Hey folks-

What are your opinions on the 6.5 STW? How easy is it to form brass? What kind of speed are you getting? I don't really need one, but I'm getting bored with what I've got.

Thanks for your time and thoughts-

Gib

Gib,

That is a big time overbore cartridge, you will probably have throat erosion before you get your scope zeroed.

The expense and hassle is not every worth the time to consider it, much less contemplate it.

I shoot a lot of 6.5 mms

In all honesty I believe the 7mm bore to be as small as practical for the stw case.There is also a much better selection of bullets in 7mm.

Brass would be silly simple to form from 7mm STW. You would hardly know the difference in resizing a fired STW and necking it down to 6.5, as far as pressure applied to the press handle and lubrication needs. One stroke will do it. And unless your chamber was particularly tight in the neck, there should be no need to thin the neck walls.

As far as performance, you could expect a marginal gain over the .264 Winchester, perhaps 50 fps or so, provided you were using a really slow powder like surplus WC 872 or something similar. IMR 7828 or RL-22 ain't gonna cut it with anything but the lightest (non-game) bullets.

Yes, any large capacity, small bore cartridge will erode throats more quickly than a smaller capacity cartridge. If it is a hunting rifle, this is immaterial (your not going to wear it out in 3 lifetimes hunting). If you keep pressures sane, you won't notice any problems with throat erosion for the first 1500 rounds or so.

The 6.5 STW would seem to be an excellent answer to salvaging a .264 Winchester barrel with a worn throat. By rechambering and properly lengthening the leade for the STW case, you could likely get rid of the eroded throat area of a .264 and go a few thousand more rounds from the barrel with a tad of added velocity.

I've considered this modification on a .264 of mine which has several thousand rounds through it (39 years old), but honestly, its visibly eroded throat isn't harming its accuracy at all, so I see no need to go to the trouble and expense.