Paul, when I talked to Greg regarding the cases, he informed me that they "came with the gun" and that, "the rig shot pretty well" - I was surprised to find that no two necks were of the same wall thickness. Setting the neck turner to obtain a 100% clean-up of the thinnest necks, resulted in removing as much a 0.002" from the thickest! Greg said that he just loaded 'em and shot 'em! He assumed that they were OK. I was very fortunate to have gotten such a good shootin' rifle at THAT price!

>So, I dug up a neck bushing .004 smaller than a loaded case neck and everything has changed for the good!<

 I am assuming that you had an opportunity to shoot after loading with the 'new" sizer-bushing - what sort of improvement did you get? 

With 134 Gr. bullets, the .30x44 type cartridges do about as well as the .30x47s - especially with a case FULL (compressed) losd of H-322. In the 'new' rig, I simply put in my "old standard" 30x44 (actually, a .308x 1.80") load  - 39.5 Gr./H-322 and tuned using seating depth first . . and when THAT produced vertical .4s, switching to the .324" neck-size bushing resulted in "ugly" low - middle 'teen' groups. ;) By ugly, I mean that EVERY single one of the groups had one shot WAY out - still that pesky vertical! BUt I can live with vertical when the result is still "in the teens". 

I believe peole are somewhat confused regarding jacket length and tunability - that really is more dependant upon bullet weight. The length could enter into the picture when expirimenting/altering the twist rate:  twist rates of 1:17" or faster should handle any BR type bullets (7-10 ogive) which are based upon jacket lengths of up to 1.080"; faster twist rates will work with bullets based upon the 1.150" jacket. According to the ballistics Gurus, the 1:15" twist IS very nearly the optimum twist rate for bullets based upun the 1.150" jacket; BR quality bullets ranging from 134 Gr. through about 170 Gr. or so can be made using this jacket.

The 1:17 and 1:18" twist barrels are within the [theoretically] ideal range for bullets based upon jacket lengths of 1.00" or less & generally, weighing 127 Gr. or less. For such bullets, these twist rates result in Sg (Gyroscopic Satbility Factor) ranging between 1.4 and 1.9. In theory, this Sg range affords  the highest degree of precision which can be expected for a given bullet.

In theory, the .30x44s should  out perform the .30x47s with bullet weights of about 125 Gr. or less, and vice versa. Of course, with our individual barrels, this does not always happen! ;) And THANK GOODNESS for THAT . . we wouldn't want to become bored - would we !?! Hope some of this proves useful . . .

Keep 'em ON the X! R.G.