what tolerances should be held to be competitive?

[chevytruck_83]

What kind of tolerances need to be held to be competitive? Specifically regarding base to shoulder measurements and base to ogive but why not open this thread up a little to powder charge velocity spread etc. I'm at the point where I'm trying to decide what's worth the squeeze. Competitive for me I'm gonna say would be 3/4moa out to 500 and 1-1.5 @ 1000. I would be happy to hear what you more talented reloaders/shooters are capable of and weather or not a little extra is worth it. I'm bumping my shoulders now and I like to be at .0015" bump but I get plus or minus 2 thou. Is that worth sweating?

 

[Shynloco]

Chevy,
I like your .0015 goal and keeping it at .002 MAX is best. Several factors go into accuracy and the shoulder bump tolerance is just one of those factors. You can drive yourself NUTS sometimes if you demand too tight a tolerance, yet keeping the lid on .002 should get you get good results IF all others factors are tightly controlled as well. Just my take.

Alex

 

[dkhunt14]

No, I bump .02 or more. I have never found it to be detrimental to accuracy. On the WSM I go as far as .005. I shoot in the lands so I don't get much case stretch. As far as consistency goes, after annealing I can hold .001 from case to case after sizing.

I use a Wilson seater die and arbor press and can hold .001 on bullet seating. Holding a one MOA to 1000 is not that hard if your load and gun is good.

I feel it is better to be consistent from round to round and is more important then the amount you do it. Matt

 

[Danattherock]

I agree strongly with that last line^^^^

As the OP eludes, the juice ain't always worth the squeeze.

Don't ask a bunch of type A keyboard commandos. Test it yourself. See what's worth it, what matters, and what doesn't. Be honest about your skill level, talent, ability of your weapon systems ability to realize the benefits of your labor, etc.

Test and measure powder charge variance, neck turned vs non neck turned, primer pocket reaming/cleaning vs just tumbled or brushed primer pockets, sorting brass by 1-2 tenth grains vs 2-3 grain lots, volume testing case capacity if that's your thing. Runout less than 2 thou vs runout less than say 6 thou. Test on paper and be objective. That's the only way to know if the juice is worth the squeeze. My reloading routine got very simple as I went down this path.

Dan
NC

 

[6BRinNZ]

I definitely think a little extra is worth it...there is nothing more frustrating than making a good wind call and having it go to a 9 high or low (Fclass)...the extras are not so much about tighter as they are consistency. IMO if you know what your rifle will do on any given day you will shoot with confidence and that in turn will add points.
Some things like seating depth (which IMO is a large contributor to precision and day to day consistency) are not hard or expensive to achieve a .0015 ES, and can be detected by an average shooter with a good rifle, but do come with a time cost.

The real trick is figuring out which areas are worth putting a little bit more into.

 

[Joe R]

And then the wind and mirage crash the party...

 

[BoydAllen]

Most of my non 6PPC critical loading has been done helping a friend who has several top built long range rifles that were built for non-competition use, but which are shot with the highest expectations for accuracy. Short range test groups needed to have bullet hole cut bullet hole. In that process, we ran into a bump runout (excessive range of runout using the same die setting) that we cured by annealing just enough to uniform the bumps (two calibers) without loosing neck tension to the point where feeding from the magazine would be a problem for concentricity. Having a large shooting budget he bought a two torch rotary annealer, and three different heats of Templiq to set it up with. Later we got some solvent to reconstitute the one that we ended up using on a regular basis. since it would dry up some in the bottle over time. Beyond that, his dies were a good match to the chamber reamers that his smiths had used (luck), and he seated all bullets with Wilson seaters. Another friend who uses threaded, sliding sleeve type seaters, and who builds his own rifles, to high standards has been able to do small modifications to his seating dies to bring their results up to the level that he gets with arbor press dies. In the chase for concentricity, having a FL die that is a good match for the chamber that it is used with seems to give better results. He uses bushing FL dies. Redding and RCBS. He uses a Chargemaster for measuring charges, not going the full route of weighing an trickling to a finer standard, although he has a scale that he could use to do that. We have had to do some shooting refinement to fix a couple of problems. We have done his load workups loading at the range, taking good notes, shooting over wind flags. He seems to be able to get good groups at 100 yd. even though his rifles have barrels with twist rates suitable for typical long range bullets. He uses SMK bullets for all of his out of state and foreign hunting and has made pretty much all one shot kills, including some very long shots, which he is well prepared for, with drop charts that are prepared for each location's altitude, and expected weather. IMO, his ammo would stand muster for any application, with the exception of powder charges not being quite so accurate as many long range shooters use. Personally, measured at the back of the ogive I like to see .002 or less runout on loaded rounds, and have found this adequate for competition accuracy in short range benchrest matches. It can be trickier to arrive at for longer rounds, but with good brass and good dies it can be done. After annealing (which had to be repeated to maintain the desired results) he had a total range of right at .001 from shortest to longest, for shoulder bump. This was for 7mmWSM and .338 Lapua. I know that this answer has ranged a bit far afield from your question, but I do not think that the information will cause you much harm ;-) Getting back to your question my friend who builds fine rifles shoots at long ranges with some friends a extreme ranges, up to and over 1,000 yards with good results, using cases that are in the range of +- a 6mm Rem.'s capacity, with 6mm and 6.5mm bores, does quite well (to your standards and better) using carefully loaded but unannealed brass. His load workups are exacting, and his shooting equipment is first rate. He competes at short range benchrest, and holds his own quite well.