Building remington 700 bdl 6.5 rem mag

[Rem9671]

I am planning on building (have a gunsmith build) an old style Remington 700 BDL 6.5 Rem Mag.I have a few questions.Will a standard 700 BDL short action work with this cartridge.What about a standard short action bolt?

 

[jlvandersnick]

If you want to get the most out of this cartridge build it on a LA so you can get the base of the heavier bullets out of the body and up into the neck. Mine shoots the 130-140 bergers very well in the 3050 to almost 3200fps respectively....with a COAL of 3.160. You can't get that type of COAL in a SA.
Of course to do this you have to lengthen the free bore.
This is an awesome cartridge that will surpass the 6.5-284 performance and duplicate SAUM performance if the rifle is set up right.

 

[Rem9671]

Can you define COAL?
And explain lengthen freebore?
So in other words the action is to short to use with long bullets and even with a la the chamber has to be lenghtend for longer bullets unless they are seated farther down in the case?
I really didn't want to use a la .How will the sa work out with lighter bullets etc?

 

[Aldon]

What's your budget and what exactly are you starting with? And what interests you in the 6.5 Remington mag?

 

[jlvandersnick]

COAL is "Cartridge OverAll Lenght"

Free bore (aka: leade) is just that, it is the area ahead of the bullet ogive ... in the barrel until the bullets ogive contacts the lands of the rifling, hence free bore

So in other words the action is to short to use with long bullets and even with a la the chamber has to be lenghtend for longer bullets unless they are seated farther down in the case?
Basically Yes....if you want to get the performance that the cartridge is capable of

I have not tried shorter/lighter bullets. On all of my rifles I tend to shoot the longest, heaviest bullets that the cartridge and the twist rate on my barrel will support.

Which is another thing to consider....barrel twist. Mine is an 8 twist. Meaning the rifling in the barrel will make one complete revolution per eight inches of barrel

 

[just country]

morning I had built a 6.5Mag on a long action, I did not tell the smithy
to ream the bore to accept longer bullets. my bad. the build shoots very
well. I could take the rifle in and have the chamber reamed, but what for??
as stated above use a long action for ur reloading benefit.
if not use a fast twist and shoot the lighter and shorter bullets!
I shoot the Lapua senear(sp) bullets. justme gbot tum