New to reloading the 6.5

[LRRPF52]

I personally make dummy cases if I’m loading a new bullet I haven’t done before.

I’ll take a de-primed and re-sized case, seat a bullet in it to the maximum magazine-length allowable COL, color the ogive with black marker, and see if that seats with a light seat into the chamber (not trying to force it into the chamber).

I then remove that dummy cartridge and see where the rifling marks are, if any.

I’ll measure with calipers any visible land engagement marks on the colored ogive, then seat the bullet a bit deeper than that, then double-check that the dummy cartridge chambers and drops free from the chamber with gravity.

That’s just what I like to do because it feels more practical to me.

Others like to use the bullet seating depth gauge, which is how I learned, but variances in how that process works steered me away from it.

I have a boat load of older PPU brass that uses LRPs, which I have no intent to use for loading, so I use them for dummy cartridges with various bullets already seated in them I can reference when I go to load them again.