I have never loaded these light bullets in this caliber before. I was going to just seat to industry standard of 2.710 for my first few. When I do this I think I am only getting about .075 of grip on the bullet in the neck. Is this enough or should the OAL be shortened for the lighter bullets. Winchester brass Nosler 55 gr. ballistic tips. I thought as a rule of thumb you wanted to seat the bullet at least half of the dia. or in this case roughly .122.

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May your chambers be true to your bores.

Nosler does not give a recommendation other than industry standard but Hornady recommends 2.600" for their 58 gr VMAX.

I have just recently started loading both the 55 Nosler and the VMAX and have followed the recommendation of shorter OAL. I still have not found the perfect load for the VMAX but with the Nosler 55, I am getting very close. My last group with this load was 10 shots @100 yds. 8 of the 10 grouped into 7/16" with the other 2 touching about 1/2" above the other 8. I believe this indicates either a bedding problem or my shooting technique.

I experimented with some loads seated out to slightly longer (2.625) and noted that the groups had started to open up a bit.

see my post in " long throats and seating depths" 243winxb

I used to load those for a friend and I can't remember what the oal" was but I know they were barely seated. Runnout was awful too cause you barely had em started in the case. BUT--they shot excellent. In my humble opinion that little bullet has so short of bearing area that the barrel get's it straightend out before exit time!! I'd say experiement with seating depth a little--it would be fun if you reported any success.

ALSO--my friend is trying hard to beat his record of downing 3 crows with one shot of those little 55 grainers. Evidently fast flying "crow bits" make good projectile too!

I tried my first 55 grain 6mm ballistic tips this weekend in three different guns/two different chamberings. The loads were sort of plucked out of the air by interpolating data for heavier bullets (since I didn't have a source on hand specifically for the 55 grain, much less in one of the wildcat chamberings I was shooting). The seating depth was shallow and arbitrary.

Results: One gun, a sporter, shot one-hole groups. Another gun, which was brand new, shot the 55's better than any other load tried during break-in, and the third gun shot into groups that beat it's long-time average with other bullets.

I was surprised and amazed. It may simply have been an accident, but with three different powders (one of them much too slow), loaded by two different people and seated to arbitrary depths, every load with this bullet performed exceedingly well.