making 25-06 brass

[Yoda]

Not wanting to Hijack Guybo's thread being new here and all, and this being just a bit off from his anyway, figured I'd start my own. With 25-06 brass getting harder to find, I figured I'd start making my own from 30-06, and since I was going to do this, I've been looking at the "Top Shelf" Lapua. I'm not a target shoot per say, and my Idea of long range shooting is playing around in one of the local hay fields between 2-4 hundred yards. Here's a bit of history on the gun that I know. Rem 700 built in 1971, 25-06, it is wearing a "Rem Classic" Stock and bottom metal ,someone chopped 1 inch of barrel off before I bought it in 1995, and it looked like someone was using 100 grit sand paper as patches for cleaning it, But it was still good enough to account for about 2 dozen Northern Michigan Whitetails with. But more in this in a different post. The rifle now wears a brand new 25 inch Bartlein 5r, SS #3 contour, Its been fired 1 time, and that was by the smith that did the work. I had the smith cut a saami chamber instead if a tight neck because, A. this is a hunting rifle. B. I new before hand I was going to be making my brass out of 30-06 cases, and I did not want to get into the neck turning thing if I didn't have to.
This is what I know for sure. The one fired case I have out of this barrel mic's at .290 which sounds about right for the chamber neck diagrams I've look at being .291.
The factory 25-06 Remington brass full length resized and loaded with a 100gr bullet Mic out at .282, Lots of neck room here, Now the resized Remington 30-06 brass to 25-06 Mic's out .284-.285, plenty of room still.. Wyo7200 the only one I know of using Laupa 30-06 necked to 25-06, and he's neck turning his cases. Is anyone else using Lapua brass to make 25-06 ? If so what are you getting for a unturned neck diameter of a loaded round ? Wyo looking forward to you chiming in here also, and is anyone running and velocity test to see where that are running compared to say Winchester brass.. Thanks in advance.....

 

[joelkdouglas]

I haven't turned any 30-06 Lapua brass into 25-06 brass, but my 30-06 Lapua brass normally mic's at 0.0145 or 0.015 inches per wall thickness (total for the two sides would be 0.029 to 0.030). I've seen some variance with Lapua thicker than even 0.016 per side, but it's normally in the 0.0145 range.

If you got Lapua in that range and it didn't get thicker when you necked it down, you should get ~0.286 loaded rounds. I don't know how much thicker the brass would get when you sized it down.

Sorry I can't be of more help, just thought it might be good to throw out what I knew about the Lapua 30-06 brass.

 

[Yoda]

I'm thinking if I can stay under 0.288 I should be good to go,,, Thanks for the info

 

[Guy Miner]

Just checked GRAFS.

They advertise that they have .25-06 brass on hand, for sale, from Hornady, Norma and Prvi.

FYI, Guy

 

[Yoda]

Yep they do, I have a little over 100pc of 25-06 win/Remington cases right now, I'm going to play this resizing 30-06 down to 25 out for awhile.. I've never used hornady or priv brass, and if I'm going to pay the money for norma might as well buy the Lapua, not many people have anything bad to Say about it..

 

[kraky]

I've been making 2506 out of win brass in 270.
I shortened a lee 270 trim mandrel to make quick work of the needed shortening of the case.
Then a trip through the 2506 FL die w/a slightly more aggressive shoulder bump and I'm all set.
Roughly just downsizing case mouths. 020" so not a big change or jump in neck thickness.

 

[filmjunkie4ever]

I had to do this once a few years back but with 280 Remington brass. I am not sure if it would be the same thing dimensionally.

One tip I can give is to use less than full house loads for fire forming these "made" cases. I had a couple of blown primers before I realized the strain taking place in the process.

It didn't hurt my gun (incidentally a Remington 700) but it cant be good for them either.

Just my $0.02.

Good luck!

 

[Wyo7200]

Did the smith give you the dimensions of the reamer or chamber blueprints by chance? I'm sure your measurements are right, but that info never hurts.

This is what records I have for converting the brass. I'm waiting to re-size the RP stuff.

Loaded, I get something like:

Fired, I get:

I ran the 30-06 cases straight to 25-06 with imperial sizing wax. I trimmed them down to be +.01 of the trim length. I believe the the neck thickness was measuring .016-.018 before I neck turned them down to what I thought was .013 but it turns out it was to .014.

I used just short of the 1.0 ml lee dipper of Titegroup powder, a little wad of TP, filled the rest of the case with whole wheat cream of wheat (3.0-3.4 ml dipper I think), stuffed another wad of TP in the top to create a 25-06 shot shell. Went out to the range and started popping them off. I got some H2O capacities at this point.

Lapua: 67.86
Nosler: 69.1
RP: 67.3

I cleaned them up, ran them through the neck sizer and started load development. I didnt have to trim the case. The K&M mandrel gave me a neck tension of .001. It was extremely easy to seat the bullets and I could even push some in with my fingers. I went with the RCBS expander ball, which gave me a tension of .002. Much better for hunting.

I can't drop a bullet through the fired Lapua cases without a little bit of pressure but the Nosler and RP cases swallow it no problem. The full loaded fired cases are coming out to be +/- .03 of the trim to length.

 

[Yoda]

Thanks for all the info fellas, Filmjunkie4ever, the shoulder of a 280 Rem sit farther forward than the 30-06 case based cartridges, far enough to the point you can cut the chamber of a break action gun (TC Encore) that is chambered in a standard 25-06 to the 25-280 Ackley improved.. where is with a break action (TC Encore) chambered in 25-06 you can not cut the chamber to 25-06 Ackley improved, . Thanks again...