Igloo;
Top of the morning from the cooler than normal south Okanagan sir, I hope you're well.
We've been fooling with 6.5's since the first surplus 96 showed up in '82 if memory serves. I modified one into a hunting rifle for my late father in the early '80's as well and it's been inherited and used to this day by our eldest daughter as her main hunting rifle.
She's had fantastic success with the 130gr TSX on local mulie and whitetail bucks so that's my baseline for experience.
I was so impressed at how the 6.5 130gr worked on game as compared to the .270 that was shooting 130gr TTSX and GMX that I rebarreled it to a 6.5x55. The barrel used was a near new Swede military surplus one so it's the 1:7.8" twist with fairly deep grooves.
For the sake of science or just to be different, I've loaded 120gr TTSX and GMX in it and have taken a few bucks with them. Last year I had the somewhat unusual occurrence where a 120gr GMX hit a moving mulie buck and didn't contact bone going in or coming out. With the monometals we've had the best luck breaking at least one scapula if possible and two is even better.
Anyways sir, all that to say that I was able to locate one box of the 140gr GMX from P&D in Edmonton to see how they'd shoot in my rifle.
They aren't a "usual" spitzer or spire point shape for sure, reminding me of the old 275gr Speer Semi-Spitzer I used to shoot in the .338 Win.
I want to say without looking that I tried at least 5 of the usual medium slow powders that have given decent results in my Swede and none of them would get the 140gr GMX to group for beans. Some were really terrible in fact.
A buddy found a couple more boxes of 130gr TSX out in the Kootenays for me, so for now I'm putting the testing of the 140gr GMX on hold and might test some of them in my rifle, again as they've worked so well in our daughter's 96.
Hopefully that was useful for you or someone out there, realizing of course it's a sample of one rifle, etc.
All the best.
Dwayne
