Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats .243 on a long action

It will feed fine. Action length covers a range of cartridges. For example, my 22-250 is on a 243 action. It is a lot shorter than a 243, but they use the same head diameter.

My measurments show the .243 is only .005" wider at the same length as the 6-06. One turn should clean everything up.

Terry

I'm no mathematician but I asked Mathman for his assistance.

You wanna fight about it in the meantime? (joke)

Terry

The laughing guy was a dead giveaway!

If you want something smaller, and if you reload you can try the 110vmax for fun and load the 110 tsx for business. Less recoil, flat and will do the job. Otherwise I would find a 25-06 barrel for the easiest transition. If you are dead set on the 6mm caliber it will be a little more complicated but should work.

I would think $50-$75 would get you a decent takeoff. Maybe another $100 for a rechamber and screw back together? Not sure on the smithing costs as the ones I had this done on were two or three at once and awhile back.

............x2

That's the problem working with small slopes. It takes a lot of change in one direction to effect much change in the other.

From SAAMI dimensions for 30-06 and 243 I calculated the point on the 30-06 that equals the 243 shoulder diameter is about .402" down the case.

Thank you Mathman!

Your .402" jives with my rudimentary calculations.

I rechecked the case dimensions through several sources and they all match so I'm confident that to clean up a SAAMI 243 chamber with a 6mm-06 reamer you'd need to set the barrel back 6.432 turns but call it 7 turns to make it easy.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Terry

Sounds like the easiest option to me.

6/06 AI.........

That would indeed be a very cool cartridge to work with.

that's what i'm doing... rem LA... i'm thinking that it won't suck too bad...

This is giving me a lot to think about. i do reload, and have loaded some vmaxes before. After all the math, is the jury still out as to whether a .243 could turn into a 6-06? If i could do this for under 200 bucks, I'll probably do it. Is the job any harder on the smith to do a 6mm or 6-06 from the .243 barrel? I like the idea of a 6-06, so I'd probably better look for a stainless barrel, huh?

Oh ya, got another question. I assume that you have to have 6-06 dies, and that a .243 die won't cut it for neck sizing, and bumping the shoulder when needed, right?

I'd run the 243. Great cartridge, and no slouch in the velocity dept.

I think that it's hard to out 243 a 243...or a 243AI. IMHO.

270jrk, the regular 6mm-06 would cost too much since the barrel needs to be set back pretty far and rethreaded. Since you're considering the wildcat 6mm-06 though the easy solution is going with the wildcat 6mm-06 Ackley Improved. You would not need to set the barrel back at all with the AI version.

All that being said, the cheapest route to go would be to keep it a 243 and enjoy all the goodness that is the 243 for cheap.

Thanks for all the replies everyone. I did a bit of thinking and figured my best option is to leave it as is, and spend the $200 bucks or so on shooting. That'll get me 400 shots outta my .270. I need practice more than I need a .243, although that's definitely high on the list when I have a good job. What's a poor rifle nerd supposed to do?