Anyone played with this caliber yet? Was thinking of getting barrel for my savage to try. Any help would be great. Thinking about the 120 grainers.
John
Short answer long, bought two 6.5 Swedes ~20 years ago because my brother's M36 carbine piqued my interest. Loaded lots of boxes and found that both were easy to pinch groups down to 1.5" with iron sights at 100yd.
Fast forward to 2012.
When I ran onto a Savage M11 in 6.5 CM, having been out of shooting and reloading for a number of years, I was not being familiar with it. Laid a Swede next to a CM cartridge and immediately knew it would be a good performer. Bought it, got it home and started researching the round and rifle.
If you must hand load for the satisfaction of it I can recommend the Nosler 120(?) Ballistic Tip for both accuracy potential (see above) and Nosler's design intent, per my phone call direct to customer service. Sorry about not knowing the weight, I haven't loaded any ammo in over 5 years, I simply built up that big of a stock on everything and slowed down that much on shooting.
In closing, unless you are a dyed in the wool reloader you may get all you need out of factory loads in terms of small groups. My 6.5 CM averaged 1.1" the first five 3-shot groups of 120 gr A-Max's out of the barrel. Haven't shot it since--no need to. I'm busy getting a combo coyote/pig hunt set up.
Best of luck, keep us info'd of your progress with the build!
