Tweaking 7.62+54R

[Patrick Chadwick]

Has anyone pulled the bullets,measured the average charge and reloaded all the cases the exact same and reseated the bullet? If so did you get noticeably better groups?

Yes. I had a couple of packs of Norma Russian Match ammo. Good ammo, but I made a check of the maximum possible OAL in Ivan the Terrible, and realized that there was going to be a longish unguided flight before the bullets engaged the rifling. So I pulled down twenty cartridges, weighed the powder to establish the average charge, and reloaded with the bullets seated slightly further out. The results have been posted recently.

Typically, factory ammo seems to be made to CIP tolerances minus an extra tolerance to allow for variations in production. When it is fired in old service rifles that were never made to CIP or SAAMI specifications in the first place, the factory ammo rattles around in what is effectively an oversized chamber for that ammo.

The only milsurp rifles I have that work well with factory-fresh ammo are the US and Swiss ones. All others are more accurate with neck-sized cases fired in the same rifle. And most perform better with flat-base bullets than with boat-tails, because of the typically longer-than-CIP throats.