The ammo thread for Hornady 143 ELDX indicated some positive results, but I wasn't getting them in my 7mm-08.
143gr 6.5 ELD-X Hornady
I took Rob's advice and started over from square 1. I loaded 5 slugs of 7mm 162 ELDX's into once fired cases and carefully loaded them into the chamber of my rifle.
My results were... interesting. Hornady's recommended COAL is 2.755. The bullets themselves hug tightly around 1.49"-1.489". My dummy rounds came out 2.92", 3x 2.93" and one curious guy came out 2.96". I started them all at 2.98". I tried again and that same case, same bullet came out the same way. That slug showed signs of a bit of rubbing but the rest looked pretty clean.
Previously, I was having problems with the bullets at longer load lengths coming out scored on one side near the start of the ogive.
One showed that, out of these 5.
My conclusion is that I will base my reload off of 2.93 COAL, and load closer to 2.91 or 2.905. That allows the bullet to be about 41% seated with .336 protruding below the neck, if the cartridge is pretty close to stated specs.
It seems like this % seated and protrusion into the case is much more closely in line with the ELD's for .260 and 6.5 CM.
The Hornady load book length of 2.755 stuffs these bullets in deep, seating 52% of the slug and jutting .486 below the neck.
I'm going to load some up and will post results. Please provide me feedback- I'm a newer reloader and I'm working on a plain RCBS FL die set.