Watch how relatively little seating depth affects muzzle velocity, all while causing way bigger changes on paper than these little velocity changes cause -using powder. If your seating change leads to 10 or maybe even 20fps, then go ahead and replicate the same velocity change with powder, and you will not see anything likewise from that.
This means seating and powder are not of the same function, with a flip of the coin choice.
Nobody wants to consider it, but I say seating is not tuning at all.
I think seating adjustments are primarily affecting bullet bore interface.
At optimum for a particular bullet and bore, the bullets slip right into the bore without an inconsistent resistance. That's where a seating issue is cleared.
And I believe that if you measured/recorded barrel vibrations, as Harold Vaughn did, you could identify where optimum seating is, based on the measure.
Where you're not shooting a tiny underbore, that needs high starting pressure to reach competitive pressure, then you're likely to find optimum seating well off the lands(OTL). Once you find this, you will not have to fiddle with seating again for that bullet, for the accurate life of that barrel. Well, that is if you keep using THAT bullet. This is because the ever receding lands are mated to that bullet.
The optimum land relationship is maintained.
With this, it doesn't matter what your powder or load is, optimum seating will fall right where testing shows it to be for this bullet and that finished barrel. The only trick to this, in a sense, is that full seating testing has to actually be done to see this. 99.x% of reloaders are never doing this, and of the .x% who do, they don't do it correctly. They're merely trying to 'tune' with seating. To find better than powder alone, instead of actually finding best seating (regardless of tune). In other words, they cannot separate seating and tuning in their minds.
But try this; imagine seating as you would consider swapping primers.
One of the primers could turn out the clear winner for you, but is that tuning?
I think most would agree that it is perhaps optimizing ignition,, clearing a less than optimum condition, and not tuning. Yet it's important, can have a big impact on results, and you should optimize it,, like seating.
This means seating and powder are not of the same function, with a flip of the coin choice.
Nobody wants to consider it, but I say seating is not tuning at all.
I think seating adjustments are primarily affecting bullet bore interface.
At optimum for a particular bullet and bore, the bullets slip right into the bore without an inconsistent resistance. That's where a seating issue is cleared.
And I believe that if you measured/recorded barrel vibrations, as Harold Vaughn did, you could identify where optimum seating is, based on the measure.
Where you're not shooting a tiny underbore, that needs high starting pressure to reach competitive pressure, then you're likely to find optimum seating well off the lands(OTL). Once you find this, you will not have to fiddle with seating again for that bullet, for the accurate life of that barrel. Well, that is if you keep using THAT bullet. This is because the ever receding lands are mated to that bullet.
The optimum land relationship is maintained.
With this, it doesn't matter what your powder or load is, optimum seating will fall right where testing shows it to be for this bullet and that finished barrel. The only trick to this, in a sense, is that full seating testing has to actually be done to see this. 99.x% of reloaders are never doing this, and of the .x% who do, they don't do it correctly. They're merely trying to 'tune' with seating. To find better than powder alone, instead of actually finding best seating (regardless of tune). In other words, they cannot separate seating and tuning in their minds.
But try this; imagine seating as you would consider swapping primers.
One of the primers could turn out the clear winner for you, but is that tuning?
I think most would agree that it is perhaps optimizing ignition,, clearing a less than optimum condition, and not tuning. Yet it's important, can have a big impact on results, and you should optimize it,, like seating.
