quote:

Originally posted by emron:
Be very careful with primers. Dont drop a box on the floor. Dont step on one with a hard soled boot, you may get an unpleasant surprise. Even worse is a gang-firing of primers in a hand held primer press. Could lose a hand easily with that. I have 3 hand presses, but I stopped using them since a friend had a primer explosion in his progressive lee 1000. Wrecked the press, blew out the overhead light, damaged his hearing. I only prime one at a time and use a bench mounted RCBS priming tool. But then I dont load large volumes, only use a single stage RCBS Rockchucker. With progressives, on full auto function, you dont have a choice, and accidents are very rare with the well designed presses like your Dillon. Some primers are less likely to gang fire because of their design. CCI and Remington come to mind. That said, my favorites are Federals but the I am loading them one at a time

Glad you brought this to my attention. I am worried about how much force is required to properly seat a primer. I push the handle forward a little, remove the case and check primer depth. If it needs a little more oomph I put it back in and give a little more. I do squint, though, just in case one goes off. I suppose with time and experience I'll develop the proper feel for this.

Another thing I was thinking about a little while ago... I work nights and often have nothing other than my thoughts to keep me awake... What is the proper way to measure the length of the chamber from bolt face to the beginning of the rifling lands? I have read that there can be some accuracy benefits to seating the bullet in the case just deep enough that the contact surface of the bullet contacts the lands when the action is locked. Do I simply barely seat a bullet in an unprimed and uncharged case and chamber the round? Then remove the round and measure from the head to the marks the lands leave? Seems simple, but what if a bullet gets stuck in the bore, I could just knock it out with a wooden dowel, but then what if my lands start so far ahead they wouldn't show up anyway? I read about pressure spikes because the bullet jumps a little then stops because of the force against the lands. Sounds dangerous to me. I'm mainly curious about this for the Weatherby chambered in .22-250 Rem and the Ruger Gunsite Scout chambered in .308 Win and the M1A.