Hey - I just talked to teh guy who is gonna rebarrel my rifle. He likes the customer to send a long a dummy round with their prefered bullet and seated the way they want. That way he can cut the chamber to the dummy.

Question is whats the best way to do this? I was thinking of using Lapua brass (I don't really want to neck turn and from what I hear this is the best brass - its a hunting rifle that will be built to shoot) and seating my bullet choice as long as the mag will allow? Giving myself a little bit of margine for recoil.

Now say a guy gets his dummy set up and along comes another bullet he wants to try - how forgiving is that chamber then?

Man I can not believe all the questions a guy thinks of after he hangs up the phone!

BTW - 1~10 twist, 22 or 24" Krieger SS #5 contour, on a Ruger M77 (tang safety).

Thanks

Don't get too worried about this process. If you don't have dies yet just order a set of Reddings. Don't seat the longest bullet you contemplate using as far out as you can. Say you are building a 300 Win Mag. Take a 200 Nosler Partition, or 180 Barnes TSX, or whatever and seat it so that it will EASILY feed through the magzine. If you end up using shorter bullets they won't have a huge freebore to jump across, and with a longer bullet you just seat it in the case a little more. You will never notice the theoretical loss of powder capacity. If you have a good smith he will make everything square straight and true. It will be plenty accurate. Thing in terms of ease of feeding through the magazine, and leave it just a touch short so that as the throat erodes over time you can seat your bullets out a bit farther without crowding the end of the magazine.
Throat dimensions are always a bit of a compromise. You'll most likely be happiest over time if you go middle of the road.
JCN

Buy a box each of the bullets you are most likely to use - if you are rebarreling you probably have an idea of what you want to do with the rifle and so should have an idea of what bullets you want to use.

Get a Stoney Point Comparator. Seat an example of each bullet and try to get them to the same approximate "Stoney" length - i.e. the same case head to ogive length. But DON'T obsess about getting them all the same length, just make sure they will all be seated deeply enough to hold the bullet securely and feed through the magazine.

Then, take your pick of those and send to the smith. He will throat the barrel for that bullet but you can use any of the other bullets you chose and seat them as needed for best accuracy.

The only time different bullets have given me a problem was in making up bullets for a short action M700 with a 2.80" mag constraint. I wanted to shoot Hornady Spire Points and Nosler BT's which have vastly different OAL's when seated to the same "Stoney" length. If I loaded the Hornady's to an OAL length of 2.80" (base to bullet tip), and throated accordingly then I'd have to deep seat the Nosler's. If I throated for the Nosler's at an OAL of 2.80", then to reach the lands the Hornady's would have had to be seated to an OAL much greater than the magazine length.

What caliber are you talking about? In a long action Winchester or Remington using '06 based or short magnum rounds (the old definition of short magnum - .7mm RM, .300 WM etc.) the magazine length is very forgiving for different bullet profiles and weights.

P.S. What John said too. Don't try to crowd the magazine, leave yourself a tenth of an inch or more at least.

If you have a way to measure neck concentricity just choose an UNFIRED and UNSIZED case of whatever brand you want that has good concentricity - less than or equal to .001" difference in thickness all the way around is good. If you don't have a way to measure this then the Lapua brass is a real good way to go as well.

I would send him a dummy in the lightest bullet weight I was considering using for the rifle. Doing this you can "chase" the rifling as the barrel wears with all different weight bullets you shoot from the gun. You may give up a slight amount of case capacity with heavier bullets, but you'll be able to keep all the bullets close to the rifling.

Terry

The number one rule to follow is this:

Make sure that the over-all length of your dummy round will fit properly and function inside of the magazine box of your action. The magazine box itself will largely determine maximum over-all length.

This sounds elementary, but there are lots of folks who have come to sorrows because they overlooked that fundamental reality, or rather, their brain-dead gunmaker did.

For example, one of my friends ordered a .30-06 with an extra-long throat, and he wanted to be able to seat his preferred 180 gr. bullet about .0030" off the lands. His riflemaker accomodated him, but the resulting cartridge wouldn't come close to fitting inside the box. So he ended up with a .30-06 long-throat single shot. If he tried to seat the bulets deep enough to fit in the magazine, accuracy went all to heck in a hurry.........

AD

All - she is a 30-06 and I think I am gonna set up to run Lapua brass and 168 grain TSX. I would say 99% of this rifle will be used on MI deer and when I go to gunsmith school in Colorado if I luck into an Elk hunt or such but that is a pipe dream.

Thanks for the help so far - any other advice is helpful too!!