So I thought I would post what I have been working on lately, and perhaps it will be of interest to the forum. This post follows discussion in the Scout Rifle thread, where I mentioned that I bought my answer to the scout rifle, a Tikka T3X in 6.5 Creedmoor. Nice rifle, well built, and very accurate for a factory gun. Yes, you can get better, but for a $1000 retail rifle with a factory barrel, I am very impressed.
I reload for all of my rifles these days, and this one is no different. I purchased Hornady brass, Forster dies, and a variety of bullets. I will try some bullets that I have had luck with in other 6.5mm rifles: Hornady 140AMAX, Berger 140 Hybrid, Nosler 140 RDF, and the Sierra 130TMK. Since the Tikka has a short 20" barrel, I'm going to favor the 130TMK.
One issue is the brass. Hornady makes some fine stuff, but the Creedmoor brass is not the best. A hundred cases cost me $76 online, the factory cases weigh approximately 155gr, and research on 6mmBR.com and elsewhere mentions that they do not last very long (4-6 reloadings before the primer pockets stretch out). Lapua is my brass of choice, and they are just now introducing 6.5 Creedmoor brass. For a whopping $120 per hundred. I'm not so keen on that price.
Since the case is similar to the .308 Winchester, I chose to buy some Lapua 308 Palma brass ($75 per 100) and make my own. Why Palma brass? Lapua chose to put small primers in the Creedmoor brass, just like the 6.5x47 and 6mmBR brass they sell. By using Palma brass, that also has a small primer pocket, rather than the large primer pocket in their 308 brass. This will be an issue when I deprime the small primer brass with standard Creedmoor sizing dies. I will have to put a smaller depriming pin into the decaying rod, to deal with the 1.5mm flash holes in the Palma brass.
Necking down the Palma Brass to Creedmoor is pretty straight forward. You can do it in one pass with the Creedmoor die, I chose to do it in two passes and use a 260 Remington die as an intermediate step. Since I use a Dillon 550 to reload rifle ammunition, this poses no problem. Just add another die to the four-hole toolhead. I will have to trim the brass to length, since the Palma Brass necks down to 2.000" and It will need to be 1.925" or shorter to chamber. I chose to trim to 1.918" and they shrank to 1.916" after firing the first time.
Since I'm necking down 308 brass to 6.5mm, this will cause the case necks to become thicker. Thus I will need to neck-turn the brass after it is sized. I added a 6.5 Sizing mandrel+holder to the Dillon toolhead after the Creedmoor die. Thus my sizing toolhead had three dies total: 260 Rem, 6.5 Creedmoor and 6.5 Neck Mandrel.
I measured the neck of the fired Creedmoor brass and found the chamber has a .296" neck. Factory brass has a .013" thick neck, to yield a .290" loaded round at the neck (.264" + .013" +.013").
My sizing die sizes to a .288" neck on the factory brass. Since the necks of the Palma brass came out to .018", they will not fit into the rifle's chamber without neck-turning. I chose to turn the Palma Brass necks to .014".
This will yield a loaded round of .292", which will fit well into a .296" neck chamber. Since the SAAMI-spec Forster sizing die will over-size the neck of the Lapua brass too much (too small) I will order another die from Forster with the neck honed to .290 to better fit the chamber. This means the brass will size to .290" (with the neck expander ball removed from the die), expand to .292" with a loaded bullet (.002" neck tension) and the neck will expand to .296" after firing. This is an acceptable working range for the brass and will not over-size it, allowing it to last for many reloading and firing cycles.
Here is the sized brass before trimming or neck turning.
Here is the case trimming operation. I use a Sinclair case trimmer attached to a homemade stand. I use a Milwaukee cordless driver seen in the background for driving the trimmer cutter.
Here is the case after trimming and de-burring, but before neck turning. It is held in the collet for the neck turning process. I also use a cordless drill to turn the brass during neck turning. Use plenty of lubricant on the case neck during turning, my choice is Imperial Sizing Die Wax on a brush inside the case neck, and on the turning mandrel. I chose the 21st Century Neck turner, and am very happy with its performance. It adjusts well, trims smoothly, and the mandrels are high quality.
Before turning:
Neck Turning:
Here is the case after trimming and neck-turning.
Ready to load!
Next I charge them with H4350. I am testing loads from 42.2gr up to 43.1gr paired with the Sierra 130TMK bullet. While this is lower than the charge using Hornady brass (43.0gr), there is a reason. The Lapua brass weighs more (169.5gr), thus it has less internal volume. If I use the same load for the Hornady brass as I do for the Lapua, I could be dangerously over pressure. Start Low and Work Up! Measure the case heads for expansion after firing. Check the case heads for extractor/ejector marks. Learn to reads the signs of high case pressure. This is a perfect example of why a lighter bullet (130 vs 140) actually needs less powder. The case volume makes the difference. Please be careful.
I also made some Creedmoor brass out of Lake City 308 brass. This brass is even heavier! 180gr per case. This means I have to start even lower (41.0 gr) and work up. The experiment showed no advantage, so I moved to Lapua brass as a result. Supposedly the factory Lapua 6.5 Creedmoor brass weighs about 165gr per case, so my manufactured cases from Palma brass will be pretty close to theirs in weight.