How far in is enough?

Hi folks,

Bit of a noob question here but thought I would ask the council of wise chiefs before I potentially do something I shouldn’t..

Have got a T3X in 22-250 that I have started reloading for.
I tried several different charges of AR2206H with 50gr Sierra blitzking projectiles, lit by a WLR primer. All loads were at the Sammi recommended max length of 2.350. I found reasonable but not great groups at 34.5gr (0.6moa) and 36.5gr (0.8moa). I was aiming for 0.5moa so wanted to try messing with OAL to tighten the groups a bit.
I measured the chamber with the Hornady OAL gauge at 2.490. It seems that a good place to start is 20thou off the lands which would mean the OAL is 2.470. Mag length is no issue, almost 1/2 inch spare.
My question is the projectile is only seated in the case 150thou, compared with 270thou when seated to the book max length, is that enough? Neck tension seemed good when seating and concentricity is under 1thou.
Thought I would ask in case I’m doing something dumb.. Cheers

The general rule of thumb is the bullet should be seated at least it's diameter into the neck, i.e. .22 for 22 cal, .308 for 30 cal.
But I have had loads with a lot less length seated that have shot very well.

To add to that, I'd be comfortable seating a 22 to .15, that's about two-thirds of the diameter so not really shallow.

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Originally Posted by Stimpy

Hi folks,

Bit of a noob question here but thought I would ask the council of wise chiefs before I potentially do something I shouldn’t..

Have got a T3X in 22-250 that I have started reloading for.
I tried several different charges of AR2206H with 50gr Sierra blitzking projectiles, lit by a WLR primer. All loads were at the Sammi recommended max length of 2.350. I found reasonable but not great groups at 34.5gr (0.6moa) and 36.5gr (0.8moa). I was aiming for 0.5moa so wanted to try messing with OAL to tighten the groups a bit.
I measured the chamber with the Hornady OAL gauge at 2.490. It seems that a good place to start is 20thou off the lands which would mean the OAL is 2.470. Mag length is no issue, almost 1/2 inch spare.
My question is the projectile is only seated in the case 150thou, compared with 270thou when seated to the book max length, is that enough? Neck tension seemed good when seating and concentricity is under 1thou.
Thought I would ask in case I’m doing something dumb.. Cheers

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Greetings Stimpy,
One calibre or 0.22 inches in your case. You can go a bit below this but I would not go below 0.20 inches (5mm). Others may differ. Test it and see.
Regards Grandpamac.

Thanks Cigar and Grandpamac, I thought I had heard somewhere not less the caliber into the case, so that makes sense. I think what I might do is go back to 2.350 and step the loads out 10-20 at a time to a maximum of 200 thou in the case and see what happens, you never know what happens in the reloading rabbit hole...

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Originally Posted by Stimpy

Thanks Cigar and Grandpamac, I thought I had heard somewhere not less the caliber into the case, so that makes sense. I think what I might do is go back to 2.350 and step the loads out 10-20 at a time to a maximum of 200 thou in the case and see what happens, you never know what happens in the reloading rabbit hole...

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Greetings again Stimpy,
I see that the Blitz king projectiles have a boat tail which needs to be excluded from the seating depth. You may get better results from a flat base of 55 grains. My son wound up using BM8208 in his 22-250 with excellent results. I looked in my Tikka hand books to find your rifle likely has a 1 in 14 inch twist which may limit your projectile choice to not much more than 55 grain projectiles. Others may have practical experience here. Shooting to see as you propose is always a good idea. No sense in rushing of to fix a problem that may not actually exist.

Hi Grandpamac, you do know your stuff, indeed the SBK does have a boat tail and the Barrel a 1-14 twist. I did push the boat tail in the case when measuring the unseated length so the boat tail wasn’t taken into account when I took my measurement. I am quite keen to try some BM8208 if I can get hold of some (easier said than done at the moment), and I do have some 55gr V-max flat base projectiles, so that might be my next thing to try... Thanks very much for the advice, cheers

Thanks Mimms2, I didn’t think of that, I’ll be sure to be gentle when chambering, cheers

I measured some factory ammo and it all came in between PPU 2.347, Hornady 2.338, Sako 2.338, Federal 2.335 so I went for an aggregate of 2.34 for my Savage 22-250 1-12 twist.

Running 1455 blitzkings with a load of ADI2208 36Gr and Federal large rifle primers. Haven't done any real good testing just backwoods testing results are average but all would be in the kill zone.

I pulled 100 berger loads in 22-250 and reseated them deeper after dumping powder and redoing charge..they were mind boggling accurate BUT I couldnttrust them as loaded by someone else....and seated deeper as they werent in case very far...and they still shoot minute of hare out to 250 yards so didnt seem to bother them much.

Just seat them.224 into the case Excluding boat tail
So you have.224 of baring Surface in the neck
Then if you want to play with seating depth go from there
Shorten the round in 2-5 thou steps

But from my experience charge and primer make more difference than seating depth in a factory hunting rifle
Sure seating depth dose definitely make a difference but im unsure if you will see enough of an improvement to justify extra components to test
If you had Thousands of bucks worth of target rifle and you are trying to reduce your group from.3 moa to .2moa definitely play with seating depth
Just purely depends how much time and money you want to spend on it

I reckon its important to state that at .6MOA you're already doing pretty good. If you did .6 of an inch at 100m then that's actually better. Are you measuring c/c or outside to outside (no idea who invented that). It might actually be worth checking the supports before changing anything in your reloading. I mean, has your rear bag/bipod or bag ever actually produced a .25moa group with another rifle?

Only mentioning it because i found my groups tightened a fair bit using a new rear bad with rabbits ears. Off a concrete slab with my bipod i can only manage .6 myself. Off the grass it can go almost single hole sometimes.

Hi Rambo and Tfoye, thanks for the constructive comments, I went back and had another look at my groups and it is .51MOA (C to C) at 100 meters with the 34.5gr load so I might load up a few at that level and run them through the chrono and see what FPS I’m getting (unfortunately I forgot my chrono the day I shot them, so not sure of the velocity) if it’s fast enough then I might settle on that load. I was shooting off a front sandbag and rear ears, but I’m no expert so perhaps I’ve already reached the point where I’m not going to get much better… Cheers

While all the talk here is seating out further, you may find a sweet spot further back that 20 thou off the lands. I.e. more jump.

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Originally Posted by mimms2

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On a push-feed like your tikka the danger is knocking the projectile out of concentricity on chambering..

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On average, I'd think the T3 is one of the very best actions in terms of not upsetting a cartridge on chambering. They are generally butter smooth in feeding and are certainly the best of my eight+ other actions.

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Originally Posted by Stimpy

Hi Rambo and Tfoye, thanks for the constructive comments, I went back and had another look at my groups and it is .51MOA (C to C) at 100 meters with the 34.5gr load so I might load up a few at that level and run them through the chrono and see what FPS I’m getting (unfortunately I forgot my chrono the day I shot them, so not sure of the velocity) if it’s fast enough then I might settle on that load. I was shooting off a front sandbag and rear ears, but I’m no expert so perhaps I’ve already reached the point where I’m not going to get much better… Cheers

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Groups are always Measured Center to Center mate
.5moa ctc is a bloody good group for a factory rifle
Remember tikka’s are Guaranteed to shoot 1moa from the factory
So you are already 50% better than the Expectation

Not saying it couldn’t do better with a bit more playing and a better rest infact it probably can ive seen tikka rifles that shoot consistently to .3moa but the owners have all the top end loading gear dies alone worth more than an entire basic reloading set up
The neck tension etc being very consistent very very consistent charges and super consistent length and runout messurements

If you’re new to reloading your Probably making do with cheaper less consistent gear (could be Wrong) and less experience
What im saying is that if you are new to reloading (think I read that in the original post)
You are doing very well loading ammunition that dose .5moa constantly you are doing very well wouldn’t be complaining at all with that

If your getting 1/2 at 100m you are there.
Load all your rounds and go shooting.
That was the best bit of advice I ever got from a guy that knows!

Sent from my SM-A025F using Tapatalk

Thanks for the replies guys, yep I think I’ll settle on .5 MOA. Correct in that I’m only using lower end gear (Lee press and dies), but I was pretty happy with less than 1 thou runout. Perhaps I watched too many YouTube videos of groups touching and had unrealistic expectations. Will buy a Forster set at some stage, happy to spend the cash on good gear, but with young kids and living in the heart of Jaffaland, getting out to shoot is more of a challenge than buying gear. I might try some experimentation with primers and leave it at that.
Still after the elusive 300 yard magpie…