Project Appleseed

Hi Folks

Question about overall length when reloading for the Garand.  Hornady says max is 3.34 and I've seen others state the minimum is 3.15, optimum is 3.24 and max is 3.34 and John Clarke's article in the American rifleman says 3.34 (which is what TM 43-0001-27 also says).

So my question is what do you set your length to?

I've never measured it.  I used an HXP round to set up my seating die and used surplus (pulled) fmjs and they worked great.  If I were trying to wring the absolute best accuracy out of my M1 I would do things differently but it shoots just fine as is.

Depends on the bullet weight.
I have been loading 168 Grain bullets. I started at 3.24 and have gradually worked my way up to 3.3. I have not noticed a gain in accuracy with the difference in seating depth yet.
The Hornady M1 Garand Match load is areound 3.25-3.26, If I am remembering correctly.
Max COL from what I have read is 3.34
With a 150 Grain Bullet it is not long enough for a 3.34 COL. I have not worked up any loads for 150's yet. I want to recall reading that other folks had success with 3.15.
Best advice I can give is to use your loading data for reference and tweak your load to suit your rifle. I started with what was listed in the Hornady 7th and went from there.
Remember that the deeper you seat your bullet, the higher the pressure, so by increasing your COL you are decreasing the pressure and velocity. But the closer the bullet is to the lands, the more accurate it tends to be.
I have found that my M1 really likes a certain velocity 2600-2700 FPS and when I am over or under a few hundred FPS the accuracy goes from 2 MOA to 5 MOA.
The CMP Forum is a good place to find M1 reloading info.  www.odcmp.com
Good luck.
Sorry for the long post, not sure if this was all stuff you already knew or not.

My best Garand load to date is a Hornady #3037 150 gr FMJ over 47.5 gr of IMR 4064 and CCI #34 primer seated to a 3.185" OAL with a light crimp using the Lee factory crimp die.

I gauge at 3.329-3.33.  Bullet seating has a bell-curve length distribution due to ogive differences. So my procedure is to seat all, gauge all, set seater 1/4-1/2 turn deeper and seat all that failed gauging, lather-rinse-repeat.  I use 3.33" rather than 3.34" to give me some margin for error and because it has not shown a significant accuracy difference for my purposes.

SoM

Thanks for all the helpful replies.  I have this suspicion that I am seating the bullet too deeply - mine have been around 3.24 and I wondered if in my chamber there might be a bit of "jump" before it contacts rifling.

Not a reloading expert by any means but is it not considered the less jump there is to the rifleing the more accurate (potentially) they will be?

If that's anywhere close to fact then setting OAL to just shy of what will feed through the mag would be the only logical option. I see no reason to load shorter but I'm not familiar with M1 geometry, just poodle guns and AR-10's....O.L.

If you really want to get serious (safely) you need to consider

1) Pressure has to be good (high enough to operate, low enough not to damage the rifle) so you shouldn't do anything to cause high pressure

2) ammo needs to fit in the magazine and feed out of it into the chamber

3) bullet should be close to the lands but not touching them when the cartridge chambers (touching can increase pressures and maybe keep the bolt from locking fully forward)

If you're trying to get the bullet close - but not touching - to the lands the weight of the bullet and the shape of the bullet (ogive) will help determine how deeply the bullet has to be seated - which also affects pressure.

I agree OD. Next question...Is there any bullet shape (ogive) that would allow contact with the rifling and still fit in the magazine? I could be wrong but I don't think there is.....O.L.

I haven't done the "experiments in reloading" with an M1, just an M1A - and yes, you can seat a 180 Sierra matchking out far enough to fit the magazine and still contact the lands - at least on my M1A you can.

I have a Schuster gas plug on my shooter M1 expressly for the purpose of trying heavy bullets (and a usually wrong powder) but have not gotten around to it yet.  Too many other projects.

You know, now that I think of it I remember Silence having a problem at the Feb. 2007 RBC with some .308 ammo from that Georgia firm.  He had a round or two where the bullet stuck in the barrel when he unloaded it at the end of an AQT stage.  Some of the guys got to checking his 50 caliber can of ammo and found about 10% of them had bullets seated out far enough to cause problems even though they were fitting in the magazines just fine.  Might be an unusual problem but I wouldn't want to do it on purpose based on what I've read.