SmallCaliberCentral

Anyone know of a quick way of finding COAL in a rifle?

Lightly collapse the neck of a fired or new case (dent the neck lightly), place bullet in neck, insert in chamber, close bolt. Done deal!

Thanks!

From 6mmbr.com on May 23rd, 2008

RELOADING TIP: Andris Silins has come up with a simple way to measure length to the lands in your rifle:

“Here’s what I did to find length to lands for seating my bullets. I made four cuts into the neck of fire-formed brass. Then I pressed the bullet in lightly and chambered the entire gauge. As the cartridge chambers, the bullet slides back into the case to give you length to lands. It took less than five minutes to get it cut and working. A little light oil in the barrel just past the chamber helps ensure the bullet does not get stuck in the lands. It works great and is very accurate.



I made the cuts using a Dremel with a cut-off wheel. You can adjust tension two ways. First, you can make the cuts longer or shorter. Longer cuts = less tension. If you used only three cuts insted of four you would get more tension. The trick is to be gentle when you open and close the bolt. If you ram the bolt closed you may wedge the bullet into the lands. When you open the bolt it helps to keep a finger or two near by to guide the case out straight because the ejector wants to push it sideways.”

I tried it in my 22-250 and it seated the bullet at around 2.500, now the book says 2.350 max?

No worries, it's just how it should be. Here's why.
The book value is a guide, and is always lower for safety and legal issues. Guns out of a factory have chambers cut with reamers built to a SAAMI spec (The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute). The the ammo manufacturers build ammo in accordance with the SAAMI spec so there is no problems. I'm not sure off hand what the SAAMI spec is for a 22-250 chamber, but I'll just say for this disscusion it's 2.400. Your reloading manual knows this and HAS to set the max lower than what the spec is, and in reloading manuals it's 2.350.

This is done for safety. As a bullet appraoches the lands, and is even jam fit into the lands (as bullet #3 below), pressure increases, possibly to very dangerous levels. We can talk about freebore here, it is related, however an entirely different disscusion. When a bullet is seated into the lands it is held in the case by the lands for a given period of time, if this time is too long, and your case is on the hot side, it becomes VERY dangerous. You are alright playing with seating depth changes up to what the book stated (2.350) without much worry of increasing pressure beyond a danger level. This is why it is so important to measure your chamber length and always measure bullets off the ogive and not overall. So, people who have not measured their chamber (with a the high end, patent pending, super expensive, top secret gauge explained above) should DEFINITELY stick to the book value. However, you know your bullet doesn't touch the lands until 2.500, but proceede with caution.

A 22-250 reamer.


NOTE: This is just an aside, but quite interesting. The 6PPC is the most accurate 100yard cartridge in the world. The long bullets in the 6PPC are always jam fit into the lands, they actually load them longer than the chamber so the bullet is pushed back upon closing the bolt. Because of this they run some super high pressures, and very heavy actions. The bottom picture shows how nicely the bullet is stabilized in the case and in the rifling, leading to consistency and accuracy.
The top bullet picture is representative of a SAAMI .204 chamber and a short 20 cal bullet with a large "jump" to the lands, it will never acheive the accuracy of a jam fit 6PPC.

Sorry about the french image, I used it because it shows perfectly what I'm talking about.
This images was used to illustrate freebore.

Thanks!

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