Advice on depth of seating of bullet.

Advice from Ken and Rod:

Always seat to the full depth of the rammer, this puts the bullet at a consistent depth. (Their loads are adjusted to compensate for this deeper seating.)

Advice from Alan Westlake:

Do not seat bullet/ball to full depth of rammer, just so bullet is 1-2mm below the lip of the chamber and therefore doesn't stop the cylinder rotating.

 This shows round ball and bullet in the same .457" calibre for the Ruger.

The bullet is lubed with Alox and the ball with a graphite/moly coating.

The bullet (Allwood, .44 Remington/Ruger bullet) has a flat base and a round nose. The bullet nose has a longer radius than the round ball, i.e. it seems flatter. The two rings nearest the base are .454" diameter while the ring on the nose is .457". This difference means you can seat the bullet in the chamber by finger pressure as far as the second ring. You need to use the rammer to seat it the rest of the way, this means it goes in straight, overcoming Sam Colt's objection to bullets, and gives a good tight fit in the cylinder.

To maintain consistency I looked for a point which would allow me to do the same thing every time. I started to seat a ball in an empty chamber (no primer and no powder!) and checked with a straight edge across the mouth of the chamber. When the ball was exactly level with the edge of the chamber I drew a line on the rammer where it met the frame using a fine tip spirit based OHP pen. Then I noticed that the line I had drawn was 1mm below the base of the slot cut into the rammer. If I lined up with this it would give me a seating depth as advised. I repeated the test with a bullet and found that because the nose was not exactly the same radius of curvature as the ball it seated 1mm deeper, but within the limits advised. I could therefore use the same mark for both projectiles. The photos below may help to explain:

For some guns e.g. those converted to .38 using wadcutters, you cannot use the rammer on the gun. You have a special press with which you load the bullets into the chambers off the gun. I will photograph this when I get the opportunity.