6.5 has made obsolete my rifles

[jmorris]

Hate to burst your bubble but 6.5 Creedmoor is not difficult to find at all where I am.

Wasn’t suggesting it was, try and find WSSM or any of the “x”mm BR’s, they would be examples of rounds that have been pushed out of the market. If you occupy more shelf space than another, it’s hard to say you are being pushed out of the market.

 

[.308 Norma]

A new .38 caliber cartridge would be stupid... but if they came out with a high powered 9mm cartridge and made it rimmed so it was revolver friendly... oooh! .... now THAT would be cool!

Something like a 9mm Mauser rimmed maybe. The 9mm Federal, which was essentially a 9mm Luger rimmed, sure wasn't all that cool. According to my "Cartridges of the World" book, it only lasted from 1989 to 1992 - 3 years.

 

[Jerseykris]

As for me I have an 800 yard range 10 minutes from the house, so I can stretch a rifle's legs a bit.

800 yard range that close to you, that's actually kind of awesome. I have quite a painful haul from my house for a 600 yard range, and can only bring a few rifles at a time.

 

[jmorris]

Something like a 9mm Mauser rimmed maybe. The 9mm Federal, which was essentially a 9mm Luger rimmed, sure wasn't all that cool.

I have a Blackhawk that has both 38/357 and 9mm cylinders.

I am also getting close on finishing my 357 maximum upper for one of my contender rifles, that would fit the mold.

 

[Lafitte]

A lot of new calibers have come and gone, a lot have stood the test of time. My hunting rifles have stood the test of time. A few are .220 Swift, .243, 7mm Rem mag, .30/06, .45/70. Now, if my objective was to shoot paper rather than hunting game there are some many calibers that work better than the above listed. How many time have I taken game past 500 yard? "0". I think 6.5 Creedmore will probablys stand the test of tiime. When it is as old as one of my favorites, 30/06 I will give it a try at shooting paper. Or maybe I will be shooting a 26 Lafitte!

Lafitte

 

[.308 Norma]

I have a Blackhawk that has both 38/357 and 9mm cylinders.

So do I. What I said was, "The 9mm Federal, which was essentially a 9mm Luger rimmed, sure wasn't all that cool." I was responding to MikeInOr who posted that a "high powered" 9mm cartridge with a rim to make it revolver friendly would be "cool."
I personally have never seen a 9mm Federal revolver. But from what I've read, the 9mm Federal cartridge would chamber in most old 38 S&W revolvers - with disastrous results.

 

[MikeInOr]

So do I. What I said was, "The 9mm Federal, which was essentially a 9mm Luger rimmed, sure wasn't all that cool." I was responding to MikeInOr who posted that a "high powered" 9mm cartridge with a rim to make it revolver friendly would be "cool."
I personally have never seen a 9mm Federal revolver. But from what I've read, the 9mm Federal cartridge would chamber in most old 38 S&W revolvers - with disastrous results.

I was being kind of facisous and basically describing a .357 mag. ...But with a different name so everyone will have to have one!

 

[.308 Norma]

I was being kind of facisous and basically describing a .357 mag. ...But with a different name so everyone will have to have one!

Oh, okay. I get it. Funny!

 

[mcb]

38 Short Colt is, at least for gamer revolver shooters, the new 9mm Federal. That said rimless revolvers are better for games anyway. 9x19mm eclipsed 38 Short Colt a few years ago.

But back on topic since I thought this was a rifle thread.

The recoil issue just does not get very far with me. I have shot 6.5 Creedmore and 308 Winchester in the exact same Remington 700 rifle in the same shooting session. The recoil difference was noticeable since I was looking for it and I suspect someone not looking for it might have missed it. And for a light weight hunting rifle that only gets shot a modest amount in practice/load workup and a hand full of times in the field each year the recoil difference is not enough to make a difference.

If I am target shooting out to a mile recoil is nearly a non-issue since I can put as much weight and as big a break or suppressor on the gun as I want. I have found that a suppressed 18 lbs 338 Lapua with a good recoil pad is IMHO more pleasant to shoot than a light weight 6.5 CM. And it will do a mile flatter and buck the wind better than any 6.5mm

 

[Llama Bob]

The 6.5CM did a lot of things right in terms of length, sectional density, twist rate, geometry and shoulder position that previous cartridges around it did wrong. Those good choices have it displacing a lot of other options both for hunting and targets. It's really amazing that it's still competitive for PRS even with all the wildcatting going on around it.

The one weakness I see is too few high-BC bonded hunting bullets in the 150-160gr range. The Weldcore is really the only readily available option. This is a limiting factor on elk.

 

[troy fairweather]

My motto is that just because something better has come down the line, that doesn't make the old stuff ineffective. That applies to just about everything. Guns, cars, boats, ect... Case in point my 30-40 krag. Its 119 years old and it still shoots a 180 grain ballistic tip 1 moa.

View attachment 802590

We really have not made all that much progress in the field of hunting rifles in the last 100 years.

the 30-40 is about perfect for deer to wish they still chambered it in lever action.

 

[Llama Bob]

My motto is that just because something better has come down the line, that doesn't make the old stuff ineffective..

That's true. For people coming along making a choice of a new rifle though the recent improvements are worth paying attention to. There's no added cost for a 6.5CM (and other modern cartridges) but some potential advantages.

 

[Llama Bob]

the 30-40 is about perfect for deer to wish they still chambered it in lever action.

They're all over Gunbroker, including a fair number of Miroku made ones NIB. Until that inventory sells off, I wouldn't expect more to be made.

 

[troy fairweather]

They're all over Gunbroker, including a fair number of Miroku made ones NIB. Until that inventory sells off, I wouldn't expect more to be made.

only if i had money lol.

 

[Dibbs]

I have no idea why someone would buy anything larger than a .223 or smaller than a .308 and not consider a Creed. IMO, it makes everything in the .25-06, .270 range obsolete in a new rifle.

For some, that extended range isn't so attractive. I'm considering a bolt action 223 or maybe even 5.7, specifically because it doesn't have the range to go halfway across the county,
like a 6.5MM Creedmoor would. I want the round to drop into the dirt, after a couple hundred yards.

That said, if you don't have to worry about property boundaries, and safety issues, the 6.5 Creedmoor is a fine round.

 

[MachIVshooter]

fair points lol.....Honestly im still kinda upset at them for droping the 7stw in favor of the rum....

Both are massively overbore, severely diminishing returns for powder used. The 7mm Rem Mag is about the best balanced of the fast .284 cals.

I have no idea why someone would buy anything larger than a .223 or smaller than a .308 and not consider a Creed. IMO, it makes everything in the .25-06, .270 range obsolete in a new rifle.

It's a good round, but I wouldn't go that far. For hunting, we'll consider only ranges inside 500 yards, and a 200 yard zero range.

The 6.5 creed with ~140 gr. bullets in the (avg .560 BC for hunting pills) maxxes out at about 2,800 FPS from 22-24" sporter barrels. That gives you a 345 yard MPBR with 42" drop @ 500 and .63 second TOF to 500

The .25-06 will run 3,200 FPS with ~115 gr bullets (avg .450 B.C.), giving an MPBR of 385 yards, 34" drop @ 500 with .57 sec. TOF to 500

The 270 with 150 gr. can hit 3,000 FPS, giving 370 yard MPBR, 35" drop @ .58 sec TOF @ 500

The 7 mag can push 175 gr. spitzers at 2,950 for a 370 yard MPBR with 36" drop and .58 sec TOF to 500. And the 7 mag hits considerably harder at that range.

Good ol' .30-06 with a 180 gr @ 2,750 FPS has a 335 yard MPBR, drops 46" @ 500 with a .65 sec TOF

Recoil-wise, the .25-06 will be about the same as the 6.5 CM, the .270 a little more, and the 7 mag quite a bit more. But the 7 mag is still in the tolerable range.

So, if we look at it from a hunting perspective, the 6.5 CM really doesn't do a darned thing better than the old stand-by pronghorn, deer & elk rounds except fit into a short action. Which is why I said before that it's a worthy contender, but one would be rather foolish to trade off their current game getter in favor of it.

Personally, if I did a 6.5, it would be a 6.5-06 AI. It's like the 6.5 CM, but for men

 

[ECVMatt]

So I tried the whole 6.5 thing a while back when it was called the .260 Remington. I was hunting a lot at the time in Texas and my buddy back there got one too. Although I shot my biggest whitetail with the .260 I was underwhelmed with it. It did not shoot as flat as some of my faster cartridges nor did it hit as hard as some of my slower ones. It just seemed like I had better choices available. I am sure things have changed from then to now, but now I am just too set in my ways to try something that doesn't significantly perform better than one of my proven favorites. I have tried, from time to time, to get on the 6.5 C bandwagon, but just don't see the advantage for my kind of shooting. I guess if I was going to start from the ground up on a long range rifle I might give it a try. Anyways, Onward!

 

[Steve S.]

I own the “old” calibers (.308, 45-70, .45 Colt, .45 ACP, .22); they are all fun to shoot. I bought a 6.8 SPC about 10 year’s ago; super accurate, kills deer like a bolt from the heavens but that caliber is now passé. I would buy a 6.5 to have something new to shoot. Where I hunt, the deer have gone on record that they refuse to bleed unless they are shot with the latest and greatest.

 

[someguy2800]

I see a parallel to this in the racing community. 20 years ago the only performance engines that got any attention were the small block and big block V8's from chevy, ford and chrysler, with well developed aftermarket support for all of them but the small block chevy being the run away favorite. Then along came the LS1 in the camaro and corvette. At that time we all shrugged at what we were supposed to do with this new computer controlled contraption, but lots of people swapped them in street cruisers just to be different. The core engines were expensive and we had better and cheaper parts available for the old small block and you could make more power with the old stuff so it didn't get much love. A few years later they came out with the 5.3 and 6.0 LS engines in the pickups and many moaned and complained that GM have given up on the ole small block that had been serving us well since 1955. Now that has run its course and the LS motors get all the love. We figured out the heads, block, the rotating assembly, oil system, and valvetrain were far superior to anything else available, and once the aftermarket caught up and prices came down people realized you have to spend thousands of dollars to make a small block chevy as good as a stock 5.3L that you can get from the junkyard for $300 with a few bolt ons. We figured out the computers and now we have aftermarket blocks and heads that you can make 2500 hp with. They are now more easily available and cheaper to build than a chevy 350 and you can make more power per dollar. Of course we still have a market for the old small and big blocks because there are a lot of people that still have them and know them, but less and less people are building them new and pretty much all the young people entering are gravitating toward the modern engines and for good reasons.

The 6.5cm just like the chevy LS engines have a firm hold on the market and will only continue to grow in popularity. The young kids getting into shooting for sport and hunting don't have preferences. They talk to other shooters and read on forums like this and when they see the positives spelled out they go for that because they don't have nostalgia. The older cartridges will continue to be popular for a long time because they still work great and a lot of them have had 50-100 years of rifle sales to feed the ammo sales, but they will get displaced over time buy new people coming in and adopting the modern. Its really remarkable to me that the ammo is everywhere and pretty much every single factory bolt rifle has it as a chambering and they managed to do that in only 10 years or so.

 

[MachIVshooter]

I see a parallel to this in the racing community. 20 years ago the only performance engines that got any attention were the small block and big block V8's from chevy, ford and chrysler, with well developed aftermarket support for all of them but the small block chevy being the run away favorite. Then along came the LS1 in the camaro and corvette. At that time we all shrugged at what we were supposed to do with this new computer controlled contraption, but lots of people swapped them in street cruisers just to be different. The core engines were expensive and we had better and cheaper parts available for the old small block and you could make more power with the old stuff so it didn't get much love. A few years later they came out with the 5.3 and 6.0 LS engines in the pickups and many moaned and complained that GM have given up on the ole small block that had been serving us well since 1955. Now that has run its course and the LS motors get all the love. We figured out the heads, block, the rotating assembly, oil system, and valvetrain were far superior to anything else available, and once the aftermarket caught up and prices came down people realized you have to spend thousands of dollars to make a small block chevy as good as a stock 5.3L that you can get from the junkyard for $300 with a few bolt ons. We figured out the computers and now we have aftermarket blocks and heads that you can make 2500 hp with. They are now more easily available and cheaper to build than a chevy 350 and you can make more power per dollar. Of course we still have a market for the old small and big blocks because there are a lot of people that still have them and know them, but less and less people are building them new and pretty much all the young people entering are gravitating toward the modern engines and for good reasons.

I don't see it. The LS does a lot that previous engines didn't. The 6.5 CM? It's just a shiny new label on a very old concept that doesn't do anything a lot of other cartridges won't. The big thing that is driving 6.5 CM isn't so much the round itself, but that the twist rate & barrel profiles of the rifles lend themselves to excellent accuracy with heavy-for-caliber bullets, and the ammunition manufacturers offer loads that will rival what most handloaders are capable of. All the other .264s (6.5x55, .260 Rem, 6.5-06, 6.5mm Rem Mag, .264 Win Mag, 6.5-284, etc) are capable of the same feats, as are numerous other rounds, but that requires rebarreling a rifle and tayloring handloads. The 6.5 CM brought that to the plug'n'play crowd who can now be competitive with a fairly inexpensive factory rifle and factory ammo.

The 6.5cm just like the chevy LS engines have a firm hold on the market and will only continue to grow in popularity. The young kids getting into shooting for sport and hunting don't have preferences. They talk to other shooters and read on forums like this and when they see the positives spelled out they go for that because they don't have nostalgia. The older cartridges will continue to be popular for a long time because they still work great and a lot of them have had 50-100 years of rifle sales to feed the ammo sales, but they will get displaced over time buy new people coming in and adopting the modern. Its really remarkable to me that the ammo is everywhere and pretty much every single factory bolt rifle has it as a chambering and they managed to do that in only 10 years or so.

That's happened many times before. 7mm Rem Mag took off like that in the 1960s.

 

[Bushpilot]

someguy2800, I think you're spot on as far as the engines are concerned but I think the comparison to the 6.5 CM is off....

With the computer controlled engines you're talking about brand new technology, whereas with the rifles it's just really re-applying what was there all along with the 6.5x55. Changing a rifles rate of twist to accommodate a different range of bullet lengths/weights is not new. People building custom rifles and barrels have offered different rates of twist for a long time. Give the same long bullet/fast twist treatment to old cartridges like the 243, 257, 25/06 or 270 Winchester and you will see similar if not better 1000 yard ballistics....

https://www.ssusa.org/articles/2017...whidden-uses-243-win-for-long-range-shooting/

 

[someguy2800]

The 6.5 CM brought that to the plug'n'play crowd who can now be competitive with a fairly inexpensive factory rifle and factory ammo.

The LS brought that to the plug'n'play crowd who can now be competitive with a fairly inexpensive factory block and head.

So it is like an LS then?

 

[someguy2800]

someguy2800, I think you're spot on as far as the engines are concerned but I think the comparison to the 6.5 CM is off....

With the computer controlled engines you're talking about brand new technology, whereas with the rifles it's just really re-applying what was there all along with the 6.5x55. Changing a rifles rate of twist to accommodate a different range of bullet lengths/weights is not new. People building custom rifles and barrels have offered different rates of twist for a long time. Give the same long bullet/fast twist treatment to old cartridges like the 243, 257, 25/06 or 270 Winchester and you will see similar if not better 1000 yard ballistics....

https://www.ssusa.org/articles/2017...whidden-uses-243-win-for-long-range-shooting/

The parallel I'm trying to draw is that in both cases people dismissed them as not doing anything the old stuff wouldn't do, but it was the new people coming into the hobby that adopted it and moved away from the old.

Of course the 6.5cm is not anything revolutionary, it just conveniently fits in everything and was offered with the right combination of stuff to make it successful.

 

[cdb1]

I’ll fess up to not liking the 6.5 Creedmoor. Not because it isn’t an excellent cartridge but because of all the hype it receives. In my imaginary world my beloved 6.5x55 would receive all the love being showered upon the 6.5 Creedmoor. The Swede does everything the Creedmoor can do and more-you can push a bullet faster with a Swede, and the Swede has been around 100 years longer. The 6.5 Creedmoor being chambered in a short action is no advantage to me either because the extra weight of a long action is negligible in my eyes.

The people I’ve heard that are the most vociferous about the superiority of the Creedmoor are of a type that hunt deer from a stand less than 100 yards from a feeder. In such a circumstance there is no advantage a Creedmoor has over any number of cartridges.

 

[Poper]

There's some things the 6.5s do unusually well, mostly due to having fast twists and heavy for caliber bullets.

For hunting tho there's little one caliber will do that another can't duplicate.

The only standard caliber I don't own between .22 and .31 is a .27
I've had two 6.5 Grendel's, two 6.5 Creedmoors, and a 6.5-284.

I liked them all, but then I like all the other cartridges/calibers I've owned too......I suppose I really do need to try a .277

Yes, LoonWulf, I believe you should. My Tikka .270 Winchester is the most accurate rifle I own.

For many years I had a love affair with anything with a .264 bore. It all began when I was a kid and my dad had a sporterized Swedish Mauser that was uncanny accurate. I have had multiple 6.5x55's, a sporterized 6.5 Carcano, 6.5x54 Manlicher Shoenauer, sporterized 6.5x50 Arisaka, .260 Remington, 6.5 WSSM, and a 6.5-.300 WSM custom. I still have a 6.5x55 Tikka and the 6.5 WSSM. The rest have found new homes since the advent of the 6.5 Creedmore and the accompanying 6.5mm hyperbole.

I'll be hunting with my .30-06 this fall and will take my .270 as back up.