Quote Originally Posted by fgw_in_fla View Post
Congratulations....

You have just become the very first guy I know that admits to crimps on his ammo for a bolt gun.

I recall trying it for a time when I first started reloading. I gave it up about 3 months later when I became completely engrossed in neck tension, annealing & seating depth.
It all went downhill from there. No local therapist for reloader's OCD, no known meds, no support groups....
Well-here's my admittedly rather skewed reasoning. My go-to factory ammo for general sighting-in is the atomic 168 nosler custom comp. It works very well in every 308 rifle I have including my semi-auto AR's. It has replaced Gold Medal matchkings as my "baseline" factory ammo. The atomic stuff I've bought uses about the crappiest--looking and prepped dated brass I've ever seen in production ammo but it shoots so gosh-darn well despite nothing special about CBTO or anything else in prep as far as I can tell. The only other thing I noticed is that they appear to use a taper crimp of some sort, so my conclusion is as long as you have a good bullet driven by good powder a consistent crimp applied with the lee factory die might make a significant difference in consistency. The chances are at least as good that I have no idea what I'm talking about, too. : )