Bullet Base to Ogive advice

[mtang45]

I'm stepping up my precision reloading to measuring bullet length from ogive to base for the first time. I just measured 50, 7mm Berger 168gr VLD's and found variation from .732" to .736". The results of the 50 measurements were;

7 @ .736"
21 @ .735"
18 @ .734"
3 @ .733"
1 @ .732"

This appears to be a normal distribution; is this variation from high to low typical, good or excessive in bullet lengths? If my goal is to continue to shrink group sizes, should I toss out the 11 extremes and only use the 39 .734" and .735", or is this variation so small it really doesn't matter?

Thanks for your input.

 

[Scott Harris]

That's a pretty tight spread and you can just shoot them without sorting. .010 difference and then it starts to pay to sort......at 1K yards. 600 yards and shorter, I think the variance matters much less.

 

[mtang45]

That's a pretty tight spread and you can just shoot them without sorting. .010 difference and then it starts to pay to sort......at 1K yards. 600 yards and shorter, I think the variance matters much less.

Thank you scotharr, thats just the confimation I needed ;D

I will load them up!

 

[Leaddog]

The next variable you will find will be case head to ogive variations of your loaded rounds. This is induced by your seater stem's contact point forward of the ogive. Much has been written on these forums.

Before you load, you may want to weight sort your bullets although I've found the Berger's to be pretty consistent.