Weatherby 6.5 RPM?

[window licker]

I am sure he does have 10 firings at that velocity. The Norma brass that I have used in the .284, 6br, and 300 norma have all been soft. Not junk, just not up to pressure like lapua is. So back to my point, running the RPM at 3200 with a 140 is going to be a tall order with Norma brass.

 

[Nomosendero]

Ahh, things have changed in the last few years. I fully expect other companies to offer brass.

 

[Nomosendero]

Yep, there's a lot of 5% increases as we go up the cartridge ladder in any bore size.

Best plan is to pick your bullet weight, then pick how fast you want it to go, and based on that pick your cartridge.

Yep, to me it's that simple, but if a person does that he can't gripe about the cartridge & we can't have that!

 

[yorke-1]

I don't understand the comparisons between factory spec'd ammo in a factory spec chamber to handloaded ammo in a custom chamber; those are not apples to apples comparisons.

 

[Coyote_Hunter]

Comparing maxed out 6.5-06AI loads to the pre-release factory ammo specs is a bit misleading.

Given that the basic 6.5x284 case has pretty much the same capacity as the 6.5-06AI, the stretched long-action RPM case will surely allow a handloader to achieve a good bit more velocity than the 6.5-06AI round.

While I understand your objection, I don't quite agree. My Krieger barreled 6.5-06AI cost about $800 less than the list prices for a WBY 6.5 RPM rifle. The chamber was cut with PT&G standard reamer. WBY created the 6.5 RPM and could spec the chamber any way they wanted. They are likely the only company chambering rifles for the round so in that sense it is very much like a custom, even if it has a SAAMI spec.

My point is I use cheap brass (fire-formed .25-06) that is readily available and will be for the foreseeable future. I don't expect the WBY 6.5 RPM brass will ever be plentiful or cheap. With the 24" barrel I get 3075fps with a 140g BT (last chrono'd 2/20/2016). That is exactly the same velocity claimed by WBY for the 140g AB and 100fps faster than the WBY claim for the 140g InterLock. The WBY 127g LRX at 3225fps beats my 6.5-06AI 130g Scirocco II load at 3161fps, but the Scirocco II has a B.C. of .571 while the LRX lags behind at .468. With both of these two loads zeroed for maximum Point Blank Range for a 6" target at 6000 feet altitude, the WBY 127g load adds a total of 4 yards to MPBR (275 vs 271 yds) and has a whole inch less drop at 600 yards. At 600 yards, however, my 130g 6.5-06AI load has higher velocity (+17fps) and energy (+57fpe) and less drift (-2.3").

At a WBY reported price of $50-$60 for ammo, compared to $9.60 (140g Interlock) or $19.60 (127g LRX) handloads, I'm happy with the 6.5-06AI.

BTW, Weatherby's claimed velocities, as far as I know, are all that is available for comparison. The big reason for the 6.5 RPM is so that WBY could fit the cartridge in a 5lb rifle. That's not to say you couldn't fit a 6.5-06AI in a 5lb rifle.

 

[Coyote_Hunter]

Coyote Hunter, you can do all that for $469? I can & will download but it's like horsepower, you don't have to use it most of the time but it's nice when you need it. I like the 6.5x55, 45/70, 450 Marlin, 308 & have 3 338 Lapua mags I can load for $1 a rd. I shoot mainly 22lr, have a range here on the farm & shoot 10-20,000+ rds a year. Started for honing my ELR skills & got hooked. We're shooting golf balls at 300 yards & moving back to 400 yards. If you can master 22 rimfire ELR, CF is easy.

Buy a used Savage .25-06 and have the barrel rebored and rechambered. I've bought two for under $300 each, but for $460 I'd buy a Vanguard. The problem, though, is not cost of purchase but cost of ownership. 6.5-300 brass will never be as cheap or as plentiful as .25-06, which is what I fire-form into 6.5-06AI. And barrel life of the 6.5-300 will be shorter if shooting full throttle loads.

It is your preference, though. I shot a used Savage .243 (11FXP3) that was to become a 6.5 CM. Now I have a .243 that isn't going anywhere. So I bought another used Savage (111GNS) in 7mm RM. The barrel on that one was so bad inside and out that shooting it was never given a thought. It will become a 6.5 PRC or .264 WM. Ruled out the 26 and 28 Nosler, 6.5 RPM, 6.5-300 and .300PRC for various reasons, including COL for the .300PRC. They simply don't do anything I need doing (p-dogs to elk out to 600 yards) for the same cost over time. And I don't have any desire to put up with the extra recoil.

It is kind of like the 450 Marlin. I load for a Marlin 1895 .45-70. Loads range from half the recoil of a .30-30 factory load (350g hardcast over 13.5g HS-6 for 1097fps) to my "Rhino Blaster" loads at 52 ft-lbs recoil (460g hardcast @ 1812fps). Is there anything a 450 Marlin can do that the .45-70 cannot do? (Not that I'm aware of.) Brass for the .45-70 is widely available, 450 Marlin brass not so much. Same bullets but the .45-70 gives slightly higher velocities than Hodgdon lists for the 450.

 

[Michael O'Connor]

While I understand your objection, I don't quite agree. My Krieger barreled 6.5-06AI cost about $800 less than the list prices for a WBY 6.5 RPM rifle. The chamber was cut with PT&G standard reamer. WBY created the 6.5 RPM and could spec the chamber any way they wanted. They are likely the only company chambering rifles for the round so in that sense it is very much like a custom, even if it has a SAAMI spec.

My point is I use cheap brass (fire-formed .25-06) that is readily available and will be for the foreseeable future. I don't expect the WBY 6.5 RPM brass will ever be plentiful or cheap. With the 24" barrel I get 3075fps with a 140g BT (last chrono'd 2/20/2016). That is exactly the same velocity claimed by WBY for the 140g AB and 100fps faster than the WBY claim for the 140g InterLock. The WBY 127g LRX at 3225fps beats my 6.5-06AI 130g Scirocco II load at 3161fps, but the Scirocco II has a B.C. of .571 while the LRX lags behind at .468. With both of these two loads zeroed for maximum Point Blank Range for a 6" target at 6000 feet altitude, the WBY 127g load adds a total of 4 yards to MPBR (275 vs 271 yds) and has a whole inch less drop at 600 yards. At 600 yards, however, my 130g 6.5-06AI load has higher velocity (+17fps) and energy (+57fpe) and less drift (-2.3").

At a WBY reported price of $50-$60 for ammo, compared to $9.60 (140g Interlock) or $19.60 (127g LRX) handloads, I'm happy with the 6.5-06AI.

BTW, Weatherby's claimed velocities, as far as I know, are all that is available for comparison. The big reason for the 6.5 RPM is so that WBY could fit the cartridge in a 5lb rifle. That's not to say you couldn't fit a 6.5-06AI in a 5lb rifle.

I plan on chambering a barrel to 25-06
Rem 30° Imp and use 131 gr. ACE bullets. It will shoot flatter and retain more energy than anything in it's class of Cartridge cases. I don't need the extra weight of 140-156 gr. bullets as the 131 has a ~.345 B.C. without a long bearing surface. Less recoil means a lot when you are building a light mountain rifle to hunt everything but bull elk. I love elk meat but the chances of getting an elk stamp in Michigan aren't good, and I have a 7mm if that does happen.

 

[Turnbolt53]

My 6.5-06AI pushes a 130g Scirocco II to 3162fps and it remains supersonic to 1200 yards.

Comparing maxed out 6.5-06AI loads to the pre-release factory ammo specs is a bit misleading.

Given that the basic 6.5x284 case has pretty much the same capacity as the 6.5-06AI, the stretched long-action RPM case will surely allow a handloader to achieve a good bit more velocity than the 6.5-06AI round.

While I understand your objection, I don't quite agree. My Krieger barreled 6.5-06AI cost about $800 less than the list prices for a WBY 6.5 RPM rifle. The chamber was cut with PT&G standard reamer. WBY created the 6.5 RPM and could spec the chamber any way they wanted. They are likely the only company chambering rifles for the round so in that sense it is very much like a custom, even if it has a SAAMI spec.

My point is I use cheap brass (fire-formed .25-06) that is readily available and will be for the foreseeable future. I don't expect the WBY 6.5 RPM brass will ever be plentiful or cheap. With the 24" barrel I get 3075fps with a 140g BT (last chrono'd 2/20/2016). That is exactly the same velocity claimed by WBY for the 140g AB and 100fps faster than the WBY claim for the 140g InterLock. The WBY 127g LRX at 3225fps beats my 6.5-06AI 130g Scirocco II load at 3161fps, but the Scirocco II has a B.C. of .571 while the LRX lags behind at .468. With both of these two loads zeroed for maximum Point Blank Range for a 6" target at 6000 feet altitude, the WBY 127g load adds a total of 4 yards to MPBR (275 vs 271 yds) and has a whole inch less drop at 600 yards. At 600 yards, however, my 130g 6.5-06AI load has higher velocity (+17fps) and energy (+57fpe) and less drift (-2.3").

At a WBY reported price of $50-$60 for ammo, compared to $9.60 (140g Interlock) or $19.60 (127g LRX) handloads, I'm happy with the 6.5-06AI.

BTW, Weatherby's claimed velocities, as far as I know, are all that is available for comparison. The big reason for the 6.5 RPM is so that WBY could fit the cartridge in a 5lb rifle. That's not to say you couldn't fit a 6.5-06AI in a 5lb rifle.

Ok. Agreed that cheap brass is good.

$200 2-die sets, and $300 3-die sets are bad (6.5-06AI and 25-06AI).

And I am sure we can agree that the 6.5 RPM can be loaded with any bullet that the 6.5-06AI can be loaded with, so we might not even bother discussing BC.

4D reamer rentals lists the 6.5-06AI case capacity at 68.47gr.

We won't have full information on the capacity of the 6.5 RPM case until people start actually measuring them, but the chart below was included in a Shooting Times article of actual 6.5 RPM test-firing.

As I suspected, it indicates a significant capacity advantage to the 6.5 RPM case when compared to the 68.47gr 6.5-06AI case. Capacity of the 6.5 RPM case is a bit less than the 264WM.

 

[Michael O'Connor]

Ok. Agreed that cheap brass is good.

$200 2-die sets, and $300 3-die sets are bad (6.5-06AI and 25-06AI).

And I am sure we can agree that the 6.5 RPM can be loaded with any bullet that the 6.5-06AI can be loaded with, so we might not even bother discussing BC.

4D reamer rentals lists the 6.5-06AI case capacity at 68.47gr.

We won't have full information on the capacity of the 6.5 RPM case until people start actually measuring them, but the chart below was included in a Shooting Times article of actual 6.5 RPM test-firing.

As I suspected, it indicates a significant capacity advantage to the 6.5 RPM case when compared to the 68.47gr 6.5-06AI case. Capacity of the 6.5 RPM case is a bit less than the 264WM.

View attachment 152384

 

[Michael O'Connor]

The 6.5 SST, 6.5 SS or 6.5-06 AI would appear to be much more efficient than the 6.5 RPM. I have lost all interest in the case for 6.5 mm bullets. Of course, I don't care for the 26 Nosler or other considerably overbore cases either. Good luck gentlemen with this new case. I will look in on the reloading performance of this case periodically.

 

[Bigeclipse]

Why shoot a 6.5x284 or 6.5 PRC when they only have a 5% increase over the 6.5 Creedmoor or .260? An extra 100fps or 150fps makes a difference beyond 500 yards.

6.5prc is averaging 150-250fps over creedmore, not 100.

 

[Rich Coyle]

I don't understand the hostility towards the new cartridge. You don't have to disparige it to justify your favorite.

 

[Coyote_Hunter]

Turnbolt53 –

Yup - $200-$300 die sets aren't part of any of my plans, but then I didn't pay anywhere near those prices when I got my Redding dies in 2009. RCBS has 6.5-06AI 40-degree for $151 and change, special order, which is still high but a one-time purchase compared to brass. The Weatherby 6.5-300 brass runs $1 more per piece than .25-06/.270 brass. I have a minimum of 200-500 pieces for each of the rifle cartridges I load (excluding .223/5.56 and .308/7.62 x51, for which I have many times that). The 6.5 RPM will likely be in the same range. You can of course, get brass by purchasing Weatherby loaded ammo for about $3 a round. Assuming that you can find it. I don't anticipate difficulty finding .25-06 or .270 Win brass in my lifetime.

Agreed that you can probably load the 6.5 RPM with any bullet – I just compared what WBY offers and I load. I suspect if I loaded the 127 LRX that velocities would be somewhat higher than what I get with the 130g Scirocco II. In any case, the velocities would be so close that the more expensive 6.5 RPM would be hard to justify on the basis of performance. Kind of like getting 125 apples per bushel for $125 or 120 apples of the same variety and quality for $60.

Not sure where the 6.5 RPM loads will use in terms of powder, but the 6.5-300 WBY uses 29% to 47% more than my 6.5-06 loads to get the same performance, based on Hodgdon's 6.5-300 data. Granted, you can burn even more in the 6.5-300 to get an extra 100-200fps over my 6.5-06AI. The 6.5 RPM will be more modest in its powder consumption but we don't yet know what those numbers will be. Given the 6.5 RPM's larger case, it will likely use more powder to achieve velocities similar to the 6.5-06AI. Probably around 10% more.

As I said before, the big advantage of the 6.5 RPM is you can get it in a 5.5 pound genuine Weatherby rifle – for a mere $2500 bucks.

 

[Rich Coyle]

Sounds good to me. I will take one.