There are a lot of 6.5x55s around in good to VG condition at places like tradeex, gun shows and on the used racks at gun shops. With the Creedmoor craze still ongoing, there are a lot of bargains to be had. I originally posted this (unintentionally) in the Single Shot forum. I was exploring the purchase of a 6.5 Grendel, when I discovered 100s of 6.5x55mm rifles, M96s and M98s, primarily at tradeex. This previously loved rifle cost me $250 ($190 USD). An M96 with a VG bore. The stock will probably need refinishing.

Used rifles and 6.5x55mms aren't everyone's cup of tea, but the prices on Husky 1600s, various M96s and assorted other makes are worth a look. You can even get a new Zastava made 6.5x55s for $695. There's other stuff to look at as well. www.tradeexcanada.com

There is no plastic or pot metal on this rifle. More details when I receive it.

Keep me updated Steve. I have looked at them online. If they have good sights I probably would buy one.

Will do.

When it arrives, I will take the action out and have a look at the stock. I am not going to bother bedding it, but it will need a clean up, at the minimum. After I shoot it, I will use the little known, and mostly forgotten method of action shimming, should there be a need. The Finns liked to shim their military rifles. It works great, as long as the stock is made from good hardwood.

Can i order one and ship to the US?

Mr. Redgwell, Bill here. I've looked at those quite often. I believe there are some in stock at epps, I know there are three left hand versions, two in 6.5 & one in 375. No funds now but maybe later. There's even a LH mod. 85 in 7.62 x 39,, wish someone would by it soon , very tempting would make a nice little bush gun. Mgbgalt sir, I know Epps guns on hiway 11 north ont. 🇨🇦 Will ship to the. USA. At the dollar differents it would be a real good price $$ . Just a heads up, anyway maybe if I trade In the 454 casull, no no sorry just thinking out loud. Have a good week guys I'm out. 🐾👣🐾👣🇨🇦

Hi Bill. Most of them are undervalued because the the 6.5 Creedmoors. Some real bargains to be had.

mjbgalt,

It doesn't look like Epps has much in stock. The least expensive rifle they have listed in 6.5x55 is a CG63 - a target rifle - for $495.

I just looked up zastava & there's quite a few, 27 of them including 3 lefties, some model 85s, the little one in 7.62x 39. & one manlicker 85. ++ a bbl off of a model 70 in 6.5x 55 for $100.00 bucks. I wonder if there's enough meat on the chamber end to fit it to something else??? Ok stop talking about them or I'm going up to look & looking leads to............ Have a good day, Bill out. 🐾👣🇨🇦

My "new to me" 6.5x55mm from Tradeex - lots of pix

I haven't taken it apart yet, but first impressions are important. I am hopeful that it looks as good under the wood, and of course, that it shoots. There is some work to do to clean everything up.



It is a 1943 Husqvarna with a 580mm (22.8 inch) stepped barrel. It weighs 7.5 lb and the trigger pull is 3 lb, but it's that clunky Mauser type. I'll worry about that later. If the trigger doesn't impair the shooting, it will remain.





The outward appearance suggests that it has been in storage for a while. Basically, it's dirty. The bore is great. crisp rifling with virtually no wear. The finish shows handling, but no pitting, rust or gouges.



It is drilled and tapped, and came with inexpensive aluminum Weaver bases, made in Japan. I'm not sure how old they are, but the screws are in good shape and will clean up well.

The wood is wonderful. I am not sure what it is, walnut probably, and it's in good shape. A little TLC will help here to get rid of the dirt, sticky labels and stains.



I wish this rifle could talk. I think that it was cut down at one time for someone of smaller stature, and repaired later. You can definitely see the fix, but it was well done, with no unsightly seam or size difference between the two pieces.

There is a foresight, but no rear sight.

For what I paid, this is a steal. And again, I'd like to thank all the people who purchased 6.5 Creedmoors. For $250 ($190USD), it's a huge bargain!

Steve, I agree with you on all the great old rifles available at decent prices. I recently scored a NAACO (North America Arms Co.) 30-06. It has an FN action, a Williams "Twilight" 4x scope and a nice stock. I believe the barrel was likely made in Toronto in NAACO's own shop. I love the old "classic" style and looks of the old sporters, and this one covers it all for me. 30-06 has always been a favorite caliber, along with heaven knows how many others!

The Swedish M96's are generally tack drivers and can be had, as you point out, at good prices. I have a few full wood milsurp 96's and 38's, some of which are rare.

You have a good looking rifle there. Share some pics when you get it all spiffed up.

Thanks for contributing to the thread and congratulations on finding your rifle! Did you find it at a gun shop or a show? If you can, take some pictures, so we can have a peak.

Tradeex also has a number of 9.3 rifles, many of which are in VG or excellent shape.

Hey, I sound like a Tradeex ad.

I took the stock off this afternoon and began cleaning th wood and metal. I am not familiar with Swedish sporters and found a few things that puzzled me. The first was the safety. It's aftermarket, but who made it?



The, there was the stock. Who made it? I posed this question on the Mauser forum here.



More on the stock.

...

So I cleaned the preservative and upteen years of dirt, dust and crud from the metal and the wood. The rifle is somewhat of a mystery to me. I am hoping that I find out more about her as time goes on. The stock is bedded and the barrel is free floated.

I included this. A picture of the wood that was added to return the stok to the correct length for an adult to shoulder it. The flash really highlights the difference in the wood, but there is almost no difference in the colour when looking at it in natural light. It is approximately 1.5 inches thick.

Great score.

I picked up an old Husky FN '06 last year with a beech stock rougher, mostly, than yours. Had the split behind the tang common to those because they don't relieve the wood there for some reason. Think I have it fixed, but may just drop it into another stock I have. The checkering is pretty sad on the original too, and I'm not sure how re-cutting it would work out with beech.

I think I'd replace that added wood on the butt with a thick pad and maybe a black spacer if needed. It looks okay, but is probably gonna slide all over the place.

Keep us in the loop on this one.

I believe that I will be putting a recoil pad on it. Maybe a Limbsaver grindable one. I'll measure it and see which size I need.

I have a M96 that was made in 1907, IIRC. Wood shows some character, but the metal is nice. 6.5x55 Swede. It has a 29" barrel, and the metal looks great for something built 112 years ago.. Good shooter. With the irons and a makeshift rest, I was able to shoot 5 into an inch and a bit. at 50 metres and I love the 6.5 Swede. so much so, I bought a Tikka T3 stainless synthetic. -- and that one shoots bug eyes at both 100 and 200. Three rounds of Remmy green box into an inch and a half at 200 yards.

Might move the model 96 if the right deal presented itself. Am looking for a nice accurate 223 bolt rifle with an 8" twist.

Any idea what the M96 is worth, ballpark?

You might try emailing Tradeex. They should be able to give you an accurate price.

Thanks. I could do that.

Keith, I have had an 8 twist .223 for 4 years. It is a Browning White Gold Medallion. Not the cheapest model but I managed to get it at a substantial discount through a family connection. Nothing has been done to upgrade it but it shows a lot of promise. Nowadays I have trouble telling how much any poor groups are my fault as my eyes are not what they used to be. Often I get 4 shots into respectable groups with a fifth shot outlier. One of my more reliable bullets is the 70 grain Speer which seems to shoot into 3/4" groups. I have not tried other heavy bullets. Surprisingly the Hornady 40 grain V-Max bullets also shoot very well.

Poor health over the last couple of years has kept me from doing the quantity of shooting I used to do. Don't know if you are looking for a low cost rifle or not but if you check the catalogue you may find that Browning has a model that meets your needs.

Jim

Jim,

Thanks for the info. I have had several Brownings over the years and still have a few. Started out with a 22 pump (some call it the trombone) that mom bought for dad the year they got married -- 1948. Learned how to shoot with that little tack-driver. still have it. Next was a Belgian BAR in 7mmMag. Good rifle but what I wanted was an 06. Next was a BL22 for my X wife. Then came a Challenger pistol 22LR, then an Abolt 2 M1000 Eclipse in 300 WinMag, then a used BL22 for my younger daughter. Also had an Auto 5 S/A 12 way back when.

Every Browning I have owned was very accurate and well made. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another one if the stars aligned. Also have a great fondness for TIKKAs. Have three, all shooters. CZ is also nice and accurate. Got a couple of em.

Preference in a 223 would be to a TIKKA Varmint. Your thoughts.

Apologies to Steve for hi-jacking this thread.

No problem. The Canadian section is underused. Have at her.

Keith, it so happens I have a Tikka Heavy Barrel varmint gun in .222 Remington. I managed to get it on sale a number of years ago. It replaced a Browning heavy barrel in .223. If anything I think the Browning may have been a little more accurate. I also have a CZ .22 LR (M452). It is not as accurate as most suggest theirs are. It tends to throw occasional flyers, however, I have never tried high end ammo in it so don't know if this would clear up that problem.

Contact me if you want more details. I would have replied last night but this useless system would not let me in. It kept telling me to refresh the webpage. Maybe one day the people who operate the campfire will rectify the problems.

Jim

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