Thread: 6.5 Creedmoor load development

So I was happy with the accuracy but with a shortened barrel in mind the velocities were not quite what Id hoped for. This is where I admit I was green when entering into this rocky relationship. I honestly thought this cal could do much better. I kept falling back to my .308 pet loads pushing 150gr pills to 2850fps with very little effort and my trusty old .30BR pushing 130gr pills to the same speeds on a case half the size. I guess I had been reading a lot of 6.5x47 results from guys with 28" tubes spitting them at mach 3 and didnt really think to hard on the possibility of slightly larger capacity Creedmoor case not doing the same on a shorter barrel.



After getting home, documenting my results and looking at the brass I found quite a few anomalies.
Firstly the load of 2209 at 41.5gr behind the 139gr Lapua scenar was noted at the range as too hot. Although a very nice tight group and 6fps ES it had a slightly tight bolt lift, flat primers, sharp edged firing pin craters and a minor ejector ring mark.

Now here is where I must make mention of my Remingtons normal characteristics and in fact nearly every Remington 700 Ive owned with the exception of my early Remington M700 Police LTR that went through remingtons custom shop.
The firing pin hole is over sized so primer cratering is a normal phenomenon in this rifle. I have polished the sharp edges of it to help a little but it is something I live with as I dont see a benefit in personal safety to do the popular bushing mod to it.
The ejectors are also way over sprung and are prone to denting case mouths and scratching up the side walls of your expensive shiny brass as they withdraw from the chamber with way too much side loading... so it got the snip and the face of the ejector was rounded off and polished as was the sharp edged hole it protrudes from.



Now these characteristics all come with new challenges as it makes it much harder to read pressures of your loads from the cases.
Many years of reloading and knowing the M700 action well I took all of this into consideration while working up my next loads.
This is where I warn you all... if you intend to replicate what I am about to share with you, be sure you have a clue what you are doing or stop now as this can be dangerous. I can say now I am at the other end of it that the Creedmoor case though more than one surprise at me along the way that ive never seen before in other cals and if it wasnt for me spotting early signs along the way it could have got nasty.

Now at this point I could post a lot velocities or photos of cases and primers and go through all my ladder load tests I did with various components but I know you will blow past it and skip to the end anyway so instead I will share the following link... this guy spells it out better than I can and I really dont have the time to go through all of my test records and explain the relevance to this load work up.

https://www.primalrights.com/library...nding-pressure

I know this link has been shared here before but it is important right now to every one of you, seasoned expert or beginner reloader, as like I said this case is full of strange surprises nothing short of possessed!
Read it and read it again, understand every bit of it especially the last part where he is testing the Creedmoor case right to total failure.
If you don't spot these pressure signs through all the other "quirks" of your rifles action you are asking for trouble.