In fact, Barnes advises handloaders to start its TSX bullets 0.05 inch from the lands, then seat them deeper if accuracy isn’t as good as desired.

Monolithic bullets are longer than lead-core bullets of the same weight and are well known for liking to be seated deeper. This is partly due to the increased use of longer bullets, which tend to tilt less during the journey between case neck and rifling. Seating bullets slightly deeper in the case can often improve accuracy. Bullets don’t necessarily need to be seated near the rifle bore’s lands to shoot accurately. As a result, bullets seated pretty far from the lands can shoot very accurately, often more accurately than when seated closer. 303, but it still groups handloads into half an inch because the throat is tighter than that of a typical military bolt action.Ĭustom or limited-production rifles, however, usually have very even rifling, with throat diameters barely above bullet diameter. 204 Ruger sporter in which the throat and lands vary even more than Uncle Larry’s. Today’s factory rifles are more precisely chambered and throated, though some still have uneven lands in front of the chamber. Handloading advice during the postwar era usually suggested seating bullets about 0.03 inch from the lands to minimize bullet tilting. That’s the case with my Uncle Larry’s Lee-Enfield rifle. Their wide throats often allowed deeper-seated bullets to tilt during the journey from case neck to the start of the rifling, and the chances for tilting were pretty good because lands on one side of the throat were often longer than the other due to hurry-up manufacturing. Military rifles had pretty generous chambers so they could function with ammo often covered with various substances, from green oxidation to hastily wiped-off mud. Usually, those rifles were “sporterized” by remodeling the military stock, as I did on the Mosin-Nagant. Most of my father’s friends hunted with surplus rifles, including Mausers, Lee-Enfields, 1903 Springfields, and 1917 Enfields. In 1964, I purchased my first centerfire rifle, a Westinghouse-made Mosin-Nagant 7.62x54R, for $10 from an ad in the American Rifleman. This coincided with vast numbers of war-surplus bolt-action rifles that were available through the mail for very low prices. Handloading started becoming really popular after World War II, during the postwar economic boom when Americans had more time and money to pursue hobbies. This idea originated back when most rifle chambers-especially in military rifles-weren’t as precise as they are today. One example of rifle handloading knowledge that used to be true but is not necessarily true today is the assumption that handloads always shoot most accurately with bullets seated close to the lands.

Hot brass casing burn