How close is too close? What seating depth usually produces the best accuracy in your loads?

In the Hornady handbook it indicates that just kissing the rifling usually produces the best accuracy but too close and you get a huge pressure spike.

Your opinions and tips are appreciated.

I seat my bullets just off the rifling I would think that if you worked up your loads with the bullets just kissing the rifling you can get a safe load start low.

In rifle cartridges using progressive-burning smokeless powders, having the bullet touching the rifling is NOT GOING TO CAUSE DANGEROUS PRESSURES!! By the time maximum pressure occurs, the bullet will be from 4 to 6 inches down the bore. In a pistol, with much faster powders, other rules apply!! IN ANY CASE, if you work up powder charges from a safe starting point, you can avoid unsafe conditions before they occur, whether the bullet enters the rifleing or not. I have several target loads in which the bullet is seated into the rifling when the breech is closed. This was common practice in Schuetzen single-shot rifles, most of which used soft lead bullets. The greatest danger from bullets which enter the rifling is that they sometimes get stuck, and, if you extract the unfired round, a bullet can be left in the throat, dumping your action full of powder. A REAL jam!! This problem caused the great elephant shootist W.D.M. Bell to go back to his 7mm Mauser caliber Rigby rifle after having jams in a 6.5X54mm Mannlicher-Schoenauer caused by "pulled bullets" and dumped powder charges. (He found the 6.5X54mm with 160 grain solid bullets to be a perfectly acceptable elephant killer, except for this little problem!!).

it depends on what you are going to do with the rifle.
Benchrest... sure, jam it right up, and build your loads around it
hunting? best to start at .02 off and go BACK looking for accuracy. If you shoot barnes X, start at .065.

The ONLY rifle I have that I load with next to zero clearence is my 222 rem br rifle.
jeffe