First, if you're going to offer alternatives, I'm not interested. I've done a fair bit of reading on this over the past week, and every thread has got a few from the peanut gallery.
"Why don't you just buy the brass?" or "Start with a different case!" I've got plenty of Hornady ammo and virgin brass, I'm not worried about a shortage. I don't have 22-250 or .243 brass to convert, nor do I have the dies, so that's a pointless line of inquiry. Zero value added to the conversation.
I just wanted to do this for the sake of experience.
Anyway, I had some PPU .308 brass I wasn't going to reload. I have LC and LC LR brass for my .308, and I didn't want to bother loading up the PPU. It wasn't worth the trouble of selling, so I decided to experiment with it, and see if I could make usable 6.5 Creedmoor brass.
I had the brass, of course, Hornady headspace gages in a caliper, a Redding 6.5 Creedmoor body die, and an RCBS Trim Pro 2.
So here we go:
0) Run all the .308 brass through an annealer. I've read that doing big step downs in neck size isn't good, but since I didn't want to spend a bunch on money of bushings, I figured I'd just anneal the necks and give it a go. If I wreck a few pieces of PPU brass, no big deal.
1) Hornady brass, fired in my recently barreled Remington 700.
2) PPU brass that was fired from the 700 when it was stock.
3a) With a generous, but not sloppy application of Imperial Sizing Die Wax, I ran the brass up into the Redding 6.5 Creedmoor body die. There's a bit of resistance as the neck gets reduced in diameter, but the resistance increases a lot once I hit the shoulder, that's where I stop.
This gets the neck slimmed down a bit, since the body die isn't intended to really do neck sizing. I'm not going to worry about getting the neck exactly right, since it's going to have to get the expander mandrel treatment and a neck turning once my K&M kit gets here.
3b) Pull out, check for damage, buckling, etc... Little more lube and back up into the body die, this time cranking on the handle and really testing out the bolts I used to secure the press to my bench.
4) Trim the case. The .308 cases need about .090"-ish trimmed off to get down to the 6.5CM spec of 1.920". I've been using an RCBS Trim Pro 2 to do this.
Voila! It's done, well almost. I assume it'll look better once it's been fireformed in my chamber. Now I just wait for the K&M neck turning kit to show up so I can load these.
P.S. I'd welcome suggestions for cheap .264 bullets to use in the first firing of the reformed brass.
P.P.S. If you've got more money than time on your hands, ask me to make you some Lapua 6.5 Creedmoor brass.
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