Six &Twenty

Perhaps I'm just a little creeped out. This is my fist pass at a 'small bore', I have worked up loads for 35 Whelen, 458 Win Mag, and both smokeless and black powder 45/70. I am used to 'stick' powders and have no experience with ball powders (in rifle cartridges) The Black Powder 45/70 loads are compressed as 'standard procedure', I actually have a special compression die for this operation, and I drop BP charges through a 24 inch drop tube... but there seems to be no 'space' in the BL-C (2) to accommodate compression. I vibrated the cases and it did not seem to lower the powder column at all. Just hoping someone else may have faced the same dilemma...

Looking for a little 'baseline' info. I am not 'new' to reloading, but something I thought would be a walk in the park now has me seeking advice. I picked up a boat-load of German (MEN) 7.62 which has proven reliable in my FAL. I've been chasing the brass around for a while now and figured I'd re-load some. Got another deal on Hornady 155 gn BTHP from Midway, and I was enthusiastic about this particular bullet as it has a cannalure exactly where it should be and these are destined for the FAL, a good solid crimp seems prudent... and it was really inexpensive. Looked up some load data for 155 gr bullets to select a powder and settled on Hodgdon BL-C (2). Hodgdon data recommends a 45 gr starting load with a maximum of 48 gr. Now it gets interesting. Brass was de-capped full length re-sized using a Lee .308 Winchester die, and tumbled for a day. MEN does not appear to stake in primers so I did not need to mess with primer pockets. I seated Winchester WLR Standard Large Rifle primers. I dropped my first charge in the case (45 gr) and it was REALLY close to the neck. Puzzled, I threw a 48 gr charge and put this in a second case. This was well into the neck of the case... there is no way this is gonna work! I checked calibration on my digital scale and it's perfect. I did a little looking around on the internet and discovered that 7.62 brass is 'typically' thicker and may have a heaver 'web' than .308. I have not attempted to do a case volume measurement, I've never messed with this before. I am assuming (and you know what that means) the MEN cases are markedly smaller internally than the Winchester brass used to produce the Hodgdon data. From what I am 'observing, it looks to me like 45 grs is going to be about max without compressing, and there is no way I want to start compressing a ball powder! With bullet at the cannalure, LOA will be exactly 2.80 inches. So the question here, is how far back should I go to select a 'starting' charge. My gut is telling me maybe 42 gr, and work up in half grs from there. Any thoughts??