I was going to write something here but it seems mturner's response covers it better than I could ever cover anything. Wait! I wrote something anyway...couldn't help myself....
OK, in The Spirit Of Wilbur I'm going to provide an unfounded, speculative and maybe even irrelevant "insight".......the difference is, I'ma' just forge on ahead damn the torpedoes
(cain't help myself, nuther
)
"I've heard" that when the bullet obturates and upsets to fill the grooves there's a very fine line between not only width and depth, the ratios thereof, and their relationship to each other but also with the overall diameters involved. The way I grasp it is that the barrelmaker must, by figures, experience and trial and error find that combination which allows everything to squish into place, sealing against unnecessary leakage while not STRETCHING THE BULLET........
In short, the bullet WILL find it's way down the bore, at some pressure or another, but that the job of the barrelmaker is to keep it as pristine as possible.
An example.
I have a friend who fired some 30cal bullets down a .270 tube and collected the bullets. They made it to the collection box, no animals were harmed in this experiment, and the bullets were now very LOONG 270 projectiles. Some even oozed lead out the tips.....
My point (such as it is) it that it's a tricksy science..... I've managed to acquire a couple undersized "setup barrels" from rifle barrel mfgrs for use as fireform barrels and in one case I've got one set up for pressure testing. It's a 338 barrel that's 6 thou undersized from the production runs. The only way I can capture these pills is in a snowbank and we haven't had any for the last 5yrs so I don't know what the slugs measure out to but my guess is that they're "stretched"
I'll find out after the election's over and we get some snowbanks back, meantime this tight barrel does build pressure differently as Michael mentioned.
eeebedy eeebedy eeebedy that's all folks, such as it is