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Some of Y'all may be shocked and mortified to find that in the old days, and the old Speer manuals that no mention of OAL was often mentioned concerning the various bullets used.
We used to simply set our seater die either with a factory shell, or by whatever would fit in the mag, and then work up a load beginning with a suggested starting load. I suggest you do the same. jd
As a matter of fact, I can remember when hardly anyone even had a caliper for measuring cases or OAL. EVERYBODY owned one of the notched case length gauges, and that was how they set up case trimmers.
Most guys, who admittedly were loading for their hunting guns, would have looked at you with confusion if you asked them about a bullet to lands measurement.
I turned "hardcore" sometime in the eighties, and started experimenting with seating my bullets out as far as the rifling allowed, and then bumping them in a smidge further. Never really knew what a "smidge" measured, but I shot some pretty good groups. Of course I also shot some excellent groups with some bullets that were probably seated a quarter inch off the lands.This simply wouldn't be possible these days.
jd