Load development by group consensus Part 2 seating depth 

I’m liking 2.340 to 2.330 because impact is consistent. I’d start 2.340” and as it erodes you’re still fairly consistent to 2.320”. But honestly, this bullet isn’t working.

2.305 gets my vote, great video. Thanks for doing the interactive seating depth test, very helpful. This is part of my reloading process where I can improve.

2.335 gets my vote! Really enjoying this. Hope you do a recap of what you would've done with this scenario. I'm glad you showed even the bad results. I had a similar test yesterday where nothing shot particularly well. Your vid encouraged me to keep trying different stuff!

2.330 to 2.335 looks like good seating depth node to allow for throat erosion. Load 2.330. DON'T CHASE THE LANDS 👍

2.340 to allow extra room of node change in future as will be using barrel tuner next .

I like consistent impacts of 2.335 + or -, try tuning further. I am not a competition shooter just a hunter that enjoys accuracy.

2.340 my vote / but your Gun doesnt like the Bullet/Powder Combination If this where the Target of a Hunting Rifle it is good at 100 Yards but i have shoot better targets with my Steel Action HS Straightpull Hunting Rifle in 308 with 150gn TTSX and my Blaser R8 Ultimate in 7x64 with 140gn TTSX. It is not the Target you like to see on a FClass Rifle i think ....

2.340“ is the one. As the throat of the chamber erodes you’ll still shoot pretty tight groups. 2.305 is what a novice would choose. Look at the group just to the right. That’s what your rifle will start shooting as the chamber erodes.

That's a lot of location change in the groups. I would go back and explore the 2.330 to 2.340 in 3 thou changes. The 2.305 has nasty on both sides.

First of all you went down the wrong rabbit hole on the charges. Your patrons chose to large of a ES and SD. 6 more shots in stage one and you might have something good. Second, Now your seating depth jumps are to large (you will find it hard to get two good charges in the same node) Anyway good experiment. Please make a video about the correct choices for comparison. Given what we have to choose from 2.340 is clearly the best choice. Please test.002 on each side of 2.305 Thank you.

Awesome project and learning experience - think I would move on to different something

2.340" seems to work well and indicates you have about 0.010" of erosion (maybe more if 2.320" group is fluke) before needing to adjust seating depth again.

At first glance I’d say go with 2.340”. Looks like there’s 10 thou of room on the deeper side to work into. Some larger groups in that region would be nice to confirm. Very Nice SD!

I would say the 2.340 that way you have some room for throat erosion. I'm not 100% on powder charge.

Time to flame!! I see no consistent trends or reliable data in any of this "testing". The powder sweep was a glorified Satterlee which has been debunked so thoroughly and so many times even Satterlee himself no longer uses it or stands by it. I am shocked to see a high level competition shooter using it and worse evangelizing it via these "load development" videos. Want to prove me wrong? Repeat the test and see if you show the same "flat spots" or ES trends. Next, you literally just released a video covering a test you did of an extreme range of seating depths which showed that it has very little effect on group size. Why are you then proposing we try to "tune" group size via seating depth? The proof of this being ineffective lies in your own results here - the groups are all over the map and show no consistent trend. You are essentially seeing "noise" in the data, but again you are leading people to try and "tune" by picking one arbitrary value vs another. There is no real development occurring here, just reading tea leaves and finding shapes in the clouds. This is not my opinion it is scientific fact and it can be proven experimentally by repeating any of these tests and seeing what the new "results" are.

2.340, gives you about 10 thou of wear before before seating depth needs to be reworked.

That was my thought on powder charge but looking at the results I think I would have stopped shooting part way through and tried a lower charge. You might get something accurate but looks to me as if it will end up a knife edge load with hardly any room for error. Very interesting video. You might catch up with Erik’s subs if you do more of this. Anyway we never had a gear review with the shaving equipment did we? It did a superb job 😂😂

This is fun and interesting! Thanks.

2.340 or just a couple of thousandths shorter to allow for variations. Since 2.340, 2.335 and 2.330 all look like they group in the same area, that should keep things consistent for a good amount of wear and tear on the lands before you have to recheck. Bullet/powder combo seems less accurate than high level F-class expectations (for that barrel)... Thanks for this interesting group experiment.

The powder charge that I liked on the last video was not the popular choice, so based on the winner and the new group on paper it looks like there could be a node from 2.34 and 2.33. 2.305 Unfortunately falls b/w two lousy ones other wise it would be a start also. But i still think the not so great charge will creep up later. Just my 2 cents

2.340 with expectation that the right tuner setting will make it happier.

2.340. Room for throat erosion. I personally wouldn't be thrilled with these results though. I don't think this powder charge, or component combo is quite right.Thanks for doing this though John, I think it's such a great idea to see how a top pro approaches load dev.

2.340. Now rinse & repeat is my method. (who is watching the polling booth?) 😎

2.305 is my vote. Love the content.

I would start with 2.335, but again mine pick didn't get enough vote last time.....

2.338”

2.335” There being reasonable groups either side. But I would like to have done another round of three shot groups from 2.340-2.330 in .001” increments to see if there was anything better or how they opened or closed up.

I'd pick the 54.6.. so I was close 😁. On this jump-test I've have shosed 2.320 if I have no tuner ,but in this case with tuner I'd settled with 2.335 in the middle of a stable POI and good precision in comparison to the whole test . The 2.305 is nice... but probably a fluke with two uglys on both sides. So... 2.335 with tuner to come 👍

Late to the party .... but 2.340

2.305 looks like the best

Lapua bullets, I've heard they like a little jump. Soooo, 2.290

2.340

i would try 53.8 seating depth test

2.340 - 2.330 is the best bet

2.340

Just looking at the results & leaving all the assumptions out, from 2.340 to 2.255 you had a velocity SD of 6.9 & ES of 28 across the board. That tells me that with the mass of projectile & the powder burn rate used, that seating depth has little to no effect on velocity stability. This is a common result in my experience when using heavy for caliber projectiles & slow burn rate powders. As for the shot to shot distribution, I think it reasonable to assume that you have one genuine outlier at 2.320 which happens. With the POSSIBLE exception of 2.310 as either an outlier or a 99th percentile shot, the groups appear to me to be well within a normal distribution radius. Until the sample rate is increased per group, there's very little to discriminate between each group dispersion without the liberal employment of a whole lot of assumption.

I’d try 2.337”. I usually do my testing in .003” increments. I feel like in between the first and second length looks promising. But then I’m a hunter. Not a F-class shooter.

If I saw these results from one of my barrels I'd assume that something in my system was broken. A few of those groups should never happen with a custom barrel and good components unless something is wrong with the rifle system(scope, stock, action, rest or bad barrel).

Truth be told 2.340 to 2.330 is really the only range the loads were semi consistent I would go to the bottom of that node 2.330. The 2.305 group is just an odd ball group nothing around it was consistent enough to call that a node.

2.340-2.330 should be retested in .003 increments my opinion but it think out of those I’d go 2.335.

2.340 looks good and seems to hold until 2.330 area, which will give you room for throat erosion so I would either call it good there or try going longer (into the lands).

2.335” is my vote. What do you think about that David Tubb nosering cutter?

2.330, as barrel erodes, it will head for the 2.340😉

Looks like you may get a small seating window out of it, but too many 2 and 1 groups. Powder is off a bit I reckon.

stop wasting components, seems like you forgot to tighten up your action screws lol)))

2.340

2.340”

I'd give up on that combination already

2.330”-2.340” looks to be a node. I would pick 2.330”

My vote is on the 2340 load - you should be able to tune in on that one

2.340

2.340

2.340

2.340.

2.335

2.335

2340

I would test .002 on both sides of 2.305..

Where do you get your mirage shield for your barrel?

2.338 is what I would go with there.

This is some sort of Fudd Reloader Nightmare! Let the inter webs decide your load 😂👍🏻I'm loving it man

2.340

2.338 is my vote. I agree that this combo isn't working the greatest but if we are sticking with this you have room for erosion and a fairly wide tolerance. Secondary 2.290

I would work with 2.300 to 2.310 .

2.305 is tightest in my opinion.......

2.335

2.335 and see if you can tune it in or not

2.335 or 2.290 or 2.280 look like theybwould be the center point of the nodes possably? Unless the 2.295 to 2.275 is one big node then inwould choose that

I will play with 2.335 and 2.330

I need to see 6, 9, 12, and 15 thou in the lands before I make a decision.....Load up 5 rounds at 54.8 or 55 at 12thou into the lands....Thats where I think it'll shoot.

Well, 2.305" appears to be the best here. So if I understand, you started at0.005" OTL, so that means it is jumping 0.040". I still wish we could have started at -0.020" into the lands. Cool test, thanks for sharing John.

I'd probably retest the 2.305 to see if it would replicate and I would probably try 2.345 and 2.350. But what I see from this test I too would probably go with 2.335 based on similar groupings before and after.

2.340 to 2.330 in finer increments. 2.335 should work though. 2.295 to 2.285 would be worth investigating also.

I'd probably move on to pitting 2.335" vs 2.305" and see which one groups more consistently over a few 5 shot groups. Just to weed out any possibility of either being a "lucky group".

Thinkni missed something, but why start at 5 off the lands, why not like 2 off and work back? I have found that most of my bullets and loads like it around 2 off 🙂

2.335 is my vote. The groups on either side are similar in size and there is nothing crazy going on. I would have chose 2.305 if the groups on either side were less erratic.

I would do a 2.285 - 2.295 test again. I really liked the 2.305 but, on both sides it a bit to radical. Jeff D

Agree with 2.335 since it has decent groups on either side.

2.285 to 2.295 looks like the sweet spot. Very forgiving, same point of impact, horizontal tendency.

Phew. A lot to unpack here! Well, for starters, great shooting, and this is fascinating because I've never had the opportunity to fire a high-end platform before, so it's great to follow along on this load development and see how higher-end equipment reacts. My initial impression of this is how you can readily see some of the harmonics and you work through your strings. I see 2.340 through 2.330 as a fairly stable, but maybe not ideal, node. 2.325 is when we start to enter our "scatter node", where the point of impact shifts left and gets very ugly at 2.320 and 2.310. I'm not surprised that 2.305 tightens up again, and that precision looks promising and worth investigating, but I wouldn't place much stock into it because the next string, 2.300 opens up and shows leftward POI again, but also upward. Lastly, 2.295 takes a huge jump to the right, and goes further up. I didn't bother taking the ones that jumped 0.010" into account, but it's really cool to see how the next string after 2.295 has the whole group in an upward POI, which completes that trend, and from there we can see it creep back down and left again. That's awesome! I'm in Michigan, where during the summer it's a swamp, and during the winter it's a cold barren desert. I like wide harmonic nodes and the OCW method, so I would test further in that 2.235-2.330 range. I don't have a tuner, so I'd do 0.002" for seating depth. Since we have a tuner, I guess we could try... 2.330. That looks like the "most honest" group. I don't think that very tight group, 2.305, can really be improved upon - I think either way you try to tune it you'll find yourself angry.

If I only had one number to go with at this point it would be 2.332. If I was trying to zero in more I would try 2.338 also, two 5 shot groups at each.

You mentioned your cases don't have a donut because you pushed it out. I'd like to see a video of your process for this. Great videos thanks so much!

These videos are interesting for sure. As far as this gos I'd go with 2.290 and test also like 2.330 and 2.340.thanks again and keep up the good work

2.335 or 2.290 gets my vote.

2.335 seems to be round groups and stable on both sides of seating depth. So I would pick that one myself.

Why not 53.8 ?and 2.305 .

2.335. I hope that tuner will help. so far it doesn't look great. If this doesn't work head in to the lands and see if it gets better.

SO many 2 and 1 groups. SO many potential variables for the 1's.

To me this is just crazy

I like 2.335 since the group on either side are pretty tight as well. This one only has vertical stringing which tells me it's a good node with some velocity affecting point of aim.

2.305 looks good to me.

2.335 looks good. It'll give ya some wiggle room to load quickly.

Ok, so my comment will be based off of what bullet I believe you are using. Hornady A-tips right? It is very well known that they like to shoot big jumps...like .080-.120". This has been personal experience as well. Many can't get them to shoot worth a damn any closer to the lands than that. Having said that, you need to test deeper so you're not barking up the wrong tree. None of those groups were any good. When you get deep enough, it will dramatically improve. Just my 2 cents.

2.305 gets my vote

Thanks for the great experiment!! Test @ 2.335.

i would try 2.335

2.305 is my vote

2305 for the win

I'd go with one of the first 3 because it looked like they had close speeds on the chrono

2.290