Here's my situation: I've been working w/a .41 magnum/14" barrel in a Contender. Groups have been marginal at best (2" average/5 shot groups at 100 yards). I started looking very closely at my bullet seating procedures, I was setting oal at 1.612" for every round. I went through a box of 210 grn Sierra's and found a +/- .002" difference in oal of the bullets themselves. Now, this tells me, that if my RCBS die seats off the bullet ogive, then my loaded round oal should differ +/- .002" from 1.612" - Correct? I do not have a comparator (sp?)to measure these rounds, only a micrometer that measures .0000". my problem is that my loaded rounds are varying .005" from round to round , and this constant die adjustment to maintain 1.612" +/-.002"(depending on bullet length) is getting old. I don't mind spending extra time to handload each round - afterall I trickle charge each round to insure consistancy - but the constant adjusting makes me nervous that I will lose track of die setup for future loading.Any suggestions?

if you are sure your seating die is seating off the bullets ogive you could try to modify the die by grinding away most of the cupped area on the seating stem so that it matches the bullts shape,I reload several thousand 357 mag loads every year and I use several types of bullets and never had that much difference between loads,I use lee dies and after every couple 100 I clean them when loading casted bullets because of the lube build up,anyway pull the seating stem out of your die and mate it with the bullet and see what it looks like hope this helps

T/C -

If this were me, I might try loading up a batch of bullets with mixed oals, maybe 1.607 to 1.617, then shooting them all in the same group. I suggest this only because case OAL may not be the culprit to your group size.

If you shoot a mixed batch and get the same 2" group size, there seems to me to be two possibilities - 1. that you've reached the potential of your barrel/load, or, 2. that improvements will come by altering a different component in the reloading process.

Good luck.

Not to ignore your question BUT, what are the details of the load you are using? Is this a factory barrel or custom?

How did you arrive at the overall length you are using? Getting closer to the rifling is more important, imho.

Mike