Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats My 6.5's

First pic is of the 6.5 lineup with the addition of the 6.5 PRC on the far right ....


A little info I posted on another site back in March 2016

"" A bunch of guys over on the Snipers Hide have been messin with the 6.5x55 AI and I believe a few of them have them built on Tikka T3's,
Quick Design shows two versions the 6.5x55AI and the 6.5x55 BJAI (Bob Jourdan's version) there is also the 6.5X55 GWI developed by a gunsmith at Kelbly's, I don't have the dimensions for that one but the reamer is available from PT&G

I also got hooked on the 6.5x55 Improved meth,
being a long time 6.5 Swede fan it was a no brainer to do it as I had tons of brass, bullets and powder for it already and I had zero interest in the 6.5 Creedmoor which in my opinion is a backwards thinking design as it does not improve on anything over the 260 Rem just shoots the same bullets slower, something the 6.5x47 Lapua had covered quite well

since I had a Tikka T3 in the 6.5x55 Swede I used it for my build, I got a Manners Elite Hunter stock, Bartlein #3B 8 twist 26" barrel and a couple of 5 round extended Tikka mags from Beretta, I didn't use any of the AI versions and instead developed my own 35 degree shoulder wildcat for better feeding from the detachable mags, I also MAX improved the case for full capacity and throated it to run 140 gr Berger Hybrid bullets without hanging into powder space .... in my version, factory loads and standard Swede brass handloads CANNOT be fired as I pushed the shoulder up considerably and headspace is no longer the same,

Took it out to fireform 95 pcs of brass a few weeks ago and it showed pretty good accuracy with the fireforming loads, I had 50 rounds of 6.5 Wolf Killer that I had previously fireformed with cream of wheat loaded with 50.0 gr of H4831SC (2906 fps ave.) and another 45 rounds of fresh Lapua 6.5X55 Swede brass loaded with 48.0 gr of H4831 and Hornady 140 gr AMAX bullets (2841 fps ave.) jammed .024" into the lands for a solid no case movement fireforming process..

after sighting in the Vortex PST 2.5-10x44 I fired 5 round "bursts" directly from the Tikka detachable 5 round mags, fed perfectly from the mags without a single hiccup, let barrel cool and repeated , drilled out a nice 20 shot hole at 100 yards, I can tell this one really wants to shoot but needs a better scope, looks good so far all I need to do is get around to annealing the fire formed brass and start the real load development, My goal is working up to 3100-3200 fps with 140 gr Berger Hybrids using 54-55 gr of RL26 ""

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