Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada I'd like to thank all the Canadians who bought Creedmoors

My CZ453 shoots the Blue Box bulk ammo into tiny little bug holes. Actually cuts staples out of the target at 25 yards. I've tried some T22 and some subsonic and found rhar for the price differential, they didn't shoot any better. I usually attribute the occasional flyer to shaky old brother Keith.

I got the rifle all cleaned up last night. She turned out very nice. She has that 1960s clean, sporter look. Neither the metal, nor the stock needed refinishing. The wood didn't need anything other than some Murphys, and cleaning off the preservative that stuck to it from the metal. I'm not sure when Tradeex got it, but it has definitely been sitting for a while. There was some powder residue in the barrel, chamber and area. I scrubbed it out and there doesn't seem to be any pitting or corrosion anywhere.

The trigger is intriguing. I asked about this in the Mauser forum, but it appears that a previous owner did some work on it. It has a slooow lock time, as most Mausers do, but the trigger breaks at 3 lb. and has what I am told is a home made safety. (The armadillo shaped metal piece and assy in the above pic.)

I put a Burris FFII 3x9 scope on it. The rifle weighs 8 lb. 6 oz. I have some 140 gr. Hornady SSTs here, and a box of discontinued Sierra 160s that I will try. Recoil will be about 13 ft/lb.

For those of you that live near a Cabelas, there are some powders on sale. I bought some IMR 7828 for $44.99 yesterday.

Looks petty good. Can't wait to hear how it shoots. I scoped my wife's 06 with the Burris FF2 3-9x40. Good glass.

I started my annual shop clean up today with my oldest grandson, and we left a cardboard box with about 100 licorice allsorts sitting out. I'll make up some 140gr. loads to zero the scope.

My grandson and I were making up some loads to zero the scope. I asked him to get a box of Hornady 140 SSTs and some brass from my workshop. This is what he found on the shelf. I use Lapua 6.5x55mm brass. The cases in the ammo box are Lapua. The surprise he fetched is in the bag.



I thanked him, but said that I wanted the Lapua. We went into what we call Shawn's Tornado Room (cold cellar) and he showed me where he found them. They were in a cooler marked 6.5 Swede, and had to have been there for a long, long time. "You must have forgotten them." he said, but I explained that they were undersized, so I stopped using them. American made 6.5x55mm brass was undersized at the rim (and still is, I believe). This wasn't well known in the 1970s and 1980s. I was told this by someone at my club, after I had been experiencing extraction problems. I thought that it was because the rifle was military surplus.



I had purchased two bags from Lovetts, a shop in Kitchener, Ontario, many years ago. Some of you might remember the place. I'm not sure if the original owner, Keith Lovett, is still alive. The last time I talked to him he said that he had sold the place and was moving to NS. That was over 10 years ago. The second owners have since closed the doors.

I showed my grandson the difference by micing the rims. The Remington rim was 0.472 inches. The lapua was 0.479 inches. I remember having extraction problems, but when I switched to the Euro brass, the problem went away. Funny what difference an extra few thou makes.

Steve;
Good afternoon - or evening in Ontario I suppose - to you sir, I hope the day was a good one for you and this finds you and yours well.

As you might already know, we've been playing with 96 Swede rifles since the early '80's and as such would use whatever brass we could lay hands on. Off the top of my head there is Imperial, Privi Partisan, Remington and some resized .257 Roberts brass in the old batches.

The 96 that I'd built for my late father, which subsequently went to our daughter, digested one and all without an observable stutter.

When I was suitably impressed enough with her kills on local mulie and whitetail bucks that I had a near new Swede military barrel grafted into a 98 action for my own use, I picked up a bunch of Lapua brass as well as a batch of Hornady to be held in reserve.

As the 98 was a commercial between the wars action, I've no idea what it was originally chambered for, but since I've owned it I've had an '06 barrel first, then a .270 and now the 6.5x55. Feeding and extraction are like butter on a warm August Okanagan afternoon Steve!

In our experience, if using it on game, the Swede with it's fast twist seems to dote on monolithic copper bullets, giving similar performance on deer sized animals as we were seeing with 180gr bullets in an '06.

Anyway, we like the Swede out here in our part of the world Steve and expect you'll find it an easy cartridge to get along with as well.

All the best to you all as we head into winter.

Dwayne

Hi. I never shot copper bullets from my other Swedes. I never saw the need. I didn't use my 6.5x55mm that much. In fact, I.only ever took them deer hunting, so I didn't experiment too much.

I'll get some bullets other than 160s and see how things play out. My present stock of 6.5 bullets consista of two boxes of 160 gr. Sierra semi-spitzers and a 100 140 gr. SSTs.

Steve;
Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it.

Way back in the day when we started shooting stuff with the Swede, we found 140 Hornady were fine, as were 140 Partitions.

We did however find that a couple different 120gr bullets came apart way too quickly. I was talking about this to someone - I want to say greydog - who is a gunsmith I respect a lot - anyway if it wasn't him it was someone else who felt that the deep groove military barrels could be a little hard on some bullet jackets.

When our eldest daughter inherited the Swede I'd built for her grandfather - my late father - I wanted the girls to break at least one shoulder and both if possible - as some of the country we hunt tends to get vertical pretty fast and a runner can make the difference between retrieval in hours or days. As mentioned the 130gr TSX has proven to always give an exit on the deer she's hit, one even breaking the knuckle of the scapula on the way out.

One memorable hunt that illustrated that was a buddy's grand old mulie buck that pitched off a cliff, bounced once and broke half the antler off one side and then wedged into a tree with a forked base. We did find the antler and since we were back packing the deer out anyway, it didn't matter it was solidly jammed into the trees. I want to say it was the first time I did a "gutless" method of taking an animal apart - more or less...

On the 160's, I was present when a regular sized black bear was hit with a 160gr Hornady Round Nose and it came unglued in spectacular fashion - but again that's a sample of one.

Anyway, as always there's a multitude of roads to Mecca and our way isn't the sole path by any stretch.

Dwayne