COAL Work with me here please

[I SHOOT STUFF]

Just a thought, as I'm fairly new to reloading (loaded and fired, maybe 500 rounds total now, with mixed results).

When seating bullets, I've noticed many seat at a slightly different COAL than one another. In the past I have adjusted the die for each and every cartrige, to make the COAL as close for each round as possible. but I began to think, this would, in actuality, make the distance from bullet to lands vary moreso than if I let the COAL vary from round to round, because the part of the seating die that touches the bullet is close in diameter to the diameter of the barrel/lands, and thus, the LENGTH of the round varies from bullet to bullet becaus of discrepencies in the ogives of each bullet; therefore letting the COAL vary slightly may do MORE to achieve a uniform DISTANCE FROM LANDS.

AM I RIGHT?

[royinidaho]

The way that I look at it is that bullet length usually isn't uniform and doesn't make "that much" difference.

However, the distance seated from the rifling makes much difference.

The trick is sort bullets by distance from base to Cal. diameter on ogive. Or by surface bearing length.

Then seating die setting remains constant for any given length of bearing surface.

This is pretty poorly explained but you may catch my drift.

There are simple tools that are used to make these measurements.

[EddieHarren]

I agree with Roy. You cannot measure the COAL of loaded rounds by measuring to the tip of the bullet. Bullets vary in length far to much. You must measure to the ogive.