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I ajourned to my reloading room to day feeling good the proud owner of fireformed moded cases for the stoney point OAL gauge for every caliber of gun I own.
99% of the guns I own are milsurps Lee enfields, P14,Swedish mauser, Nagants, 8mm Mausers, Mas36 etc.
You get my drift started of raring to go tried the swede hmm tried the P14 hmm tried another one etc.
COL gauges are no good to you when building ammo for milsurps if I used the measurements I got there would be no bullet retention at all.
I could use a longer COL but there is still a big jump before engaging the rifling.

I have used an OAL gauge on my service rifles but you are right to say limited bullet retention, the bullet fell out of the end of the case on my SMLE!

I keep a couple of fire formed cases for use with my OAL gauge for all of my rifles, make a note of the OAL and date then check from time to time to see how the throat is eroding. The only one we did not do this for from new was Christel's 22 however throat life seems good on the couple of occasions I have checked. I will check again when we get home as she has thrown a few rounds down it recently.

Alpha1 wrote:I ajourned to my reloading room to day feeling good the proud owner of fireformed moded cases for the stoney point OAL gauge for every caliber of gun I own.
99% of the guns I own are milsurps Lee enfields, P14,Swedish mauser, Nagants, 8mm Mausers, Mas36 etc.
You get my drift started of raring to go tried the swede hmm tried the P14 hmm tried another one etc.
COL gauges are no good to you when building ammo for milsurps if I used the measurements I got there would be no bullet retention at all.
I could use a longer COL but there is still a big jump before engaging the rifling.

Alpha1 - I have found the same with one of my rifles - a Remington 700. It certainly is disappointing when you find that you can't seat a bullet so that it is just off the lands - especially when everyone goes on about it as if it is the Holy Grail of reloading
From what I have read there are these options
1. Use a bullet that is 'jump tolerant', longer is better. But be careful not to make it too long, it shouldn't seat below the case neck.
2. Apply a Crimp
3. Both.

I'm still experimenting to see what effect (if any) they have on accuracy.

Military rifles and many commercials - like the remington, deliberately have longer freebore (if that is the right term :?: 0 so that they are tolerant of COL with no danger of a pressure spike caused by an out-of-spec round.

Either that or our rifles have got a bad case of throat erosion

Thats the beauty of cast boolits for squeezing accuracy from military riles, your bullets won't reach the rifling but boolits can always be found/made to fit the throat.