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 6.5 Creedmoor shooters that load their own- Great Brass 
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Do you own, shoot, and load for a 6.5 Creedmoor. Are you looking for some brass that will make it a tack driver?

It's generally accepted that Lapua Brass is at the top of the heap for a lot of reasons and Lapua has recently released brass for the 6.5 Creedmoor. Not only is it the same quality brass but it also uses the small rifle primer, having a small primer pocket and small flash hole. These to combine to give a more accurate ignition of the powder with corresponding accuracy as well as keeping primers from showing pressure sign as rapidly as the Large Primers with a large flash hole. This has been recognized for years by Palma shooters that are always trying to push their 155 gr bullets at speeds of 3,000+ fps.

Only downside to the new Lapua brass is that the price is atrocious. A box of 100 can set one back $120 and it's also not that readily available.

Here's what I did to solve the issue of availability and price. Bought a box of .308 Palma brass for $72.


The following steps make it into 6.5 Creedmoor brass.

1. Lightly lube the brass with a good lube like Imperial Sizing Wax or Hornady Unique. Avoid the sprays for this application. A THIN coat from neck to case head.

2. Push the shoulder back using a 6.5 Creedmoor Body die. If you don't own one, this is a good time to get one as it really comes in handy down the road for a variety of issues that could pop up.

3. Expand the case necks which at this point will be considerably smaller than 6.5mm due tot he extra metal in the .308 case body. Expanding will push the extra metal to the outside of the case neck. i use a Sinclair expander mandrel with some Hornady unique applied to the inside of the neck with a Q-Tip.

At this point you have a 6.5 Creedmoor case with a weird looking neck. Slightly expanded at the mouth and a bulge near the shoulder. Next steps fix this. Also, the case wall will have a slight bulge at the shoulder. This is due to the fact that the .208 case has more taper in the case body than the 6.5 Creedmoor but fire-forming "blows" this out (along with any minor dents in the shoulder caused by too much case lube).

4. Trim case to 1910-1.920" in total length.

5. Turn neck to .013" thickness. This may take several steps depending on your neck turning tool. I use a Sinclair NT-4000 with carbide cutter and just do it in a single pass. Forster turning tools are a little smaller and you may have a tough time taking more than .001" at a time. Go slow, the results are worth it.

At this point it's a good idea to turn the neck into the shoulder a couple thousandths, letting the bevel on the cutter scrape some of the excess brass from the shoulder so it isn't pushed into the neck to form a doughnut after firing. The Sinclair tool is beveled at 30 degrees so it matches the finished shoulder angle of the Creedmoor perfectly.

6. Load and fire using a minimum load for the bullet you choose for fire forming. Using Cream of Wheat or other "fillers" in order to save a bullet doesn't yield enough pressure in my opinion to give a nice sharp shoulder angle when fire formed.

7. Ideally at this point one would use a case neck reamer to make sure their is no doughnut inside the neck. If you have a Sinclair/Wilson case trimmer this is easy with the Wilson neck reamer. It only works on fired cases. There's a fair expense if you don't have the basic setup so a more econimical alternative is a neck turning pilot from RCBS, Century 21, K&M, with the doughnut cutter on the end. Use it to ream any doughnut that may have formed where the shoulder meets the neck on the inside.

Since I have a Wilson/Sinlair Case Trimmer I use the Wilson neck reamer which reams a fired case (which fits the chamber) to a ID about .002" larger than the bullet. When sized (neck or F/L) this gives .002-.003" clearance on the neck when a loaded round is chambered.


You now have some precision Lapua 6.5 Creedmoor brass with small primer/small flash hole. I say "Precision" because unlike the off the shelf 6.5 Creedmoor Lapua brass, this stuff has been formed to YOUR rifle's chamber and the neck ID is concentric to the rifle's bore axis. Between the neck turning, fire forming, and reaming (essentially line-boring) of the neck. There's now little or no "error" int he case geometry.

The cases I've formed, neck turned, and reamed show less than .001" of total indicated runout, with or without a bullet seated.

Yes, it's a time consuming process but:

a) it isn't as slow as it sounds
b) The end result is a precision product
c) the cases are now around $45 less than the factory 6.5 Creed.

Cases should be annealed before fire forming and again after the last "machining".


Loads can now be increased in a load development process to much higher speeds with less pressure sign. You will most likely run out of room in the case before reaching excessive pressure using the most common powders for 6.5 Creedmoor but as always, exercise caution. 2700-2900 fps with a 140 Gr Hornady ELD-M are not uncommon but again, WORK UP YOUR OWN LOADS FOR YOUR RIFLE.

Lastly, another benefit of the small primer is that there's more "meat" around the primer itself and the small primer pockets in Palma brass don't open up as rapidly as in the same case using large primers.

The good news is that the above only needs to be done once and then you have a case that could last 40+ firings as most cases only fail when the primer pocket loosens to the point where you can seat primers with your thumb.

Accuracy? I fire-formed my cases using 40 gr of H-4350 which was a step or two down from what I usually loaded for a 140 grain ELD-M. The first 25 rounds (all I fire-formed that day) were all sub 1/2 MOA and I haven't even worked up a load for this case yet. Can't wait to get back to the range to see what I can really do with these new cases.

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Wed Mar 08, 2017 8:43 am
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Nice write up!!

Did the 6.5 creedmore get popular in these last 10 years because of the excellent accuracy of the old 6.5x55mm swedish mauser?

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Wed Mar 08, 2017 6:53 pm
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Nice work. I have been doing the same thing to form 6.5 Creedmoor from milsurp 7.62 brass for a while now. With the mil brass I can just run it straight in the Creedmoor sizing die, then trim, neck turn, and anneal. With commercial Win brass I had to use a shortened 7mm-08 die as an intermediate step to push the shoulders back, as the Creed die just crumpled them.

I will say that my Creedmoor has been one of the easiest rounds to find good loads for that I've worked with; pretty much everything I've tried shoots acceptably well, and it's all just fine tuning from there.


Wed Mar 08, 2017 11:05 pm
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sportsdad60 wrote:
Nice write up!!

Did the 6.5 creedmore get popular in these last 10 years because of the excellent accuracy of the old 6.5x55mm swedish mauser?

The 6.5mm bullet has been inherently accurate forever. The "old swede" had it's limitations due to the quality of weapons that shot it. In a more modern firearm it does fine as is.

The 6.5 Creedmoor was a cartridge designed from the ground up, incorporating changes in case dimensions, shoulder angle, neck length, all designed to yield that "Perfect Cartridge". Once it hit the street people picked up on the fact it shot bullets with previously unheard of BC's, had less recoil than a .308 yet delivered a bullet out past 1K with superb accuracy. It's easy to load for and the bullets available are phenomenal.

The only downside is the availability of rifles chambered in the Creedmoor from Remington.

There's also a little "battle" over which is best, .260, 6.5X47 Lapua, or the 6.5 Creedmoor. I think that with the small primer Creedmoor cases the 6.5X47L will see some competition. As for the .260, as one reviewer said, the 6.5 creedmoor is ".260 done right".

In reality they are all three fine calibers and I doubt that one is that far ahead or behind the other in performance as it's the bullet that is what's so good.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


"For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother
" - William Shakespeare


Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:01 am
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Thanks for the history!

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Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:12 am
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deadshot2 wrote:
sportsdad60 wrote:
Nice write up!!

Did the 6.5 creedmore get popular in these last 10 years because of the excellent accuracy of the old 6.5x55mm swedish mauser?

The 6.5mm bullet has been inherently accurate forever. The "old swede" had it's limitations due to the quality of weapons that shot it. In a more modern firearm it does fine as is.

The 6.5 Creedmoor was a cartridge designed from the ground up, incorporating changes in case dimensions, shoulder angle, neck length, all designed to yield that "Perfect Cartridge". Once it hit the street people picked up on the fact it shot bullets with previously unheard of BC's, had less recoil than a .308 yet delivered a bullet out past 1K with superb accuracy. It's easy to load for and the bullets available are phenomenal.

The only downside is the availability of rifles chambered in the Creedmoor from Remington.

There's also a little "battle" over which is best, .260, 6.5X47 Lapua, or the 6.5 Creedmoor. I think that with the small primer Creedmoor cases the 6.5X47L will see some competition. As for the .260, as one reviewer said, the 6.5 creedmoor is ".260 done right".

In reality they are all three fine calibers and I doubt that one is that far ahead or behind the other in performance as it's the bullet that is what's so good.


Some interesting thoughts there. The 6.5mm variants are crazy popular, though the 6mm calibers are arguably better except in the barrel life department. I really want a .243 target gun, but the barrel life has been keeping me away. Dollar for dollar, the .243 and 6.5CM will end up being a wash once you've shot 4000-5000 rounds though, because the ammo cost will be lower for .243

Funny the arguments between .260 and 6.5CM. The guys at the range I used to shoot at brought it down to one factor. Do you reload? If not, factory 6.5CM ammo is more available, and performs better. If you do, the.260 has the ability to get you a few extra FPS that the 6.5CM can't. All in all, 6.5CM seems to be the more popular of the 2 at the moment, but when it comes time to rebarrel, I'm picking between .260 and .243 :bigsmile:

But it's more fun to watch everyone argue about which is better by 30 FPS here or there, and which shoulder angle theoretically provides more accuracy :popcorn:


Fri Mar 17, 2017 3:43 pm
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SixPointEight wrote:
the .243 and 6.5CM will end up being a wash once you've shot 4000-5000 rounds though, because the ammo cost will be lower for .243



I don't see the .243 being any less expensive than 6.5 Creedmoor when one reloads. Cases last about the same number of firings unless you go to the smaller primer and you can then easily tripple or quadruple the number of firings on the case before primer pockets open up.

Just remember, the Creedmoor is an evolutionry cartridge. It grew out of the best features of several similar cartridges, including the .260. Naturally it will be close but IMHO it is a better cartridge overall. Bound to be when you leave out the less than ideal features of the similar cartridges.

As for speed, my last outing yielded speeds equal to the .260 and hot-rodded 6.5X47 Lapua. The Benchmark barrel was installed today and I just finished putting the rifle back together. Just looking down the 3-groove barrel is giving me the feeling that I will be seeing some speeds well up around 2800 fps with nominal barrel wear or having to use a hydraulic press to compress my powder loads.

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"I've learned from the Dog that an afternoon nap is a good thing"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


"For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother
" - William Shakespeare


Fri Mar 17, 2017 4:13 pm
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