Who here likes 6mm Remington?

[dvdcrr]

If you are a 6mm fan please share your experiences with the round, as well as any really nice hunting loads.

I am shooting an older Ruger 22" M77 and a Savage 10 sporting a Shilen 24" Varmint barrel.

[HiBC]

Just my opinion,and I've never owned a 6mm.

These days,building rifles on milsurp Mausers is far less practical than it was,but there are still commercial Mausers with conventional Mauser magazine setups.

The 6mm is a 7x57 Mauser case necked down.Its perfect for a Mauser action,or any action that left the factory built for the Mauser family brass,including the 30-06 family.

If that is the sort of receiver I was working with,I'd go 6mm.

The popular short actions were made to work with 308 family brass.That includes the 243. If I was builfing on a receiver made for 308 family brass,I'd go .243.

I'm lazy. Square holes,square pegs. Round holes,round pegs. Yes,a round hole can be broached out to a square hole. As long as there are round pegs,why bother?

IIRC,initially Remington intro'd the cartridge as the .244,with a slow twist for light bullets only.They were marketing varmint high velocity,and limited the bigger game versatility.Once again,IIRC,I might be wrong,but the cartridge was re-intro'd as the 6mm with a faster twist.

Just my opinion,there is not significant difference in performance. 243 is easier to find on the shelf,but 6mm is not rare.

Whichever you have will do the same job.

[dvdcrr]

I would add to that, Savage short actions are a little longer and work well with 6mm , and I have not found Ruger actions to be a hindrance. Now the Remington short action is a little tight.
Agreed that 243 Win. is fine.

[BumbleBug]

I had a 6mm Rem in Rem 700 Varmint Special & it was a fine rifle. It was Remington's answer to the .243 Win that was starting to really take-off. The 6mm Remington in fact is superior to the .243 Win with a sharper shoulder, longer neck & a tad more capacity (JIMHO). At the time I felt like the early name change & there were still some mixed feelings of the metric designation on U.S. cartridges. I loaded it for WT deer & used it like a bean-field rifle because of its accuracy. IIRC, I shot 100 gr Speers loaded with Norma 205 which at the time was 100 fps faster than any other powder you could get. I was always sorry to see N205 go away.

I shot a number of deer with that combo & never lost a deer but blood trails were non-existent. Eventually I decided that small a caliber was not for me shooting WT deer. Please don't flame me, because I know a million .243 shooters can't be wrong.

FWIW...

[HiBC]

I guess the best way to learn about it is to fit a 308 family barrel to a Mexican 98 Mauser and then discover the feeding problems that have nothing to do with cartridge length,
The 7x57 has more case taper than the 308. That effects how te cartridges stack in the magazine.
In a Mauser box,the 308 shoulders come up to a tight stack while the case heads are not in a tight stack.

The result is the bolt over riding the case head,digging into the side of the cartridge,then driving it forward till the case crushes with the bullet and case neck in te chamber.

It can be fixed,it has been fixed. The Israelis retro'd 98 Mausers to 7.62. As I said,a round hole can be broached to a square hole.

My solution is to know which cartridge family the receiver was originally designed to use and choose the cartridge accordingly.

I imagine the Savage and Ruger rifles have some options in the mag boxes and followers for different applications.

[ammo.crafter]

I converted a 98k German mauser about 60 years ago into a 6mm.

26-inch heavy Federal barrel and walnur/maple laminated benchrest stock.

Unertle 6x24 scope.

I used this for benchrest competition in the 1960s along with 75gr Hornady bullets and 4831 powder.

PM me if you are interested in the formula.

Good luck.

[dvdcrr]

I have had a Remington and a Savage rebarreled to 6mm Remington and both have fed very smoothly which I attribute to the excellent 6mm case design. It has a gradual neck and some taper. Now OAL can be an issue if you are chasing lands in a Remington action. But the quality barrel I had put on made chasing the lands unnecessary as it actually preferred 30-55 thousandths "jump. " A couple very accurate loads with that one were RL 15 and Nosler 70 and 80 gr. Ballistic tips, using a collet neck sizing die.

[Mobuck]

I've loaded for two 6MM rifles (both Rem 788) and found both shot best using Hornady 87 grainers and a powder that filled the case. Both needed to be pushed to close to max for best accuracy.

[dvdcrr]

How did you find the 6mm/788 to be? I have heard good things.

[Drm50]

I've had 700, 700v and 788 in 6mm. They all shot ok, I never got into them much. Never bought one, ended up with them on trades. I had several 243s in
Varmit style and couldn't see messing with 6mm for any slight advantage. If
there was one.

[old roper]

I purchased Rem 40 XB in 6mm and it came with 2-5 shot test groups and loads. It was Rangemaster with wood stock. I later had 6 RemAI build on Rem action and I used it here Co for antelope tag with 95gr BT.

I think short neck difference with 243 was just a myth as that 6remAI is now 243AI with Hart barrel @ 27". I'm shooting Berger 95 gr Classic Hunter, Lapua case and I had seater made from chamber reamer.

Rem didn't make match bullets for the 40 XB so they use 100gr Sierra match and those 2 groups mid/high .3's.

Myself I liked both cases.

[gw44]

The stocks Remington put on there 6mm looked like a fence post along side the model 70 Winchester stock, that had a lot to do with it !!!

[Don Fischer]

I've only had one, a 700 BDL. Problem was that the magazine was to short to seat the bullet's out to the lands. I'd rather the 243.

[reinert]

I have an old tang safety M77. I like it a lot, and have used it to take quite a few deer and antelope through the years. I killed my first elk (a spike) with that rifle in the very early 80's using 100 grn. factory Rem. Core Lokts. Since that time, that rifle uses handloads using 87 grn. Hornady S.P.s exclusivley for bullets, and for many years my propellant was always IMR 4350. Lately, I've been experimenting with Varget with very good results. The 87 grn. Hornady bullet is a proven, sure killer on deer and antelope. Though this rifle is not a tack driver, it is certainly capable of driving a couple of shingle nails at 100 yds. in 5 shots. The action is very smooth, and feed and ejection has always been flawless.

If there's anything I would fault on this rifle, it would be the magazine length. When seating bullets for my reloads, the rounds JUST fit in the well to my optimum C.O.A.L. No big deal, really, but an extra 1/8th" in length would be optimum (IMO).

[T. O'Heir]

Biggest issue with the 6mm Rem, currently, is the lack of ammo and brass. 100 grain bullets only(that do astounding things to a ground hog.) in loaded ammo(that's not available at all from Remington). And brass only from Hornady from Midway. You won't find it in small places either.
"...6mm Remington in fact is superior to the .243 Win..." Difference is 100 FPS with like bullet weights. Not enough to matter one way or the other. Except you can find .243 ammo/brass anywhere.

[dvdcrr]

I guess I have been able to buy a lot of 6mm ammo in the last year, Rem, Hornady and Federal. ( In fact I would trade some Federal if somebody were interested.) And I picked up a bag of Win 6mm new unprimed brass. Now I know that 6mm brass and ammo can get scarce so I usually stock up. One thing I noticed with 6mm vs. 243 ( and I didn't want the thread to go there,) is that the heavier the bullet, the bigger the difference gets. The lighter the bullet the less difference there is.

[std7mag]

Come on people...
Can't find ammo or brass... This is why we reload. 7X57 brass is cheap and plentiful.
It't how i have so much 257 Roberts ammo.

As for taper..
Some slight modification to the lips on the mag. Big deal.. We all work to some extent on our own guns, right? I modified(filed) my Mauser mag to shoot 284 Win.
And don't start on the "rebated rim", no feeding issues here!

I'd take the 6mm Rem over the 243 Win. Push some Berger VLD Hunting bullets with a load of RL26, and hang my deer in the fridge.

[Cheapshooter]

I like mine, but haven't shot it, or loaded for it in some time. I have one of those "sporters" built on a surplus 98 Mauser action in the late 1960's mentioned in post #2. In the days of Reinhart Fajen, and Douglas Barrels. Fitted with a 26" Heavy Varmint barrel which tapers to 7/8" at the muzzle, and fiberglass bedded into a Fajen Custom Varminter walnut stock. Wearing a 10X Tasco (yes, they made really good scopes back then) 1MOA groups was the norm. With the size and weight it was never meant as a deer rifle. But a crow meeting a 55 gr. Nosler Balistic Tip bullet at 100 yards pushed to just under 3800fps by a 52.5 grain charge of IMR 4350 can be described with one word...Poof!

[Sure Shot Mc Gee]

6mm had the edge on the 243 thru all bullet weights~~well almost?
The only problem/s with the 6mm was its original designation i.e. >244 and a poor company decision to spin its bullets thru a 1 in 12 twist.

Once the 244 popularity slid down the proverbial outhouse hole in sales in a couple of years. Remington's quickly re-marketed their 244 dud with all-out hype & spin {no pun intended} there-by changing its identity to the New Improved Handy~Dandy {6mm Remington.} WOW! it even had a appropriate __ 1-9 twist.

"What it should have had in the beginning."

I never like the 6mm Rem moniker as it was too European sounding for my liking. So I purchased something other more American appealing.
Ruger {short throw} Flat Bolt model 77 chambered 243 Winchester.

[Jbotto]

Originally Posted by dvdcrr

I would add to that, Savage short actions are a little longer and work well with 6mm , and I have not found Ruger actions to be a hindrance. Now the Remington short action is a little tight.
Agreed that 243 Win. is fine.

Looking at a few cartridge dimension drawings, I always wanted to believe this but never had it confirmed. Woul that open a Savage short action up to being rebarreled for a .257 Roberts?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[dvdcrr]

And all that happened before I was even born. There were certainly no 244's around in the Ruger catalogs of my youth. As for the name sounding European well I never worried about that while my dad was using it to kill meat. Like I was 4 years old and he said thats a 6mm. Would have been no different if I pointed at a jar and he said thats peanut butter. OK dad sounds good to me.
NOW that we are done hearing the obligatory "Might as well get a 100 fps slower 243" and the obligatory "244 history" which has begun every 6mm article , reloading book and thread since 2005 I would like to reopen this thread to contributions from those folks who are loading for and hunting with the excellent 6mm Remington. I give you your 6mm thread.

[44 AMP]

Difference is 100 FPS with like bullet weights. Not enough to matter one way or the other.

Done a little looking, and seems the faster round can be either one.

I'm kind of the other end of most of the folks who have .243/6mms. I have both, and they aren't target rifles or varmint rifles, and they're on exactly the same action.

Remington Model 600 (the .243 is a Mohawk 600, the 6mm is a Model 600, vent rib and all).

Short, light barrels, they don't do good 5 shot groups well, without a lot of cooling time, but first shot spot on, next two shortly after very close, they do that well.

Never bothered to chronograph them, or work up "to the lands loads" (which probably won't fit in the short magazine anyway). They are pretty light handy, carry well, and do their job well. I also have 600s in .222, .308, and a magnum in .350. Not match guns by any stretch, but good game guns, and pest guns.

[Mobuck]

Remington 788 is typical of what one should expect from a "price point design"(at one time $100). The stock was birch and chunky. The magazine was OK and it's single stack design worked well enough. The trigger was not conducive to precision shooting. The rear locking lug design was strong enough but tended to stretch cases limiting the number of reloads. The barrel was topnotch.
I killed several coyotes at 300-400 yards with a 788 in 22/250 before swapping it for a 700 with a far better trigger.

[dvdcrr]

"Looking at a few cartridge dimension drawings, I always wanted to believe this but never had it confirmed. Woul that open a Savage short action up to being rebarreled for a .257 Roberts?"
I think that at least the 100 gr. would fit...

[Don Fischer]

Originally Posted by std7mag

Come on people...
Can't find ammo or brass... This is why we reload. 7X57 brass is cheap and plentiful.
It't how i have so much 257 Roberts ammo.

As for taper..
Some slight modification to the lips on the mag. Big deal.. We all work to some extent on our own guns, right? I modified(filed) my Mauser mag to shoot 284 Win.
And don't start on the "rebated rim", no feeding issues here!

I'd take the 6mm Rem over the 243 Win. Push some Berger VLD Hunting bullets with a load of RL26, and hang my deer in the fridge.

Do you have a big fridge or small deer?