The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

Some food for thought which is directly related to the 6.5x47 Lapua calibre. Which weight bullet are you loading (123gr or 139gr)? Some chambers are reamed and cut with a specific projectile weight in mind. The loading data provided by Vihtavouri (link) states that for a 123gr Lapua Scenar projectile you should be using an overall length of around 2.736". My rifle has been made based around the 123gr projectile and I cannot seat by bullets out that long. My loaded rounds touch the lands with an overall length of below 2.700".

So it sounds like you might be in a similar situation to me. If you have one of the nice Hornady tools to measure the base-to-ogive then go ahead and use this to measure the distance to your lands. My suggestion would be to make dummy bullets (case + projectile only) and seat your bullets to an overall length of ~2.650" and work your way up from there in whatever increments you see fit. I removed the firing pin from my bolt and loaded these rounds into my rifle until I could feel some resistance in closing the bolt. I then made note of the overall length of those bullets and chose to use an overall length about 0.010" less.

You have chosen a particularly difficult cartridge to use as a starting point for hand loading. At this point in the process I would recommend you read up on using Small Magnum Rifle Primers and check your bolt configuration too - does the firing in hole need bushing and is the firing pin the right size. I would also highly recommend using a chronograph to measure your projectiles velocity.

nearly there wrote:Hi safety first thanks for replying.to clarify your questions.the cases are on there 3rd reloading,the bolt was fine to close.the bolt and rifle were clean and oiled.it's 6.5x47 weatherby vanguard and my lengths were 2.708.also sorry about the wrong terminology guys.

Whoops, got a bit carried away in my reply (which may or may not be useful for you). How hot are you loading your rounds? What is your rifles barrel length? Are you full length sizing your brass or are you using a bushing die to neck size? If you are full length sizing your rounds each time and using a large powder charge with bullets sitting on/close to the lands then I wouldn't be surprised if you're working the brass too hard. Each time you full length size it pushes the shoulder back and re-forms the body, then when you fire on the next loading the brass is stretched back to match the chamber dimensions. Full length sizing is hard on brass and doing this repeatedly can cause the brass to become brittle and eventually break, dubbed as "case-head separation." I've heard quite the opposite for this calibre brass leading to very good case life (I'm on third shooting myself so cannot comment on this).

Thanks everyone.very good points for me to think over.I'll make up a dummy round and go from there.with reguards to powder I'm loading 37.8 rl15 with 123grn a max but feel lapua heads may be better

nearly there wrote:Thanks everyone.very good points for me to think over.I'll make up a dummy round and go from there.with reguards to powder I'm loading 37.8 rl15 with 123grn a max but feel lapua heads may be better

No problem. Another thing to remember is that if you swap to a different brand of bullets, but don't adjust the seating die, then you can end up with different base-to-ogive and overall length measurements. Each bullet will be slightly different so remember this when switching bullets. The below picture illustrates what I mean by ogive



Check this picture out which shows a bunch of different 6.5mm bullets with different masses. You'll notice that G and I are the 123gr Hornady A-max and 123gr Lapua Scenar respectively. Notice that the bullets have different lengths and I would bet that there's a difference in base to ogive position despite being the same mass.

That's a eye opening chart welshshooter,I stupidly believed they would all be basically the same

There's nowt stupid about it. You said it yourself that you're new to hand loading so there's plenty to learn out there!

One thing to always remember if seating a bullet deeper than the data prescribes is to adjust the load as seating a bullet deeper will increase the pressure. Work up the load from at least 10% less than max stated.