Loaded length of bullet?

[clayshooter]

I know loading manuals give OAL of a loaded round. In some cases the bullet is far short of the mouth of the cylinder. Is this good for primo accuracy or should the bullet be reloadted furthur forward in the case to kiss off near the the front of the cylinder? Obviously pressure with be low. Any thoughts?

 

[WR Moore]

I doubt many people would notice the difference if any existed. At one time, some custom 'smiths catering to the PPC crowd machined cylinders down to barely clear the nose of wadcutter target loads. The barrel shanks were extended to make the jump to the rifling the length of the forcing cone plus a few thousandths. Since there's been no tidal wave of copies of this type of work, I expect any difference wasn't worth the machine time.

Moving the bullet forward also reduces the amount of force necessary to pull the bullet from the case, which adversely affects the powder burn. In short, leave well enough alone.

 

[OKFC05]

I get lots of questions about loading that amount to: "Why don't you do the same things in handgun loading you do in long-range rifle loading?" The answer usually is "Because it does not matter."

There is an equation that combines the effects of shooter, gun, and ammunition contributions to error in shooting (Inverse of square root of the sum of the inverse squares). For example, it clearly shows that if the shooter is capable of shooting a 5-inch group at 50 yards, improving the ammunition from a 1-inch error to a 3/4-inch error will not even be noticed or measurable.

 

[Vulcan Bob]

Good advise there so far! If all is well mechanicly with your firearm, that little extra jump to the forceing cone will be just fine. I have a six inch M-19 that is very accurate with the much shorter .38 special. Load em to the specified length and worry not.

 

[pownal55]

Getting too technical will not do much good, save that for the rifle ammunition.

 

[GLV]

As the reloading manual/s information is predicated on pressure, I use the OAL stated in the manual for that particular bullet.