Making 6.5mm Swedish Mauser Cases

[jimwill48]

Needed some 6.5mm Swede cases to try out some cast bullets. Had plenty of loaded factory rounds but no empty's other than some berdan primed military cases. I read an article on forming cases from 30-06 cases but that required moving the shoulder back a long way. Looked at .308 cases but way to short. Then found a bag of 20 - 7.65mm Argentina cases that was real close to the same length. Head and rim dia were correct. Lubed up the cases ran them threw a 6.5mm Swede sizing die and bingo 6.6mm Swede cases just a tiny bit short in the neck. Loaded up with 8.0 grs of Trailboss and my cast bullet and all is well. A cheap way to get some cases for lead bullets in this caliber.

James

[geargnasher]

Go to accuratereloading's forum, scroll down to the cast bullet page, and check out the thread SmokinJ posted about it, probably at or near the top of the list. Feel free to ignore the banter that followed the original post.

Gear

[gnoahhh]

I made some 6.5x55 cases out of '06 brass about 30 years ago on a whim. The buggers swelled like crazy on the first firing. Back then 6.5 brass was hard to come by, but now it's so common that I can't imagine anybody doing such a thing.

My 6.5x55 is a M70 Featherweight from the very first production run back in '86. It's chamber is a little tighter than the Swede milsurps I fooled with before then, but I'm not inclined to mess with '06 brass even for this one.

[geargnasher]

Others have posted about how to fireform the brass evenly to prevent excessive bulging to one side of the case head, but the caution has been mentioned that these cases are more suited to lower-pressure cast boolit loads than full-house jacketed pressures, although I'm sure some will argue that they can take high pressures just fine. If case head separations were a huge problem after a couple of firings I'm sure we would have heard about it. Personally, I haven't had any failures after half-dozen firings, but I used military brass (LC) and it has thicker walls and web.

Gear

[scrapcan]

do a search on here for 6.5 from 30-06 or on 6.5x55. The info is all in the archives.

And to mention a note on the myth of case head separations when using 473 case head. Current remington and Winchester brass uses the 473 basic case head for their commercial brass. I have both and both are new brass, so don't argue the point. I also have lapua and rws that use correct original dimensions. If this were a problem it would likely cause a cease in production due to law suits.