Seating bullets into the rifling

[RGRobinett]

Presuming a L.E. Wilson type straight-line bullet seater, one need only establish a reference point based upon stem-length. Here's a link to the method I used since about 1983 < https://bibullets.com/stuff-2/ >
This always works: with a particular reamer, it very repeatable. RG

 

[BoydAllen]

I have a few Hornady cases that were tapped using fully-formed brass and a few that were bought from Hornady with unfired brass. If I had one of each type in the same cartridge, the difference should be the difference in shoulder-to-base.

Again, I don't share my exact results with anyone so those variances don't matter. The tools I use are highly repeatable on my bench and quick. If I have a new box of bullets or new chamber, I can find my hard jam point in five minutes.

Alex has stated that he does seating depth with his customers and needs a way they can all reliably repeat, and cannot afford such shortcuts and differences. I tip my hat to the bolt strippers because I've never gotten good at it and I probably won't for fear of sending my ejector pin parts all over creation.

When you have your pin punch through the hole that the roll pin came out of, put a heavy duty zip lock bag over the head of the bolt and punch, so that it is gathered up around the punch shaft, and pull the punch out of the bolt, closing the bag as you do. . The pin and possibly the spring will be inside the bag. If you need to jiggle on the ejector to free it up you can do that through the bag.

 

[Dave M.]

the wheeler method uses disassembling the bolt. I have no desire to do that with my bolt.

Then you have no desire to do it correctly, can’t get perfect results with sub par effort. Just use your Hornady gauge and keep doing it your way then. The Wheeler method is quite easy and I could have disassembled and reassembled my bolt twice in the amount of time it took me to write this post.

Dave

 

[BoydAllen]

Back in the day, when experimenting with a PPC, using neck tension appropriate to 133 (.003) I found that I never stuck a bullet as long as I was at least .003 shorter than jam. That is one of the reasons that, these days, I want to know touch and jam. For the former I find the method that Alex Wheeler made a video on to be the most sensitive/accurate.

 

[Link]

Yes, neck tension has a lot to do with jam.

 

[gpoldblue]

"Touch" is the only reference point that can be used to accurately keep track of throat erosion.

 

[JFrank]

A barrel off touch point can be just as accurate.