Sizing, Seating the 6.5 Swede?

[Old Iron Sights]

Looking at ordering the mold from Mid Sth SS. However, I don't appear to have a sizer option for my Lee press other than a custom sizer. Guess I could bore out a lee 243. Lee's selection for milsurp really sucks.

[Burnhardt]

They don't have one, I ordered a custom 268 sizer, as for a seating the lee one needs to be bored out to take the fat boolits, or some get a 7x57 seating die.

- James

[Old Iron Sights]

So the lee bullet seating die won't take the 6.5 cruise?

This is getting to be more trouble than it's worth.

[462]

Once one realizes that anything having to do with cast boolits requires the ability to adapt and overcome, frustration falls by the wayside.

Seating dies are manufactured with jacketed bullets in mind. In the case of the 6.5 Swede, most moulds will drop .266" and upward (think I've read of .270+" Cruise Missiles). A 6.5 Swede jacketed bullet is .264". Thus we adapt and either enlarge a sizing/lube die, and a seating die to acommodate our fat boolits, or we have them made.

By the way, my experience is that Lyman dies are the most fat-boolit friendly.

[jonk]

1. Measure a fired case, and figure out
a. Chamber dimensions- this will be the outside diameter of the fired case.
b. Brass thickness.
Multiply brass thickness by 2 and subtract from measurement a. You now know how fat a bullet you can chamber. Size bullet about 1/1000 under this for easy bullet release.

2. Get a .270 expander. Say you figured out that you need a .269" bullet. (Verify bore dimensions with a slug too). Chuck in your drill with some fine emery paper and slowly take off a thousandth measuring with a micrometer. Now install this in the Lee sizer.

3. Two options. You could seat in a larger die; like the 7mm as suggested. Or you can slit a wooden dowel, insert a small piece of emery paper in that, put in a drill and spin in the seater neck and open up the throat to match the dimensions you need.

Takes about 20 minutes start to finish for everything.

[Old Iron Sights]

Quick question. Do 270 gas checks work for the Lee 6.5 swede cruise missle?

[Calamity Jake]

Quick question. Do 270 gas checks work for the Lee 6.5 swede cruise missle?

No you need 6.5 gas checks

[Ed in North Texas]

Once one realizes that anything having to do with cast boolits requires the ability to adapt and overcome, frustration falls by the wayside.

Seating dies are manufactured with jacketed bullets in mind. In the case of the 6.5 Swede, most moulds will drop .266" and upward (think I've read of .270+" Cruise Missiles). A 6.5 Swede jacketed bullet is .264". Thus we adapt and either enlarge a sizing/lube die, and a seating die to acommodate our fat boolits, or we have them made.

By the way, my experience is that Lyman dies are the most fat-boolit friendly.

Not all 6.5 J-words are .264 (just most all). Just finished loading 50 with Hornady 160 grain .268 RN-SP J-words in 6.5x50 Japanese Prvi Partizan cases. C-H seating die had no problems whatever with that size. I had picked up a used C-H 6.5 Jap and a used RCBS .270 seater. The C-H did just fine. Now I need to get a proper size M-Die spud. 26 caliber is too small for the .268 and 27 caliber really bells the Prvi Partizan 6.5 Jap cases. That may not be a problem once these cases are fired. Probably should have fire formed them, but I will - and test 10 rounds each of 5 different charges of 4895 at the same time.

Ed