.338 federal reloading coal question

[onlybrowning]

I am helping a friend reload for his new Ruger M77 Hawkeye in .338 federal. When we got to seating depth, I made a dummy cartridge to try to see how long the bullet was to contact the lands. After this I would back off about .010" to seat there. I found that theis length was way longer than the magazine well would allow, so I said we will just seat to max length for the magazine. The only problem is that this is about 2.863" col and all the relaoding manuals have it listed at about 2.75col-2.820"col. Is .043" more than the books too long and how much is this going to drop pressures?

This is more of a precaution and I am hoping it will improve accuracy to seat them as long as safe and possible.

 

[Scorch]

If it were me, I would reload them to max COL and call it good. This will make sure you leave a little bit of clearance in front of the rounds. Then shoot it and see if the rounds need to be seated out. I believe you will find the rifle will shoot acceptably well without seating the bullets out farther.

 

[joneb]

I load my .308 win. at 2.850" this works with my magazine well, I could seat the bullet out farther and bypass the mag. but this is not a bench rest gun so this cartridge length works for me, I work my loads up for accuracy from the 2.850" length.

 

[Crosshair]

Load it as long as you can and still have it feed from the magazine. The SAAMI spec is just an industry agreement for factory ammo so it all works in every gun made in that caliber. For handloaders, you can load for the individual gun.