I hate to disappoint, but it will be some time before I will be back with this rifle in order to do some of the tests. I MIGHT be able to do the dropped round in the case trick, but I don't think that's it.

I do have both the calipers and a Labradar for a chronograph. Of the two rounds I fired, one did not register, the other registered at about 350 fps, which was either a bad reading, or the round really was going that slow.

When I determined COA, I seated a round by hand slightly long, chambered it very slowly, and then backed the round off from there. I'm trying to remember if I smoked/sharpied it first, but I didn't take notes on that. One point I was confused on was the "sharpness" and length of the bullet. I could see it pointing well past the chamber, but with the meplat, not touching lands. Hornady lists max COA for the 140 grain spitzer as 2.950 and 160 grain RNSP as 2.970. From my notes, I measured between 2.999 (that was the last round fired) and 3.009. I see I wrote above that there was a Hornady max in my notes for 3.063. I need to go back and find out which bullet that was for. I was either within that spec, or between .029 and .049 long. I might have been touching lands (my first thought), but a chamber cast will give me a better idea.

I have a fuzzy memory of a gauge that measured how far down the shoulder was compared to spec, but I don't remember details other than "that seems right". This was done after the fact.

I have one question based on ignorance. I understand the "no crimp" arguments, and considered taking that die out of the mix. I set it very lightly. The reason I used it, however, was not recoil. The 6.5 is pretty light in that area. My concern was the load ramp combined with the spitzer point. I thought I'd be jamming the bolt pretty hard to make sure the sharp point would climb the ramp, so it made sense to me to tighten it just a little. Was I way out to lunch on that one?