1 Attachment(s)
6.5 Arisaka from .303 British. Just tinkering.
So, bought this Gun City Type-38 Arisaka of @fernleaf at a very favourable price for a matching bolt one.
Having only .303 guns in the cupboard, I hadn't thought it through, anyway, gotta have ammo. Norma "6.5x50 Jap" $70+ for twenty from Norma, well, maybe not. Gunworks PPU "6.5x51 Jap" cases, $80 for 50, that'll do.
Anyway, I have all this .303 brass lying about, and so, here we go. I read online someone had done it using a 7mm-o8 die as an intermediary, but I didn't have that. This describes my final attempt, having squashed a handful of brass in the process:
- Start with used CAC boxer primed .303 brass.
- anneal (gas torch, dunk once neck darkens)
- .303 full resize without expander ball
- anneal
- 6.5 neck-sizing die.
- anneal, make sure I do shoulders well.
- 6.5 Japanese full size die - till get significant resistance
- anneal neck and shoulders
- 6.5 Japanese full size die till get significant resistance
- last 10mm of sizing is going to be hard going, so into lathe and take 0.1mm at most off lower 2cm of the base (used coarse file). Can also be done chucking into drill press.
- 6.5 Japanese full size die final drive to contact with case holder.
- Rim reduced in lathe, and extractor groove cut, a bit too deep, but proof of concept made. The Lee No. 10 shell holder that came with the 6.5x50 Lee dies is rather tight, my rifle bolt allows a thicker rim so that is what I go for. Make the groove very shallow or your extractor does not press against the bottom of the groove and hold the shell well. Getting those dimensions right.
I made sure I ragged the inside of the dies before each sizing stage to avoid excess lubricant building up and spoiling my efforts.
The generous throat of the rifle allows the resulting "6.5x57 Giraffe" (see image) to chamber with no fuss, so I'm still to decide whether to trim my cases to the standard 51mm length (for some reason the cartridge is called 6.5x50) or to maybe leave the neck even longer, to assist the bullet to enter rifling more concentrically.
Once I've fired the shells, I will neck size only to make the best of the generous chambers (maybe not so generous - bolt will only close on my .303-6.5 rounds once they are fully resized). The 6.5 Arisaka external dimensions were apparently reduced between the world wars to allow easier feeding in machine guns, resulting in some bulging of cases fired in rifles, but this was not a problem as the Imperial Japanese Army did not engage in reloading.
Attachment 137434
Now, have to decide if I want to make 100 of them, but probably best to just make 20 and see how we go.
