What sort of powder charge do you use when doing Bullet Seating?
When you try a different primer do you repeat step 1? Or just compare Primer A to Primer B for the powder charge you're using?
I derive initial powder using QuickLoad. It's the fastest(and coolest of fastest) powder that fills the case at SAAMI max pressure.
For full seating testing I'm basically following Berger's recommended testing(COARSE TESTING), with it's prerequisite back down in load.
Starting load as Quiet Texan mentioned ~93% is good. That back down is not for safety, but to be clear of any probable powder node.
You don't need to be going in/out of a powder node while trying to see only results of coarse seating.
Initial primer testing for me has simply been swapping through 4 or 5 different primers, 3sht grouping each.
Like seating, this is a very coarse adjustment. Just looking for what obviously looks best.
What's important to understand in this is that each on my list is mostly independent of one another.
Yeah, everything wiggles into a tight relationship in the end, but they still stand as individual attributes.
And you could test seating later, primers later, but that's a backwards calibration IMO.
How am I going to produce a legit powder ladder if using a wrong primer and worst seating?
And what's gonna happen to my perfect powder node if I change seating and swap primers?
What are the odds that I could just pull the best of primers and seating depth out of my butt to begin?
I go back to seating for a fine testing/adjustment, and then finally to neck tension testing.
If you think I'm adding a bunch of shooting with these things,, I'm not actually.
Coarse seating and primers were completed during fire forming of cases, which must be done for credible powder testing anyway.
It's a logical progression.
It's also logical to reach best hot precision before moving to cold bore accuracy testing.
I could and do mangle hot bore grouping loads for best cold bore accuracy, but I needed to start somewhere.