Ah, seating depth. You need to ask yourself what kind of reloader you are.
There are really two approaches to reloading, and you need to decide what your goal is:
Do you want to wring the last bit of accuracy out of your rifle?
Do you want to make ammunition that has acceptable accuracy for your application.
If the former, keep doing what you are doing.
I fall firmly in the latter camp. I started out chasing the last tenth, but after I figured out how many rounds I fired and range trips I made trying to make already good groups smaller, I stopped.
For some people, reloading is as much or more of the hobby than actual shooting, and there is nothing better than tinkering with different powders, and charge weights, and seating depths to try and eek out the best possible performance from your load and rifle. I am not that person.
What I do is set it so there is about .020" jump to the lands, assuming I can get that long and still fit in the magazine.
I then tune the load to the rifle with the powder charge. I have never had a problem finding a load that has acceptable accuracy for the application.
Is it the best possible seating depth? Doubtful, but it has always worked for me, but it will almost always be better than whatever the "OAL" number published on the loading manual says.
Yes, I admit I am leaving some potential accuracy improvements on the table. For me, it is not worth the extra effort and time, plus wear on the barrel to find that last couple tenths.
If you are getting 2-3" groups at 200 yards, that is 1 to 1.5 MOA, which is decent for a factory rifle.
Unclenick said:
Their value Ptmax is the equivalent of SAAMI's Maximum Average Pressure (MAP). They give it in bar instead of psi. Multiply bar by 14.5038 to get psi.
On Edit:----never mind, see below----
There is a big difference between SAMMI and CIP pressures for the 8mm Mauser/8x57 IS , but that is beyond the scope of this conversation (
but not this one, if anyone is interested).