suggested, you need to measure your seating depth and cartridge length by measuring CBTO, Cartridge Base To Ogive. Over All Length, OAL, is a poor second choice since high BC bullets vary quite a bit in length. Hornady sells an inexpensive kit which attaches to your calipers.
The most concerning part of your post is your reference to "old powder", implying that the other groups are using a different powder. That kind of testing is a fools errand. If you're testing charge weights, measure your powder very carefully and change nothing other than the charge weight. You gotta' use the same batch of brass (all carefully prepared in the same way), identical bullets, identical seating depths, same powder lot, and you have to make this test ammo all at the same time using the exact same loading procedure.
Otherwise, you're just wearing out your barrel because this kind of testing won't give you real data. You'll be left scratching your head. You might as well just toss in 30.2 grains of Varget, seat your VLD's with a .015" jump and with .0015 neck tension, and call it done.
Bottom line: There are lots of ways to skin this particular cat and I'm not saying you should use my testing procedure. But I will say that taking a precise scientific approach to testing, whatever your exact procedure might be, will yield better results in a much shorter period of time.
