Last year I was able to buy a new Interarms Mark X action with a Timney trigger. It became the basis for a custom rifle which I was able to shoot last Friday for the first time. Here is the story about it I wrote up for my family (mostly Granddad, now 97).
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All –
In August of 2008 I bought a new-in-the-box Interarms Mark X rife action that was set up for use with .30-06-sized cartridges (.25-06 Rem, .270 Win, .280 Rem, .30-06, .338-06, .35 Whelen, etc.). In November Stockystocks.com had Boyd laminated and pre-fit stocks on sale and I bought one. For the next several months I spent a lot of time trying to decide what kind of barrel to put on it. The final contestants were a .338-06, possibly in the Ackey Improved configuration, and a 6.5mm-06 Ackley Improved. The more I learned about the ballistics of 6.5mm bullets and their suitability for long range shooting, the more I leaned in that direction. Eventually I decided to build a poor man’s long range rifle using the 6.5mm caliber, with hopes that the rifle would be good for targets out to at least 1,000 yards and preferably to 1,200 or even 1,500 yards. (Going beyond that requires a whole different level of equipment and expense.) On June 1st of this year I placed an order with Krieger Barrels to build the barrel and do the necessary gunsmithing. The completed rifle finally arrived on October 23rd, just a week before elk season.
Yesterday, for the first time, I was able to get to the range and shoot the rifle. Originally I had put a spare Leupold M8 fixed-power 4x on it just so I would have something to aim with when shooting fire-form loads. A few days ago I swapped scopes with my Remington M700 .30-06 which had a Burris Fullfield II 4.5-14xAO with Ballistic Plex reticle. That left me with two rifles that needed to be zeroed. The .30-06 accompanied me to the range yesterday, partly so I could zero it and partly so I would have something to shoot while the 6.5-06AI barrel cooled. (A good barrel will last several thousand rounds if properly treated but you can burn them out in less than 100 if you cook them.)
Here’s the 6.5-06 AI rifle. It has a new Interarms Mark X action (one of the better commercial Mauser actions but not available for some years now), Timney trigger, Krieger 6.5-06 Ackely Improved barrel (stainless, fluted and hand-lapped with a 1-8 twist), and is glass bedded and free-floated in a Boyd stock. The action face was trued, the barrel threads were cleaned up and the bolt lugs were lapped to help improve accuracy. The engraving on this side of the barrel reads “Coyote Hunter”. The barrel is a “heavy sporter” contour which makes it somewhat heavy with the center of balance well forward of the action. Eventually I might add some lead weight in the butt of the stock to bring the center of balance back and further reduce recoil – this rifle isn’t intended to be going up and down mountains after elk so the extra weight, which will further help accuracy, won’t be a big detriment. If this rifle goes hunting it will be light varminting (occasional prairie dogs and coyotes) and big game in situations where bipods or solid rests are used, it is never far from the truck (less than a mile, probably much less), and shots tend to be on the longish side. It would have been perfect for some of the hunting I did this year where the access road was up high on one side of a valley, the elk were in thickets on the far side and shots would have ranged from 200 yards out to 800 yards and further.
I started at the 100 yard covered range to get on paper and set the point of impact at 100 yards, about 2-1/2" high for both rifles. My fire-form loads were pussycats in the AI, Hornady 140g A-MAX bullets over 49.0g H4831SC and running a very consistent 2669fps to 2680fps for a six-shot sample. (Hornady lists 49.4g at 2800fps for the standard 6.5-06. When I develop loads with the formed cases I expect to get about 3150fps with the same bullet.) My .30-06 load was another pussycat, a Hornady 168g A-MAX over 51.0g BL-C(2) for about 2635fps average. (Normally I would run bullets this weight at around 2900-2950fps, but these loads were developed for plinking fun and ease of reloading.)
Here's a fire form load using a .25-06 case necked up to hold the Hornady 6.5mm 140g A-MAX bullet and a fire formed 6.5-06 Ackley Improved case on the left. The -06 case walls get blown out to a more parallel configuration and the shoulder gets moved forward and made steeper, both of which add case capacity and allow higher velocities. The primary reason I went with the 6.5-06 Ackley Improved instead of the standard .6.5-06 was I wanted to prevent the possibility of a 6.5mm load getting into a .25-06 chamber. ( I don’t have a .25-06 yet, but you never know...) A second reason was that I wanted to use cheap cases. While properly headstamped 6.5-06AI cases are available, they cost about $2.00 each. By contrast I can buy .25-06 cases for about $0.40 each. I’ll probably end up with about 200 cases so the difference really adds up. (I could also use .270 Win or .280 Rem or even .30-06 cases and form them but the neck walls would be thickened during the necking-down process and the necks would need to be reamed, something I avoid by using .25-06 cases.)
After satisfying myself at the 100 yard range I headed to the longer range where I put clay pigeons on the 400 yard berm and painted the steel gongs at 500 yards. Here’s a look at the shooting area. My position was at the far end.
My first shot with the 6.5-06AI was at a 500 yard gong. Having never fired the rifle before today and only then out to 100 yards for sight-in, I had to guess at the bullet drop. The third hash mark down from center in the Ballistic Plex reticle seemed appropriate and it was – I rang the gong three times in succession. (As I write this I realize I had my iPhone with me at the range. There is not one but TWO ballistic programs on it – guess I could have calculated the drop...)
In the picture below the long, horizontal dark line in the center of the picture is the shadow of the 500-yard target boards, visible below the boards themselves. The shorter, less distinct and somewhat lighter dark line just above it is the shadow of the 600 yard boards. You can just see the two orange gongs to the right of the 500 yard target boards (they look like a single bright spot). Also notice the shine on the bench – we got new welded steel benches and stools, replacing the wooden ones that wobbled badly after a just a short period of use and had to be replaced constantly. The new benches are a great improvement!
More shooters arrived and a cease fire was called to set up targets and I took the opportunity to move one of the gongs back to 600 yards. When the range went hot I decided to try using the lower thick-thin transition point for aiming. I cranked the scope up to 14x and promptly missed the 600 yard gong, just off to the right. Holding just to the left of the gong fixed the problem and I rang it several times in a row before deciding to let the barrel cool.
Next up was the .30-06 with its pokey 2635fps loads. The clay pigeons on the 400-yard berm were barely visible at 4x so I decided t try the gongs at 500 yards. The Leuplod M8 has a plain, fine-line crosshair reticle and I had to guess about the holdover. Nevertheless my first shot rang a 500 yard gong, as did each successive shot.
Letting the .30-06 cool, I tried a couple shots at the 400 yard clay pigeons with the 6.5-06AI but couldn’t quite get the windage and elevation – flying dirt showed hit was easily in the kill zone of even an antelope, but a miss is a miss. I bounced back and forth between the two rifles, ringing the 500 and 600 yard gongs with both. Too easy.
Another cease fire was called and I put a clay pigeon on the 600 yard berm. My first shot with the 6.5-06AI was just to the right, the second just over the top. The third shot hit it pretty much dead center, leaving the lower half more or less intact. Not bad for randomly selected fire-form loads...
Another cease fire and another clay pigeon on the 600 yard berm. My second shot took it out. This was fun!
I tried the 400 yard pigeons again, and this time I got the windage and elevation correct (there basically wasn’t any wind but the scope was set to shoot a bit to the right). Several pigeons bit the dust before I called it a day.
Including the sight-in rounds, only 24 of the .30-06 plinker loads and 44 of the 6.5mm-06AI fire-form loads were fired during the course of the day. The .30-06 proved to be quite capable of hitting the 500 and 600 yard gongs with a simple 4x scope, which surprised me. The 6.5-06AI, which I had never fired before, was able to take out clay pigeons at the 600 yard line with a randomly selected fire-form load, which surprised me even more. (I have a jug of H4831SC powder that I don’t use any more and Hornady had a 6.5-06 load for H4831 – it turned out to be a very happy combination.) In fact, the most difficult shots I took all day were the first few shots at the clay pigeons on the 400 yard berm. While I don’t claim to be a great long distance shot, I think this experience demonstrates that one needn’t, as some people claim, shoot hundreds or even thousands of rounds with a particular weapon or have expensive equipment to be able to place bullets in the kill zone at ranges out to 600 yards. (That said, the wind is the biggest bugaboo at that range and a hunter needs to be willing to pass on a shot.)
It was all much easier than putting bullets in the kill zone of a running animal at 50 or 100 yards...
