SAAMI Cartridge and Chamber Drawings

[trickg]

Due to another thread, I was looking up SAAMI pressures of a couple of different rifle cartridges and I came across these.

Pistol
https://saami.org/wp-content/upload...FP-and-R-Approved-2015-12-14-Posting-Copy.pdf

Rifle
https://saami.org/wp-content/upload...99.4-CFR-Approved-2015-12-14-Posting-Copy.pdf

Shotshell
https://saami.org/wp-content/upload...-Shotshell-2015-R2019-Approved-2019-04-23.pdf

I have a laser printer so I'm tempted to print them out on some good paper stock and have them bound in a spiral binder to have as shop references.
Anything a person would need to know about basics of a cartridge is in those manuals, particularly cartridge dimensions.

I can't tell you the number of times I've seen a forum post to the effect of: "I'm thinking about loading x bullet that's x number of grains for my x cartridge - what should my OAL be?" This reference solves that mystery with hard scientific numbers.

 

[85MikeTPI]

I believe most people find the saami specs on the Wikipedia pages for the particular calibers. I have the sammi PDFs downloaded to several places and hardcopies in a SHTF notebook.

Most of the people I've seen asking about COL is for a particular firearm.. I know many 9mm guns will have trouble cycling or have poor accuracy if the saami max COAL is used.

 

[trickg]

I believe most people find the saami specs on the Wikipedia pages for the particular calibers. I have the sammi PDFs downloaded to several places and hardcopies in a SHTF notebook.

Most of the people I've seen asking about COL is for a particular firearm.. I know many 9mm guns will have trouble cycling or have poor accuracy if the saami max COAL is used.

I think a lot of times it also depends on the mags too.

When I first started reloading, I didn't even own a set of calipers. For semi-auto rounds, I compared to factory ammo and eyeballed it, and for revolver cartridges, I simply seated to the crimp groove or cannelure.

In most cases there's a decent amount of allowable variance when it comes to COAL in terms of bullet seating depth, and it's up to the reloader to make a judgement call. I have no experience with rifle, yet, but with handgun, I usually try to find something in the middle, both for charge weight and for COAL.

 

[lazarus]

Due to another thread, I was looking up SAAMI pressures of a couple of different rifle cartridges and I came across these.

Pistol
https://saami.org/wp-content/upload...FP-and-R-Approved-2015-12-14-Posting-Copy.pdf

Rifle
https://saami.org/wp-content/upload...99.4-CFR-Approved-2015-12-14-Posting-Copy.pdf

Shotshell
https://saami.org/wp-content/upload...-Shotshell-2015-R2019-Approved-2019-04-23.pdf

I have a laser printer so I'm tempted to print them out on some good paper stock and have them bound in a spiral binder to have as shop references.
Anything a person would need to know about basics of a cartridge is in those manuals, particularly cartridge dimensions.

I can't tell you the number of times I've seen a forum post to the effect of: "I'm thinking about loading x bullet that's x number of grains for my x cartridge - what should my OAL be?" This reference solves that mystery with hard scientific numbers.

Ahhh, but it only solves it if your chamber is actually SAAMI correct. Which it might not be. It could have short or long freebore. How the threading was cut will matter too.