Hi Deenangeo, interesting thread.

This may have been covered by someone else, if so just ignore it but I note you mention you're crimping into the cannelures of your 160 grain Hornady projectiles. You mention that this is giving you a COL of 2.944.

If that's the case, are you experiencing any feeding issues from the mag? It's been my experience that the 6.5 x 54 MS must have a COL of about 3.040 if the cartridges are to feed smoothly. In the case of the 160 gn Hornady's, this means seating the projectiles well out beyond the cannelure. Anything less than this and the feeding is not only rough as hell, but you can actually damage the shoulders of the cartridge cases. Also, and for what it's worth, I've never bothered crimping my loads for the MS and it's never caused me any issues.