How to determine seating depth...

[aahunt03]

How do I determine what depth to seat my bullets for a particular handgun? I understand you can seat the bullet to a specific depth for one handgun, and a different depth for another.

[Chris_C]

I first take a once fired case, Dremel out the primer area, and with my hand barely seat a bullet in the case mouth. I then take the barrel out of the gun and gently put the round in the chamber, pushing with my thumb until the case mouth is against the end of the chamber. Then gently pull the round out and measure OAL. I repeat this a number of times to make sure I'm getting consistent results. I use the opened up area of the primer pocket to push the bullet back out between measurements (with a little nail or something like that). I subtract about 0.01 off the measured numbers and consider this max OAL.

[HOGRIDER]

Some good info on COL:

http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=186965&p=2072881

[Sarge]

Make a dummy round kind of long and drop it in your upended barrel you removed from the gun. It should hit the rifling and you will feel it dragging when you twist it. Seat a smidge deeper and repeat until the bullet drops in with a nice ker plop and twists with no feeling of contact. Shorten about .001 and lock everything down!

More or less.

[aahunt03]

awesome. Thanks!