going to rebarrel a 700 BDL and want to know what the differences would be between the two.Plan is for a heavy sporter or light varmint contour and 24" or 26". maybe vapodog or seafire can help?

sorry forgot to add that its a long action. could a guy do a 260 or a 6.5x55? going to use it as a long range deer stand gun plus paper puncher.

Per the Hornady manual the 30-06 AI actually lost ground in testing compared to the standard round.

In theory it should gain you a bit of velocity but very little......less than 100'/sec

Go with the standard 30-06 chamber and load it to it's potential.....(pressures similar to the .270 win)

The standard 30-06 either factory loaded or prudently hand loaded will serve you very well...it's not far from the performance of the .300 magnums.


edited:...sorry...you asked about the 6.5-06 and I replied about the 30-06...

quote:

Originally posted by lenny:
sorry forgot to add that its a long action. could a guy do a 260 or a 6.5x55? going to use it as a long range deer stand gun plus paper puncher.

Look closely at the semi-wildcat the 6.5-06...it's a very great cartridge...AI versions offer very little and even claims of longer case life are not valid as case life for any close chambered round using neck sizing is excellent.....AI or otherwise!

Your long action will handle the 6.5 X 55 nicely however.....

It would seem that the 6.5-06AI should gain as much over the 6.5-06 as the 280AI gains over the 280, which is not a lot. The advantages of the AI's is that you have less brass trimming to do and you can get more slow burning powder in the expanded case.

I'll know more about it in a couple of months when my 280AI arrives.

You might want to check out the supply sites and plan ahead as to what dies are available. The 280AI is becoming more standard, even some rifles are factory chambered in that round now. The 6.5-06 is not as rare as the 6.5-06AI. For that reason alone I would be leaning toward the standard version.

When I was doing that route, I had the chance to play with a 6.5/06 that a friend owned...

I was finding I could duplicate the velocity of his, with a 6.5 x 55 Handloads. ( older reload manual).....

I decided to build a 6.5 x 57 ( where I just neck up 257 Roberts brass)... of course long throated makes all the difference in the world..

after that, my friend actually bored his 6.5/06 out to an Ackley version...he ended up with less velocity with bullets lighter than 129 grains and down... and gained very little with the 140s, except it took more powder to duplicate the loads of the 6.5/06 with the 140s...when he replaces the barrel, he is planning to go back to 6.5/06....

So my recommendation would be the 6.5 x 57 ( or 6.5 x 257) or the 6.5 x 55... in both of those cases, doing an Ackley shoulder does increase capacity and there will be some gains noted with the 129 grain bullets and up.. but some velocity loss with the 120s and down....

57 mm brass, while not as common as 06 brass, is still pretty available... as is 6.5 Swedish brass...I went with the 6.5 x 57, basically because the base would be a .473 face, instead of the oddball face the Swede is.. however, I have found Remington brass uses the incorrect 473 head... it may be incorrect, but it is handy with a Remington Push Feed bolt face...

I'd recommend trying to the 6.5 x 57.... and if it doesn't give you what you are looking for, then I'd bore it out to 6.5/06.. and then you can go to the 6.5/06 AI if that changed your mind...

Good luck on it Lenny... and keep us posted on the results...

Happy New Year everyone!
cheers
seafire

For lowest cost, stick to a standard 6.5-06, and make your cases from .270 or .30-06. I've been thru three custom 6.5-06s,all standard versions, and never felt under gunned with any of them. The best feature of the 6.5-06, for my money, is the ease of making the cases and the extremely high performance of the cartridge. Years ago someone caled the 6.5-06 the Thinking Man's .270, and I think he was right. Consider the wide variety of bullets available and yep, the 6.5-06 is a winner, and yu don't need to AI it, not at all!

LLS

I have, and love, a 6.5-06AI. Having said that, I would not do the AI again. I would just go with the plain 6.5-06. I do not use it as a speed burner anyway, since I have a 264WM. Unless you just like the process of fireforming, don't bother. The gain is not that much.

I've had both. If you are going to punch a lot of paper then stick with the non-AI as its easier on barrels. The two best AI cartridges are the .257 Roberts AI and the 6.5-06 AI in my opinion. You actually get something for the 40 deg shoulder. Mine gets muzzle velocities equivalent to the .264 Win. with a 26" barrel.

As for killing anything from whitetail to elk (I've not shot a moose with either one.) you don't need the extra fps from the AI. The 6.5x55 has a stellar reputation at 2500 fps muzzle. The 6.5 maximizes sectional density so its gonna penetrate. I shot a cow elk at 475 yards this fall - a one shot kill with a Barnes 130 gr TSX.

If you are having the gun built then make sure to get the action trued. Bolt and receiver faces are seldom square, and the recoil lugs do not seat the same from one side to the other, and its worse if the action has been fired a thousand times or more. That's just an inescapable design problem with the angled sear.

You won't go wrong with either one. I do recommend starting with .270 brass. Yes you have to trim a little more, but you shouldn't have to be concerned with neck brass thickness.

I have to respectfully dissagree with MR woods. I have a 280 ackly on a modle 70 classic.
Fine cartridge.
But I would say its unlikly you would see as much gain with the 6.5 Equivelent.
The 280 is factory loaded to low preasure standards.
that is the reason the AI-version is so superiour. If you load the 280 rem to say 53000 CUP like the .270
the gap beetween the 280 and its improved brother will probably be about 50 to 100 fps.
...tj3006

You mentioned the 260. One advantage of it on the longer action is that you could have that terribly short SAAMI spec throat lengthened out to to accept the longer bullets loaded to just the neck/shoulder junction and use every bit of that 308 size boiler room for powder capacity. I done that on a 6.5 Arisaka action rebarreled to 260. But...I'd just go ahead with the 6.5-06 if it were me on your action.

Max

quote:

Originally posted by Thomas Jones:
I have to respectfully dissagree with MR woods. I have a 280 ackly on a modle 70 classic.
Fine cartridge.
But I would say its unlikly you would see as much gain with the 6.5 Equivelent.
The 280 is factory loaded to low preasure standards.
that is the reason the AI-version is so superiour. If you load the 280 rem to say 53000 CUP like the .270
the gap beetween the 280 and its improved brother will probably be about 50 to 100 fps.
...tj3006

No problem. I was thinking of the 280 from a handloader's ballistics. I've never owned a regular 280, so correct me if I'm wrong, but a handload in a modern gun approaching acceptable pressures will outdo the factory fodder, and then the comparison works.

I think we are on the same track, if you hand load the 280 rem to its potential in a modern bolt rifle, it will be quite a bit hotter than the factory loads or most printed manual loads.
I think AIs are cool, but the ones that are touted as giving the biggest gain, 250 savage .257 roberts, and the 280, probably a few others I can't think of at the moment,
Are all lower preasure rounds from the factory. If you gain much more than 100 FPS its cause you are shooting higher preasure loads.
The roberts is a great example. The 1st rifles chamberd for it were usually early spanish mausers. So the sammi specs were and still are set a we bit low for the sake of the 93 and 95 mauser actions.
In my Ruger I hand load some prety stiff rounds for the Roberts, but I thnik if the barrel was longer I would probaly AI it. I would probably gain nothing from my 20 inch barrel, but from a 24 I would likly pick up 50 to 100 FPS, and it might well be worth it to some ...tj3006

Safety Question ...

If doing either a 6.5-06 or the AI version would it make more sense to chamber it as a 6.5-280 to take advantage of the .05 longer shoulder measurement to prevent chambering in a 25-06?

Not that anybody would EVER use brass stamped 25-06 and run an expander through it to make a 6.5-06.

Seems to me the 280 case was made "just so" to prevent chambering in a rifle designed for a .007 smaller bullet ...

or is this just a REALLY good reason to go with a 6.5-284 to eliminate all such confusion for the wildcatter types ...

quote:

Originally posted by Gaviidae_Esq.:
Safety Question ...

If doing either a 6.5-06 or the AI version would it make more sense to chamber it as a 6.5-280 to take advantage of the .05 longer shoulder measurement to prevent chambering in a 25-06?

Not that anybody would EVER use brass stamped 25-06 and run an expander through it to make a 6.5-06.

Seems to me the 280 case was made "just so" to prevent chambering in a rifle designed for a .007 smaller bullet ...

or is this just a REALLY good reason to go with a 6.5-284 to eliminate all such confusion for the wildcatter types ...

Chambering and firing a .25-06 in a 6.5-06 chamber does not present a hazard, merely poor accuracy with the undersized bullet. The reason for the slightly lengthened body of the .280 Remington was to prevent it from chambering in a .270 Winchester with a sloppy neck/leade. Actually, a .007" oversized bullet, particularly underloaded as with the .280 factory ammunition, would typically not generate dangerous pressures.

While I agree that there is no real-world advantage of the 6.5-06 Improved over the regular version, if you're building a wildcat anyway, why not get the small extra case capacity and sharper shoulder? At similar pressures the Imp would only provide 25-50 fps advangtage, but why not have it if your goal is long-range effectiveness?

I have a 6.5 Gibbs, which for all intents and purposes is an improved 6.5-06AI.

My buddy has a 6.5-06 that is actually a 6.5-270 (ie. his will take the longer 270 brass without trimming). He also has a fairly deep throat on it and can seat 140gr VLD type bullets out quite a ways.

I have to fiddle around with forming cases (false shoulders, fire forming, outside neck trimming, etc, etc). He just runs 270W or 25-06 brass through his sizer die and is done.

Over the chronograph with the exact same bullets, my Gibbs beats his "standard" 6.5-06 by 50fps.

I love my Gibbs, but if I was to do it over, for simplicity's sake, I'd sacrifice the 50fps and go with a 6.5-270 like his, and make sure its throated deep enough to accomodate the 140 VLDs to minimize bullet intrusion into the case.

Cheers,
Canuck