This is kind of a follow up to a question I had a while ago. Then I was wondering about seating depth measuring the entire cartridge length. In that thread I discovered that many bullets do not have a consitant base to tip length. It was also pointed out I needed to get a bullet comparator which I now have. My concern in that thread was an accuracy problem with my 300Wby. With my comparator I have discovered that my 212 ELDX are not seated very consitantly they were seated with a regular seating stem. My question now is will my VLD seating sstem seat these bullets more consistantly or am I still missing some thing.
Will a VLD seating stem make a difference in seating depth consistency.
- Thread starter WildBillG
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jimbires
Well-Known Member
can you tell if the regular stem is pushing on the bullet tip ? it should not be pushing on the tip . I had a problem using Hornady dies ,with the standard seating stem , in my 300 wby . I was loading 180 gr nosler accubond bullets . there was a compatibility problem between these bullets , and the seating stem that came with the die set . at times ,the bullet would get stuck in the stem hard enough to actually pull the bullet back out of the case . other times it just partially pulled the bullet enough to cause very erratic seating depths .
It
That's were annealing and turning necks come into play and why even though I turn some necks I use expander mandrels.
It also can be like stated above it you stem contacts the tip of the bullet or the ogive arent consistent on your bullets.
It can be if your necks are not consistent as far as spring back and inconsistent dia. inside the neck.
That's were annealing and turning necks come into play and why even though I turn some necks I use expander mandrels.
It also can be like stated above it you stem contacts the tip of the bullet or the ogive arent consistent on your bullets.
The standard seating stem made a ring about an eighth of an inch below the tip or should I say where the copper meets the tip. I am not sure but I think these cases were annealed before resizing the. Now all of this said I just got the new stem and have not tried it yet. My thought was maybe I should pull these bullets and re seat them or pull them enough to reseat in a cosistent manner.
ShtrRdy
Well-Known Member
If you can remove the seating stem from the die you can measure the consistency of the bullet base to seating stem. When I do this I also measure the bullet base to Ogive. These two dimensions will be different but should basically track each other.
Easy to check if the bullet tips are contacting the stem and if you need a VLD stem. Pull the stem from the die and set a bullet in it, if it wiggles (any play) then the tip is bottoming out before the ogive is being engaged.
Sounds like you got some other things going on too.
Sounds like you got some other things going on too.
I had trouble with 2 of my bullet seaters when i switched from standard to vld style bullets. The standard seaters distressed the tips, (made rings or worse). I got vld seater stems and cured the problem. I no longer sort bullets by ogive length and my OTB lengths are pretty consistent. All of my vld loads jump some amount, so 1-3 thousandths variation is unimportant to me.
From that video it sounds like my VLD stem is ok. It is actually the 21 ELDX stem. The bullet I played with yesterday all stayed within .002 of an inch which is much better then what I had. The only thing now is to go out and see how my loads will shoot.
Proper seating stem fitment can influence both seating depth and run-out. Excessive pressure(neck tension), is more often the culprit for me in that it can effect the consistency of both even with a properly fitted seating stem.
As Bravo 4 said, I test all my stems with the projectile I use. Some dies did require me to swap a vld (eldm/x or ftx) friendly stem in them while others did not. Some Dies didn't give me the ability to swap out stems so I had to swap them out with a different brand that did.
