SmallCaliberCentral

Just a quick question for ya. How much tolerance do you guys allow in your case lengths? I have been making up some loads for retesting tonight and started measuring them to make sure they were all the same and they were varying just a little. My goal length is 2.240, but have been getting anywhere from 2.238 to 2.242. Just wondering if this is acceptable or not.

That difference should not make a noticeable difference if you are not crimping the bullets. If you are crimping it would depend on your type of crimp tool. Assuming that your are not putting a crimp on the bullet you should be ok. The closer the coal to the same the better typically. I'm sure others will chime in.

I'm anal about my loads so I always trim to the shortest case, especially if its good brass thats been fully prepped and weighed.

fishy wrote:My goal length is 2.240, but have been getting anywhere from 2.238 to 2.242. Just wondering if this is acceptable or not.

Having a .004" is reasonable if your using a polymer tipped bullet (what kind of variation do you get by measuring just the bullets only). If you have a comparitor that measures ogive to case head, you'll find that variance should be much less if your reloading practices are consistant.

Very good idea to measure bullets as I've found variations in some older A-Max bullets to be up to .004" from base to ogive. The newer Hornady's are much better in that respect. I've also found variations in bullet length with the Sierra Match Kings by as much as .006". If your going for the "bug holes", weighing bullets doesn't hurt either.