It sounds like you are on the right track. I've been doing a little bit of load development for my AR-15 in .223, and that turned out to be more of a hassle than I thought. I tried several different bullets, and it turns out that my 1:8 twist like the 55 grain v-max the best!
I wanted to shoot the 60 grain bullets, but those didn't group worth a nickle. I could only get about 3" groups out of that. With the 55 grain v-max, I has able to put them into a 1/2"! Turns out that my gun didn't like any bullet from Nosler. It like the Sierra Blitz King 55 grain bullets, but the v-max grouped the best consistently out of the whole group.
I would like to try the Sierras a little more, I think those might be ok to, but I was happy with the v-max performance and stopped there.
I also tried a couple of different powders and settled on Benchmark for my .223, which is a faster powder... a powder that is closely related to what the gun was designed for.
Here's a great website, once you get into re-loading, you can try some bullet samples and see if your gun likes a particular bullet over another:
http://www.bulletsamples.com/
I've dealt with Tom on a couple of occasions, and he's a good guy to deal with!
I had been a long time pistol loader before getting into rifle, and I guess I would say that rifle reloading just has a few more steps involved, but pretty much the same principles apply. It seems like with rifle, it just takes a little more to get a load that shoots accurately, since we are shooting at longer distances compared to pistol. As long as a pistol goes boom, I'm happy!
Hope that helps a little.