Help needed with AI fire forming brass for a wildcat

bigbore14

bigbore14

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Hi guys,
I have just bought a 6.5-06 IMP. It came with the dies. My question is this:

I have a bunch of 270 brass, and no other 270 rifle to be confused with, so I would like to use the brass. I lubricated the 270 brass and ran it through my full length die, with the decaping pin in the dies. I then tried to chamber an empty round, and the bolt handle closed no problem. Then I trimmed it to 2.494 which is the length wanted for the 6.5-06. I don't know if I needed to trim, since it chambered fine, is this true? I don't know if my chamber was cut to 6.5-270 or not.

Then I read this on the internet:

"Using 270, or 280, or 30-06 brass will work fine, just that the neck "should" in some cases be reamed to the correct thickness."

Keep in mind:
This is just going to be for a hunting rifle, not needing to be under 1 MOA.

Do I need to ream the neck thickness of the brass when going from 270 win to 6.5-06 AI?

Also, am I doing the steps in the correct order, or should I fire form it (I will use the cream of wheat method) and then I trim to length?

This will be my first wildcat cartridge, and my first fire forming.

Thanks in advance!
 
I would back off the die a turn, or just enough that you feel slight resistance closing the bolt. Are you using a projectile or a wax plug to freform? if a plug, i would wait till after the initial forming to trim. have fun
 
Back off the die a bit. You should have a slight shoulder to control headspace untill the case is fired the first time. You should be able to feel the case seat.
Seat a bullet to make a dummy round. Smoke the neck. Chamber and see if there is contact between the neck over the bullet and the chamber. If there is a clear fit, you should be good to go.
.270 to 6.5 isn't all that big a reduction, but it will depend on the reamer used to cut the chamber, and the neck wall thickness.
 
bigbore14 said:
Hi guys,
I have just bought a 6.5-06 IMP. It came with the dies. My question is this:

I have a bunch of 270 brass, and no other 270 rifle to be confused with, so I would like to use the brass. I lubricated the 270 brass and ran it through my full length die, with the decaping pin in the dies. I then tried to chamber an empty round, and the bolt handle closed no problem. Then I trimmed it to 2.494 which is the length wanted for the 6.5-06. I don't know if I needed to trim, since it chambered fine, is this true? I don't know if my chamber was cut to 6.5-270 or not.

Then I read this on the internet:

"Using 270, or 280, or 30-06 brass will work fine, just that the neck "should" in some cases be reamed to the correct thickness."

Keep in mind:
This is just going to be for a hunting rifle, not needing to be under 1 MOA.

Do I need to ream the neck thickness of the brass when going from 270 win to 6.5-06 AI?

Also, am I doing the steps in the correct order, or should I fire form it (I will use the cream of wheat method) and then I trim to length?

This will be my first wildcat cartridge, and my first fire forming.

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

Here's the deal. When you sqush all that brass in the neck down to 6.5mm size for an inside dimension the rest of the brass has to go somewhere. I can see a problem occurring with the .30-06 down to 6.5 and maybe the .280, but I don't think there would be much problem from the .270.
The extra brass is formed outside of the neck dimension and may be larger than the rifle is reamed to. This extra thickness may not allow the cartridge to chamber in the rifle. When you do it without a bullet in it, it will force it down and in, with a bullet, there is no place for the extra thickness to go. That is why they are advising that you may have to turn the neck diameter.
I would make up a dummy round with the bullet seated to listed depths. Then I would measure the outside neck diameter and compare it to the SAAMI specs of the cartridge. If you are within the dimension, you have no problem.
If you are just outside of specs, I would carefully try to chamber that round and see if there is any room in it. If it chambers fine, then, again, no problem. If not, you will have to turn the outside necks.
Remember to test chamber ALL of your hunting rounds once you make them up to be sure that you will not get one that won't when you really need it to.
 
Ive used 270 for 6.5-06 with no issues. I was trimming to 2.484 but that's not likely a n issue on your AI. I would load a Stiff 6.5-05 load and fireform...not a big fan of COW, depends on how many pieces you are looking to form.

I prefered 25-06 cases...not a big fan of trimming.
 
Take a couple of your trimmed cases, load 'em up to mid range load and fire them. If a bullet slips back in the fired case with ease you need'nt worry about a thing, just fly at 'er. I suspect you will be just fine with 270 cases for 6.5, I use 264 cases to make 257 Wby and do not require neck thinning nor does my 340 made from 375 cases.
Oh and don't bother looking for a SAAMI drawing for the 6.5-06 as it is a wildcat and as such I don't think there is such a drawing available unless Cooper had it "legalized", not sure about that.
You will probably find you may want to trim again after fireforming as they will not all form the same exact way and you will end up with variations in case length after the forming process.
As mentioned earlier watch your headspace on initial firing and back your sizer out until you feel resistance upon closing the bolt, this is very important to case life.
 
c-fbmi said:
Oh and don't bother looking for a SAAMI drawing for the 6.5-06 as it is a wildcat and as such I don't think there is such a drawing available unless Cooper had it "legalized", not sure about that.
Click to expand...

A-Square did it. (1997)

and about Loading 6.5-06 into an AI chamber, you should feel a crush fit as you close the bolt.
 
Pathfinder said:
and about Loading 6.5-06 into an AI chamber, you should feel a crush fit as you close the bolt.
Click to expand...

What does this mean? When loading an empty 270 case in the rifle, partialy resized neck to 6.5, that I should have some resistance while closing the bolt? Is that a crush fit? Or do you mean with a bullet loaded?
 
270 Brass I started with

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Using the full length resizer, I resized just until it fit into the rifle and closed the bolt. About half of the neck got resized.

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17 grains of HS-6 was used to load the case, this powder is meant for hand guns and shot guns

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First you add the powder with a funel of its own (tap down the powder), then you add the cream of wheat (COW) to top up the case, tap it down, and then use a 1/4 of a sheet of single ply toilet paper to plug up the case.

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Here you can see what 5 grains does on the left, and working my way up slowly to 17 grains, these are some of the many I used to work my way up.

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And Wha-La! The finished 6.5-06 AI case on the left, and the 270 WIN case I started with on the right!

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Very cool round - and great pics, that explain the process well.

I use the same process, albeit I anneal first, and use Unique.
 
I also would have like Unique, but it wasn't in stock at my gun store. I would like to have annealed first also, but I have yet to try my hand at it. I need to hit a welding store and buy a 650 degree crayon to be confident I am doing it right. about 1 in 20 cases did split when I first re-sized them to 6.5 from 270, so I see the benefit to annealing. I am not sure how many rounds fired these cases are, as they were someone else cases. I will try to anneal them after I have sent a shot down range in each.
 
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