Soft Seating

[Cort]

What are the pros and cons of soft seating your bullets versus jamming your bullets? How little neck tension do you need to soft seat? Is there an accuracy difference? It would seem that soft seating gives a more consistent relationship between your bullet and the rifling; especially if your bullets are not quite consistent.

 

[Travelor]

Upside: My experience in seating bullets into the lands has been that I get better and more consistent accuracy.

Downside: BUT if the line is called to a halt, it really sucks when you bullet is left in the barrel and powder gets EVERYWHERE in the action.

Concerning neck tension, I am not experienced enough to help here other than I shoot for .002" on Factory guns loaded for single loading and .001" on custom barrel guns shot single loaded. Why you may ask? - I have no idea other than I think I read it some where once.

Dumb I know.

I would think a soft seated bullet would be very prone to moving inside the neck if you were loading at home and carried the rounds to the range in a cartridge box as opposed to loading at the range.


George

 

[Shynloco]

Travelor,
If I may be so bold as to add something to your line:

"Upside: My experience in seating bullets into the lands has been that I get better and more consistent accuracy."

As a general rule and from everything I've read, your statement is correct. HOWEVER, not always. I have various cailber rifles and that rule has held true in most, but not in one particular weapon - and that is my Ruger M77 22-250. A couple of my friends measured the headspace in that weapon and both came up with a reading of .080. Those readings were taken with two different manufacturers measuring tools. So I started experimenting with loads and increasing the Ojive measurement of each 5 rd group by .010 until we reached the .080 + measurement. What I found was that the accuracy didn't increase in the group sizes from that of what the Sierra Manual recommended as the OAL. In fact, once I got to .050, there was a dropoff of group sizes. Further, the tighest overall group was the OAL shown in the Sierra Manual. That weirdness has not happened in any of my other rifles. In fact with my Ruger M77V .308, the groupings increased dramatically once into the lands by .025. Go figure!. Guess not all things are constant depending on the weapon and perhaps caliber.

 

[bheadboy]

Cort, my thoughts run in two directions,

hunting, have a tight case/bullet seat to keep them stable on recoil in the mag. then work on jump/bump / velocity/powder for the best group

target, modeate seat of .002case neck inside id below bullet od, then work on jump/bump powder etc.
usually the .002 will keep the bullet in the case if chambered then withdrawn unless you really jam it.

Bob

 

[ReedG]

Ahhh, opinions ... never met a subject I didn't have an opinion on!

Seriously, try it. The chamber in your rifle is unique and it will soon tell you what it likes. In generalities, I think ...

1. "Loose seating" or "loose jam" is an iffy thing. Each bullet is going to seat differently into the lands. Will they all stop at the same point on their ogive? Hard to say.

2. If you are dealing with a factory chamber, I think you will have poor results.

3. Neck tension and bullet jam, IMHO, are designed to accomplish the same thing. In the early days of BR shooting, they had terrible brass and had to turn necks down as far .0075" to get a consistent neck. Doing this took away almost all the capability of the neck to provide tension on the bullet and, therefore, the concept of jamming the bullet into the lands to get better ignition and combustion came about. Today's modern, e.g. Lapua, brass is of such good quality, with necks only needing a precursory touch-up to make 'em consistent, can leave you with .013 for neck thickness and plenty of neck tension. With a load like that, jamming the bullet into the lands has little improvement in my loads.

I'm currently working on loads for a new 22 BR and have found that 52gr. Bergers seated .005 off and .000 at the lands have little difference; .005 into the lands and groups are visibly more concentric and smaller; .010 into the lands groups go to heck. All of these are with .002 neck tension on brass with .012 necks.

4. One thing to keep in mind in these discussions about loading techniques is "your mileage may vary" ... there are so many variables from one chamber to another, bedding, barrel weight, trigger pull, skill/experience, ad infinitum, that it's hard to compare. I have had several models of .223 Rem. rifles, some identical, which responded differently when loading for them.

Try it, enjoy it and keep us posted.

 

[Cort]

I need to give a bit more information here so you all can focus on my setup. I am using a 6mm BR built with a single shot Stiller Predator action with a 14 twist Shilen barrel and a no turn neck chamber with .040 freebore. The intent of the rifle is casual target shooting only so sticking the bullet in the barrel is only mildly inconvenient. Curtis and the gang at Stiller recommend a .010 jam. They finished the rifle for me in the middle of July but I still haven't had time to fire it. My first loads should go down the tube next week when my vacation starts. After I have formed the brass to the chamber, I plan to start the great experiment to find what the rifle really likes.

I appreciate your insight here.

Cort

 

[Bob3700]

OK here are my thoughts/methods,

I shoot NRA MR and LR prone with a sling. Iron sights and scope. Both of my rifles are 6mms so here is how I seat bullets.

I soft seat using minimal neck tension with the bullet seated .030" long. That way the variations in bullet length (and green box bullets have their share of variations) are rendered moot.

With the long seating of bullets, you always get the same seating depth cause the rifle does it for you. As the bbl throat wears, you don't have to chase it because of the jam.

How to get that light neck tension. Most will neck turn until a complete clean up 360 degrees. Then use a Redding type S bushing die. You may have to experiment with neck thickness vs bushing diameter to get the neck tension that works best.

My bullets seat into the cases with just the weight of the RCBS Rockchucker press handle dropping down. I check to see if I can turn the bullet with my fingers. If not, then I am good to go.

The one thing that you must watch is the necks will harden with use so annealing every 5th loading is recommended. That keeps the neck tension consistent.

Hope that helps you.

Bob

 

[RonAKA]

My Savage 6BR seems to shoot best with a 0.010" jam, and 0.001" tension in the neck. Is that soft? Not sure, but I have had the bullet stay behind, and dump all the powder into my action, so it must be at least a part jam. Nasty when that happens.

 

[nam72]

I'm grateful for you guys on forum. I've learned so much to improve my reloading ability . I sure am glad you stated the bullet seating using the weight of the handle.But I can't get anywhere near to jamming the lands.So I suppose I should shoot for a tad more pressure on the handle.