6.5 Swede & the 170 grain Lee

[Phil]

Good evening all,

I have one of those pesky Swede M96's and am trying to get it to shoot cast bullets.

I have two Lyman molds for the 150 grain bullets and they are undersize for my groove diameter, which is .268". I checked the barrel at the breech and muzzle both. It is a couple of tenths bigger at the muzzle but I'm not worried about that at the moment. The bore diameter is .2578". The cylindrical section of the throat, just ahead of the chamber mouth, measures .274" and that tapers down to .268" at the origin of rifling.

I was wondering if anyone had the body (groove) and bore diameters of the Lee 170 grain mold (which I understand is a design of one of this site's members) when the bullet is made of linotype?

I tried to order two of the Lee molds from Midsouth today but they are on backorder right now. I don't know if that means they aren't going to get any more of them or its just going to be a while.

Thanks for the help, its much appreciated.

Cheers,

Phil :castmine:

[Buckshot]

............My copy of the mould dropped slugs cast at 15 bhn with a nose OD of .2607" and a drive band OD of .2684". Lino would no doubt add a half thou or so to those figures.

............Buckshot

[Phil]

Thanks for the dope Buckshot. It sounds like the mold I need. If you hear of anyone who wants to part with theirs let me know. I'd like to have two of them if possible.

Cheers,

Phil

[Oldfeller]

Phil,

Midsouth generally only takes a month or so to gather together enough molds to cook a special order of the custom mold page. They used to go ahead and place an order with LEE when they got to 15 because they knew they would sell the remainders fairly quickly once they had them.

There ARE folks on here that are not using their 6.5 cruise missle molds, but the ones they have are collectables because they were hand-tuned by me, were serialized 1-100 and carried a special stamped cartouche on the blocks to prove they really are a first run collectable. These things have been sold in the past for upwards of $75 bucks when they actually moved hands (some people are plum collector silly I guess).

Midsouth will still sell you a freshly cut one for $15 if you can stand to wait a bit for them. That's what I'd recommend you do.

But if you GOTTA have one, I still have the #1 mold, the very first of the litter ....

Now, question is -- how collector silly are you?

<g>

Oldfeller

[garandsrus]

Phil,

I will send you some of the Cruise Missle boolits to try... The mold I have is from MidSouth so it's not "collectable" like Old Feller's, but it casts a nice looking boolet. The boolet doesn't feed well through my CG-63. I just bought another Swedish Mauser so I will try it there also, but would expect the same result.

I have already purchased a different 6.5mm mold, so I would be willing to sell mine if you can use it. Send me a PM...

John

[Phil]

Hi Oldfeller,

garandsrus has a standard Midsouth mold that I think I'm going to take him up on. Thank you for the very kind offer though. It wouldn't be worth it for me to buy a collectible mold (or anything else for that matter) because all my stuff gets used, no safe queens here. Matter of fact, I even go through the safe from time to time and cull for sale anything I haven't used for about five years or so. I have had four major eye surgeries in the last two or three years so all the heavy caliber stuff is gone. Really hated to part with some of that stuff too. I did keep all my .30's as I can shoot cast bullets in them without the recoil to worry about. Everything else is .25 and under except for the Swede. This getting older stuff ain't all its cracked up to be.

Cheers,

Phil

[garandsrus]

Oldfeller,

What OAL do you seat the Cruise Missle to?

I have read where some folks leave a couple lube grooves "dry" and leave those out of the case. My rifles wont feed if I do that.

I have two Swedish 6.5 mm's. One is a standard Mauser (just bought haven't shot yet) and the other is a CG-63. The CG-63 needs the boolits seated so that at most the last lube groove is exposed. They feed more reliably if all the lube grooves are inside the case. The standard Mauser will feed with the boolet about .125 longer than the CG-63. This puts quite a bit of boolit below the case neck.

Thanks,
John

[Oldfeller]

The Cruise Missile was designed for a standard Carl Gustav armory M96 Swede throat so it 1) just fit inside the magazine and 2) engaged that throat at 3 points which were BR nose, front crush band and body diameter. And it did, you couldn't unload a properly crush-seated bullet, it had become one with the throat.

My gun left nearly 3 lube grooves exposed on the loaded case. For low loads I left them empty. For the experimental full speed fast loads (which would generally disappear on the way to the target) I lubed them all. According to some, you could get away with only lubing the gas check shank and one lube groove for the most accurate target loads.

Talk to Sundog, Maven and Jumptrap about their best accuracy tricks, they always tanned my hide shooting the thing ....

Oldfeller

[garandsrus]

Oldfeller,

With a couple lube grooves exposed, would it still feed reliably from the magazine?

My understanding is that the rifle was designed to always be fed from the magazine so that the extractor/ejector slips over the cartridge without any undue stress.

Thanks,
John

[45 2.1]

With a couple lube grooves exposed, would it still feed reliably from the magazine?

My understanding is that the rifle was designed to always be fed from the magazine so that the extractor/ejector slips over the cartridge without any undue stress.
Thanks,John

The boolit was designed so that you could seat the gas check at the base of the neck and it would fit and feed correctly. The original "collector" series did this. Hopefully the repeated buys from Midsouth do it also. All Mausers were a controlled feed design after the 91s. The later improvements would also let the extractor slip over the rim while chambered. Some of the Swedes do this and some don't.

[andrew375]

I am very pleased with this mould, it seems perfectly matched to my m94. When feeding from the magazine the bolt needs to be cycled rapidly and firmly, otherwise you occasionaly get a hang up caused by the nose jamming into the edge of the chamber.

The one problem I am having though is a pronounced tendency for the bullets to tumble. I've found I have to coat the bullet noses in liquid alox to get anywhere. I've actually got one load that is reasonably accurate and make round holes in the target, but loads using slow powders are hopeless!

Does anyone else have this problem? What loads has anyone found for this bullet?

The load refered to above is 15 gr. of VV N320 which gives just over 1600fps.

[garandsrus]

Hi,

I loaded up some Cruise Missles from a MidSouth mold and they do indeed feed fine through the standard Swedish Mauser with a couple lube grooves showing. At that length they don't feed at all in the CG-63. They always hit the back of the barrel!

John

[45 2.1]

What loads has anyone found for this bullet?

Try 11.3 gr. of Unique with a Rem large rifle primer.