I want a stainless mt. gun 6.5x55. Sako 75 is to heavy, Tikka's stock is too long and expensive to change, Steyr hard to find and iffy for parts, Win Featherwt. out of prod et nauseum. I have a stainless A-Bolt in 30'06 that is light, handles well and drives tacks. I probably killed 50 deer with it but haven't used in 8 years...I went to a .270. A friend suggested I might get it rebarreled in 6.5x55. I've talked to one gunsmith who tried to talk me out of it because it was hard to remove the barrel and he said it would be hard to make the magazine feed right. But, I have no way to assess whether or not he knew what he was talking about. Does anyone have any experience with this or know someone who does?

I had a stainless stalker in 30 Gibbs I wanted rebarreled and nobody wanted to do it. They kept telling me to call Browning. Browning said they would replace the entire barreled action but would not rebarrel. Maybe one of our resident gunsmiths will chime in and tell us why the Browning bolt action rifles are so evil? BTW, mine was usually more accurate than I was.

There is nothing wrong with the Browning action. I rebarrel a lot of them. At the moment I have a pretty high volume of work but if you don't mind a little wait, I would be happy to discuss the 6.5 with you. If you are interested, you can send me a PM with your email address and I will be in touch.

I rebarreled a Featherweight from 30/06 to 6.5 x 55, and had it throated to magazine cartridge length...I had no feeding problems at all with it...

The only problem that I have had is getting Winchester Brass to extract all the time... their brass has the correct Swedish cartridge specs....

ON the other hand, Remington brass does not...It has the .473 brass bottom.. so it extracts perfectly all the time in the Model 70 pushfeed Featherweight...

so the only problem I had was solved...

I also was looking at Re barreling a 30/06 A Bolt... but I was thinking either 6mm Rem or 6.5 x 57 Mauser.. ( or 6.5 x 257 Roberts)..