I am now using the Sinclair Hex Nut with a caliper to measure ogive to base for my 22-250 cartridges. It seems to be working well. I am looking for a tool that will give even better results. I was told the Redding Instant Indicater will give even better results. Has anyone used this tool for this purpose or is there a better tool out there?
Measuring Ogive to Base
- Thread starter Poconolg
- Start date
Better in what way? The instant indicator, I believe, will allow you to measure the difference from the shoulder to the bullet ogive, which is what determines bullet jump to the lands. But call Redding to confirm this. I made my own tool for before the Instant indicator came out. The Redding tool uses their bushing die inserts to serve as measuring diameters, so you get to choose whether to measure a diameter that tells you where the bullet will touch the lands or to measure one where your seating die pushes on the bullet.
I want to make sure my bullets are seated to within 1 1 thousands of an inch. I want to do anything to improve my groups. Right now I am shooting 5 shot groups at 100 yds under 1/2 inch. I shoot 8 5 shot groups a week. Of those 8 groups 2 or 3 are 3/8 of an inch and at least once a week or every 2 weeks I shoot 1/4 inch groups. I want more consistent ammo to shoot better. Also what do you think of using JB every couple of weeks to clean the barrel. Right now I use Butches Bore Shine and a bronze brush every 25 rounds.
JB bore paste? I think that is like that stuff they used to show on TV that lets your engine run dry. It actually works. But then it also destroyers the bearings insie of 10 hours or some such. Tried in WWII by the USAAC and it was not worth destroying an engine over.
Ok, frank view. Just because you can measure it does not mean it has relevancy on accuracy.
Efforts are best spent in other areas, more shooting, neck tension, minim shoulder bump back.
I will defer to others, but I don't believe even .005 get you anything.
You can measure powder down to the 1/10 of a grain, how you hold your file affect the velocity variations more than 2 or 3/10 of power difference.
Ergo, once you are at 1/10 a scale that measures .0005 does you no good. A tenth above or a tenth below give you 2/10 accuracy and that's is far more than good enough.
Ok, frank view. Just because you can measure it does not mean it has relevancy on accuracy.
Efforts are best spent in other areas, more shooting, neck tension, minim shoulder bump back.
I will defer to others, but I don't believe even .005 get you anything.
You can measure powder down to the 1/10 of a grain, how you hold your file affect the velocity variations more than 2 or 3/10 of power difference.
Ergo, once you are at 1/10 a scale that measures .0005 does you no good. A tenth above or a tenth below give you 2/10 accuracy and that's is far more than good enough.
I have not used BBS.
What I do use is Carbon Killer 2000 for the most part. If I am looking at copper (usually in older guns) I use Bore Tech Eliminator .
With the CK2k I use a nylon brush, with an eyedropper . Put it on when the gun is still warm at the range run it through, saturate it on the far end, run it through 4 of 5 times.
Then the last pull through I saturate it, pull it out and run a dry patch through.
There are some similar but that stands up as equal to the best.
I have a boroscope and can confirmed how clean it gets a gun, including some grungy mil surplus guns that now look brand new.
A bit of copper is merely coating over rough areas, that's ok.
I have looked at some seriously rough barrel that shoot fine.
The issue is not shooting, its cleaning. Rough barrels are harder to clean. The CK2k is a big change and help.
What I do use is Carbon Killer 2000 for the most part. If I am looking at copper (usually in older guns) I use Bore Tech Eliminator .
With the CK2k I use a nylon brush, with an eyedropper . Put it on when the gun is still warm at the range run it through, saturate it on the far end, run it through 4 of 5 times.
Then the last pull through I saturate it, pull it out and run a dry patch through.
There are some similar but that stands up as equal to the best.
I have a boroscope and can confirmed how clean it gets a gun, including some grungy mil surplus guns that now look brand new.
A bit of copper is merely coating over rough areas, that's ok.
I have looked at some seriously rough barrel that shoot fine.
The issue is not shooting, its cleaning. Rough barrels are harder to clean. The CK2k is a big change and help.
Jim Watson
New member
That is exceptional accuracy for anything but a dedicated benchrest rifle.
Do your larger groups have obvious "out" shots or are they uniform, just bigger?
What rest and technique do you use?
1 1 thousands = one one-thousandth, I expect. It's a common colloquial usage that is redundant, as merely saying "one thousandth" or "two thousandths" instead of "two one-thousandths" covers the meaning in modern usage.
I agree, though, that as far as bullet jump goes, that level of precision is lost in the noise of other factors. The variation, within the same box, of bullet ogive length between where the ogive will contact the throat and where the seating die contacts the ogive will see to that. About 0.002" is as close as I've been able to achieve using sorted components without a second seating step.
Additionally, none of the tools except, from what I see for the instant indicator, tells you the critical piece of information for rimless bottleneck cases, which is the distance between the shoulder the case stops against and the and part of the ogive that contacts the throat. The Precision Mic and Hornady comparator inserts will do it in two steps. For the PM, use the case thimble with a loaded round to measure the shoulder datum distance from the base, then swap in the bullet ogive thimble and measure that, recording the difference between the two measurements. Then go to the next round and repeat. Sort the loaded ammo into lots by matching those differences. For the Hornady tool, measure all your loaded rounds with the case comparator insert in the caliper adapter, sorting by the result, swap in the bullet comparator insert and measure them all again, resorting by matching the differences in the two measurements. If you want to get really anal, with either instrument, sort all rounds by the initial shoulder datum results and then sub-sort within each group by the difference in that measurement to the ogive location measurement result.
As to which tool you use, that is mostly personal preference to my mind. The Hornady is quicker, but it takes more skill to make a caliper repeat as consistently as the PM does. See which one you are comfortable with. Or get the instant indicator.
I agree, though, that as far as bullet jump goes, that level of precision is lost in the noise of other factors. The variation, within the same box, of bullet ogive length between where the ogive will contact the throat and where the seating die contacts the ogive will see to that. About 0.002" is as close as I've been able to achieve using sorted components without a second seating step.
Additionally, none of the tools except, from what I see for the instant indicator, tells you the critical piece of information for rimless bottleneck cases, which is the distance between the shoulder the case stops against and the and part of the ogive that contacts the throat. The Precision Mic and Hornady comparator inserts will do it in two steps. For the PM, use the case thimble with a loaded round to measure the shoulder datum distance from the base, then swap in the bullet ogive thimble and measure that, recording the difference between the two measurements. Then go to the next round and repeat. Sort the loaded ammo into lots by matching those differences. For the Hornady tool, measure all your loaded rounds with the case comparator insert in the caliper adapter, sorting by the result, swap in the bullet comparator insert and measure them all again, resorting by matching the differences in the two measurements. If you want to get really anal, with either instrument, sort all rounds by the initial shoulder datum results and then sub-sort within each group by the difference in that measurement to the ogive location measurement result.
As to which tool you use, that is mostly personal preference to my mind. The Hornady is quicker, but it takes more skill to make a caliper repeat as consistently as the PM does. See which one you are comfortable with. Or get the instant indicator.
If you are talking about adjustments to bullet jump, I don't believe so. Too many top match shooters, based on their loading methods, have more round-to-round differences in their loads than that. Also, too many folks have the experience that altering seating depth in relatively big increments does more for load tuning than benchresters used to accept. Berger has a good article on this. The late Dan Hacket had the experience of a 0.030" change in seating depth from 0.020" off the lands to 0.050" off the lands making an improvement from 0.5" groups to 0.2" groups with a 220 Swift (little 50 grain pills). If he'd spent his time fiddling with 0.019", and 0.021", trying to identify improvements, I think he'd have shot the barrel out before he got where he actually needed to be.
I have looked at lots of targets from guys playing with numbers in the single digits of thousandths of seating depth change like that, trying to spot an improvement and have come away with the impression, from what I know of the nature of random error and the tendency of the human brain to fail to identify it correctly, they were "seeing improvements" that were actually just random. If they were shooting five or six groups of each load to prove them and using radial standard deviation or even mean radius instead of group diameter as a measure, I think they would mostly have been discouraged to find no clear improvement. They would find the groups at each such small difference in seating depth traded places all the time as to which was smallest.
If you want to improve groups, I think it's much more important to eliminate finished cartridge runout, learn to seat primers properly, find a forgiving powder charge that doesn't mind if you are off a half a grain (because even if you hold your charges to a tenth, you will inevitably get into weather or other conditions that affect the load equivalent to a half a grain of charge error anyway). Finally, play with changing bullet position in 0.03" steps like Berger does. Make it 0.020", if you are more comfortable with that, but don't waste barrel life on 0.005" changes. Bullet variation is going to give you that anyway, over time, so you want the seating depth as forgiving as you want your powder charge in order that bullet tolerances don't move you off your best spot.
I have looked at lots of targets from guys playing with numbers in the single digits of thousandths of seating depth change like that, trying to spot an improvement and have come away with the impression, from what I know of the nature of random error and the tendency of the human brain to fail to identify it correctly, they were "seeing improvements" that were actually just random. If they were shooting five or six groups of each load to prove them and using radial standard deviation or even mean radius instead of group diameter as a measure, I think they would mostly have been discouraged to find no clear improvement. They would find the groups at each such small difference in seating depth traded places all the time as to which was smallest.
If you want to improve groups, I think it's much more important to eliminate finished cartridge runout, learn to seat primers properly, find a forgiving powder charge that doesn't mind if you are off a half a grain (because even if you hold your charges to a tenth, you will inevitably get into weather or other conditions that affect the load equivalent to a half a grain of charge error anyway). Finally, play with changing bullet position in 0.03" steps like Berger does. Make it 0.020", if you are more comfortable with that, but don't waste barrel life on 0.005" changes. Bullet variation is going to give you that anyway, over time, so you want the seating depth as forgiving as you want your powder charge in order that bullet tolerances don't move you off your best spot.
Basic question:
I know Berger did it with their VLD (from memory)
Has anyone done a test with other bullets and are there differences in the various profiles?
I seldom do less than .010, but that's from what I have seen of variation that it needs to be at least that to make any difference and I suspect no less than .020 is more likely.
I know Berger did it with their VLD (from memory)
Has anyone done a test with other bullets and are there differences in the various profiles?
I seldom do less than .010, but that's from what I have seen of variation that it needs to be at least that to make any difference and I suspect no less than .020 is more likely.
I move bullets in an out in every load Ive tried in my rifles, and what I have found is that some bullets like a jump of .100 or more even, and some only .010.
And yes Unclenick you can wear a rifle out testing every measurement and still not be happy..
Im happy if a rifle will consistantly shoot 3/4 moa or less.
And yes Unclenick you can wear a rifle out testing every measurement and still not be happy..
Im happy if a rifle will consistantly shoot 3/4 moa or less.
Gary Wells
New member
Just curious but what make of rifle & what scope.