Measure OAL of each bullet or take an average? .284 180gr Bergers

[Quinc]

Loading 180gr Bergers for my .284 and wondering if I would see a noticeable drop in accuracy if I took an average of the lot of bullets and then loaded vs taking the oal for each bullet before seating?

 

[ShootDots]

If you are talking about the base to tip>>>you will get vertical.. I found that you have to do 1 of 2 things.. First, I measured the base to tip and found in 2 different lots a total difference between longest and shortest bullet was 44K! That is horrible! So you have to either 1.) sort enough bullets within say 5K, to fill 1 match plus sighters; OR 2.) sort he bullets using the base to ogive into batches that are within a few thousandths of each other THEN take the shortest bullet and trim the meplats to that length and point them.. In either case it is tedious, laborious work. However, at 1000 yards you WILL get unacceptable vertical if you do NOT do that... I for one simply switched to the 180 Scenar "L".. I have found them to be no more than 1K difference from base to ogive and no more than 7k total variance from base to tip! No sorting necessary! I have found the JLK's to be in the same parameters as the Scenar "L".. I am slowly moving in those directions..

 

[Quinc]

Should have been more clear; measuring the base to ogive. I will have to give the Scenar's a shot! (pun intended.)

 

[ShootDots]

If you do not measure the Base-to-Tip and do not sort that way too, you will have vertical past 600 yards.. All the sorting, trimming and pointing was becoming not only time consuming, BUT annoying too... You pay to have a bullet "right" and then you have to take your time to "make them right".. I do not like that approach one iota.. I would rather pay a few dollars more and have bullets that are "right" straight out of the box!

 

[GSPV]

Another route is to buy custom bullets. Bob Cautercio makes nice ones and is great to work with.

 

[Quinc]

Another route is to buy custom bullets. Bob Cautercio makes nice ones and is great to work with.

These look pretty dang interesting!
7mm 189 gr BT VLD (.2848 Dia.) (BC 750 @ 2700 fps)

 

[Jay Christopherson]

If you do not measure the Base-to-Tip and do not sort that way too, you will have vertical past 600 yards.. All the sorting, trimming and pointing was becoming not only time consuming, BUT annoying too... You pay to have a bullet "right" and then you have to take your time to "make them right".. I do not like that approach one iota.. I would rather pay a few dollars more and have bullets that are "right" straight out of the box!

While I agree with your sentiment regarding bullets that are "right" out of the box... IMO, you are completely wasting your time measuring bullets base-to-tip. If you have drawn some sort of correlation between base-to-tip variation and vertical stringing past 600 yards - then I would say the test that led you to make that correlation was not setup or designed very well.

 

[Lapua40X]

During my bench-rest period I spent more time sorting, measuring, weighing, etc. than I did shooting. It got awfully tedious. Nowadays I try to sort my long range .284 180 Bergers to length within a .007 tolerance. But I don't get too excited about it if one slips through. As for naked bullet base to ogive, I figure that when the bullet is seated the ogive doesn't know where the base is and that it's only relying on CBOL to be within kissing range of the lands. Any minor effect the difference in naked bullet length might have that relates to seating depth variables on pressures/velocity seem to be negligible.