Great video on seating depth testing.

[Castle Rock]

Coincidentally, I was listening to a Hornady podcast today, and their senior ballistician (Jaden Quinlin sp?) spoke about seating depth. He did repeated ladder tests using 100 round groups at each depth. His conclusion was that it made very little difference, if any. I'm no expert just repeating what I heard from an expert.

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I certainly believe that this is true for Hornady bullets because they lack the consistency of better quality bullets

 

[Formidilosus]

Appreciate it. I'll try this with my 300prc and see if I can save some time, components, and sanity. I'm all about making this shit as easy as it can get and this would be much easier than everything I've tried so far. It's certainly worth a shot.

Have you found that if you have a good barrel then you can get most everything to work within reason? I'm wondering if this is more dependent on how well your barrel likes a specific bullet or if most things will work if your barrel isn't a turd. I certainly have some rifles that downright do not get along with certain bullets it seems.

Good barrels just shoot. You may find a random bullet or powder combo that it doesn’t like, but not two in a row. Pick a Hornady, Berger, or Sierra bullet- especially match bullets, and a known powder and go.

 

[Formidilosus]

Can you provide links to any sold studies showing such please

Applied ballistics and Hornady (regardless of remarks), both have done so and written/showed it publicly.

I have consistently proven with large data samples with my own gear that it makes a real difference

Can you share you 20-30 shot groups at different powder charges that show late changes?

 

[LoH]

And taking a group from a .7 to a .6 isn't going to kill me any extra animals until you get a LONG ways out.

All good takeaways, though I would push back a little on this last one.

It seems we’d all agree that at close(r) ranges there’s no functional difference (measured as you say in # of animals killed) between .7 MOA and .6 MOA.

But this context (a LONG ways out) is precisely the scenario where I would expect to see .6 MOA kill basically zero extra animals than .7 MOA, in real world conditions. The effect being even more emphasized the farther out you get. (Because wind.)

Anyway, appreciate the video and discussion. And always appreciate the opportunity to simplify my processes and my thinking.

Shakespeare famously wrote that brevity is the soul of wit. We need something similar like Simplicity is the soul of…somethingsomething.

How Much Does It Matter? Overall Summary

As long-range shooters, we tend to obsess over every little detail. After all, we’re trying to hit r...

precisionrifleblog.com

 

[Grundy53]

I certainly believe that this is true for Hornady bullets because they lack the consistency of better quality bullets

Who would be your pick for consistent bullets? I would like to try them out.

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[Castle Rock]

Berger

 

[huntnful]

Who would be your pick for consistent bullets? I would like to try them out.

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Berger is probably the most consistent lead bullet. But hornady isn’t that terrible. The ELDM’s have shot better, with less work than Berger’s in pretty much all of my last 5 barrels.

But I do believe if you get everything perfect with the Berger’s, they have the consistency to outperform the ELDM’s over a large sample size.

But I have plenty of groups with ELDM’s that exceed what anyone would need to kill an animal.

 

[49ereric]

Depends on the rifle chamber imo. My 44 K98 shot horrible with Sierra 175’s so started moving the bullet out and found the sweet spot with only @17 thousands of the bullet in the case.
Military rifles are probably a worst case scenario.

 

[Castle Rock]

Applied ballistics and Hornady (regardless of remarks), both have done so and written/showed it publicly.

I had a look for something from AB but couldn’t find it, do you have a link or something please?

Can you share you 20-30 shot groups at different powder charges that show late changes?

Sorry I don’t quite understand understand what you are asking here as it relates to seating depth

 

[Castle Rock]

I certainly believe that this is true for Hornady bullets because they lack the consistency of better quality bullets

That was actually a pretty stupid thing to say, but it seemed funny at the time

Also one bullet that I have found to be very sensitive to seating depth just happens to be the 75 grain ELDM

 

[Harvey_NW]

Berger

So the bullets tested by Bryan Litz? Who in his last podcast with Erik Cortina talks about how after they upped their sample size the sinusoidal results of seating depth testing essentially flatlined, so he loaded his "shitty ammo" at an arbitrary measurement, and placed top 5 in the world with a 308?

 

[Castle Rock]

Thanks H could you please provide a link for this

 

[Harvey_NW]

Thanks H could you please provide a link for this

 

[Castle Rock]

If there was any evidence of what you are saying in that I certainly didn’t find it
My take from that, and it was extremely painful to listen to, was cortina key trying to ask leading questions and Litzy wouldn’t take the bait

 

[TaperPin]

Seating depth doesn’t matter?! So why then dont all chambers have huge freebores like Weatherby to pick up some extra speed? So why then do the highest accuracy sports ALL think of finding the seating depth the gun likes to be essential? Why are reamers being cut specifically for a certain bullet? My bs detector gets a workout when guys who don’t know, claim to know and claim to know what others know. Lol

The Hornady boys admitted their information is given in a formate and level of detail that covers a big swath of shooters in the middle area of accuracy, because that’s where their customer base is and they don’t delve into the highest accuracy levels or attempt to explain how those guns are loaded, or how loads react. Make no mistake about it, everything Hornady does is to sell Hornady products.

 

[Harvey_NW]

If there was any evidence of what you are saying in that I certainly didn’t find it
My take from that, and it was extremely painful to listen to, was cortina key trying to ask leading questions and Litzy wouldn’t take the bait

Here's another video of Cortina arguing with a project engineer/ballistician about how he can do things the scientists can't do, til he's Lapua blue in the face. The more you see, the more comical it gets..

 

[Harvey_NW]

Seating depth doesn’t matter?! So why then dont all chambers have huge freebores like Weatherby to pick up some extra speed? So why then do the highest accuracy sports ALL think of finding the seating depth the gun likes to be essential? Why are reamers being cut specifically for a certain bullet? My bs detector gets a workout when guys who don’t know, claim to know and claim to know what others know. Lol

The Hornady boys admitted their information is given in a formate and level of detail that covers a big swath of shooters in the middle area of accuracy, because that’s where their customer base is and they don’t delve into the highest accuracy levels or attempt to explain how those guns are loaded, or how loads react. Make no mistake about it, everything Hornady does is to sell Hornady products.

But what about the OP video? I mean, Keith is a heavily awarded F-Class competitor, now coach, and he has hundreds of videos doing seating depth testing and making sure he's dialed in and shooting in the .1's and .2's before the comp. But when he upped his sample size to statistically valid, and still did his part, they just didn't hold to what he "tuned" them to. I'm perplexed..

 

[huntnful]

Seating depth doesn’t matter?! So why then dont all chambers have huge freebores like Weatherby to pick up some extra speed? So why then do the highest accuracy sports ALL think of finding the seating depth the gun likes to be essential? Why are reamers being cut specifically for a certain bullet? My bs detector gets a workout when guys who don’t know, claim to know and claim to know what others know. Lol

The Hornady boys admitted their information is given in a formate and level of detail that covers a big swath of shooters in the middle area of accuracy, because that’s where their customer base is and they don’t delve into the highest accuracy levels or attempt to explain how those guns are loaded, or how loads react. Make no mistake about it, everything Hornady does is to sell Hornady products.

The guy in the video is shooting Berger bullets. And he clearly states he believes seating depth matters. Then he just proceeds to show how many shots it takes to verify the information he gathered from his small sample seating depth test.

I personally don’t think .020 off, .080 off and .120 off are going to shoot similar. You can probably see the difference in a hurry.

But .020, .023, .026 isn’t going to get you anywhere substantial with a 9-10lb magnum rifle. Most people don’t have the platforms or the capability to legitimately and consistently shoot the difference between those minute increments.

 

[Harvey_NW]

I personally don’t think .020 off, .080 off and .120 off are going to shoot similar. You can probably see the difference in a hurry.

In terms of dispersion, I think you'd be surprised if they were compared with sufficient sample size. I've been asking this for over a year on a couple platforms, and still have yet to see anyone provide evidence that a certain seating depth changed the group size by an amount outside of the statistical variability, and stayed consistent.

 

[huntnful]

In terms of dispersion, I think you'd be surprised if they were compared with sufficient sample size. I've been asking this for over a year on a couple platforms, and still have yet to see anyone provide evidence that a certain seating depth changed the group size by an amount outside of the statistical variability, and stayed consistent.

I certainly haven’t done it, or seen it personally. It’s just my assumption honestly.

I just put my bullets close to the lands, and they almost always shoot well lol. I’ve never felt the needs to do an extravagant seating depth test.

F Class John on YouTube does a test across .100 of the depth and the results are pretty cool. I think he went in .005 increments and the 20 shot group was 4” at 600 yards.