With how the economy is going and based off what I have laying around I've come to the idea of making a cheap practice rifle/ future deer rifle for my son's. I want to build a .223 based wildcat in 6, 6.5, or 7mm.
I have at least 500 once fired commercial win cases as well as thousands of LC cases and thousands of small rifle primers.
i've actually been doing alot of rimfire practice at 150yd's with my savage mkII and working my way back which has me catching the long range bug.
i'll be working with my savage action off my .243 and attempt to mod or build a stock for it.
I reload and have been playing around with quickload and really like what I see with the TCU series of cartridges. If I take advantage of maximizing the cartridge length to the max allowed by my bullet choice to get the greatest usable case capacity. with reloader 17 and a 6mm tcu at 2.6"plus and 105gr hornady a-max I shows posibilities of pusing that bullet to 2700+ft/sec however I'm not too impressed of 6mm bullets for hunting on our rather large mulie's out here so it would be questionable at best.
next up I played with the 6.5tcu and I gain more down range energy but sacrifice a little trajectory and about 200 ft/sec velocity with a 123gr a-max
lastly I plugged in 7mm tcu and 162gr a-max at 2.8" and I like the energy figures I see but I loose alot as far as amount of drop the cartridge has and worried about expansion at the velocities the cartridge will be traveling. ~2300 at the muzzle and 1800ish at 300yds.
what would you guys choose. so far the 6mm seems the best on paper except with being able to down a deer effectivly. however from what i've seen in ar's. bullets designed for varments (v-max, nosler bt's) are working great at lower velocities on big game(deer sized animal) so thinking a 95gr nosler bt at 2600-2800 may work ok for deer?
I'll start with a 22-26" heavy barrel and buy a 22" sporter barrel down the road for the boy's as there still very young.
ultimatly a cartridge that takes almost half as much powder as the .243 with still decent performance and abundent brass yet still a good trainer is what i'm after. my .308 is costing me almost .50cents a round.(178gr a-max, br2,under varget). even with the 105 a-max's i'm looking at .30-32 cents a round. and 18 cents if I used midway dogtown bullets and blue dot practice loads for the kids.
I have at least 500 once fired commercial win cases as well as thousands of LC cases and thousands of small rifle primers.
i've actually been doing alot of rimfire practice at 150yd's with my savage mkII and working my way back which has me catching the long range bug.
i'll be working with my savage action off my .243 and attempt to mod or build a stock for it.
I reload and have been playing around with quickload and really like what I see with the TCU series of cartridges. If I take advantage of maximizing the cartridge length to the max allowed by my bullet choice to get the greatest usable case capacity. with reloader 17 and a 6mm tcu at 2.6"plus and 105gr hornady a-max I shows posibilities of pusing that bullet to 2700+ft/sec however I'm not too impressed of 6mm bullets for hunting on our rather large mulie's out here so it would be questionable at best.
next up I played with the 6.5tcu and I gain more down range energy but sacrifice a little trajectory and about 200 ft/sec velocity with a 123gr a-max
lastly I plugged in 7mm tcu and 162gr a-max at 2.8" and I like the energy figures I see but I loose alot as far as amount of drop the cartridge has and worried about expansion at the velocities the cartridge will be traveling. ~2300 at the muzzle and 1800ish at 300yds.
what would you guys choose. so far the 6mm seems the best on paper except with being able to down a deer effectivly. however from what i've seen in ar's. bullets designed for varments (v-max, nosler bt's) are working great at lower velocities on big game(deer sized animal) so thinking a 95gr nosler bt at 2600-2800 may work ok for deer?
I'll start with a 22-26" heavy barrel and buy a 22" sporter barrel down the road for the boy's as there still very young.
ultimatly a cartridge that takes almost half as much powder as the .243 with still decent performance and abundent brass yet still a good trainer is what i'm after. my .308 is costing me almost .50cents a round.(178gr a-max, br2,under varget). even with the 105 a-max's i'm looking at .30-32 cents a round. and 18 cents if I used midway dogtown bullets and blue dot practice loads for the kids.
