yumastepside wrote:I don't really want to get into this ****** about carcano's, their bullet's or Italians in general..........I have two Carcano's, one full length gain twist barrel and the other one, a carbine....not sure which one I'll use yet but I have a .264 barrel from a Swede and a 6.5x54 MS reamer so the idea is to cut off the x52 barrel and internally thread it, screw the 264 barrel into that and cut the new chamber.Cases are a bit more expensive but you can buy projectiles for it.
The 6.5x54 MS has taken every thing from elephant down, if you do your part.
Why do you want to change to a different 6.5mm cartridge? Is your bore shot out?
For me, the big deficit in the Carcano is the feed system, get rid of that and the rifle would be much more useful. The 6.5x52mm cartridge is not lacking, and the rifle is very enjoyable to shoot.
I made some 6.5x54R from .303 brass last night, just ran it into the 6.5x50mm die pushing the shoulder back until it chambered in the rifle.
Had hoped to shoot them today but didn't manage it.
The rifle came from a collector who caked everything in grease decades ago and never fired it. It took me a couple hours to strip it right down and scrub out the crud. The bolt was so packed with grease as to be virtually hydraulic. The muzzle is still tight at .266", but the throat is very long. These are light loads with 95gn VMax's at 2.820" for fireforming the brass - they would touch the lands at 3.487". Even with the 160gn RN just seating into the trimmed case, the longest would be 3.155" overall, but the blunt bullet should be getting very close to the lands at that point. The brass chambers just fine without trimming but I thought it better to trim it, at least until I cast the chamber, so it might be possible to single-feed (like the Carcano, by removing the bolt, fitting the round to the bolt face and reinstalling it) for more accuracy. Mag length though is only around 3.000".