Shellshock NAS3 reloading. 6.5CM?

[av8nAK]

I see there is a company loading 6.5CM in an nas3 case. Has anyone reloaded any of these cases yet for 6.5CM? From what I can gather it takes a special sizing die to resize nas3. I was looking on the Shellshock website and there is nothing under their “reloading adapters” section. I’d be pretty stoked to get an extra 150fps out of my 6.5. From what I can tell, that should be pretty achievable with those cases. It’s not the Peak Alloy we’ll probably get eventually, but this stuff actually exists in 6.5 right now. With Federal working on military stuff, who knows when we’ll see commercially available PA cases in existing calibers outside of 7BC. Maybe that will speed things up for getting PA .308 cases at least.

 

[Andouille]

I've only seen loaded ammo advertised for 6.5CM, whereas there is brass available for 308 and 7.62 cartriges. Shellshock has some conflicting info on reloading, saying both that the cases are and aren't reloadable. Very strange.

The additional ~11%ish capacity increase provided by the thinner steel case would allow for use of more voluminous H4831SC, N560, or similar slightly slower burning powders thank typical for 6.5CM to achieve higher velocities while remaining under 65K psi. I have incrementally (safely) tested up to 47.2gr of H4831SC in standard 6.5CM LRP Lapua brass, resulting in 143 ELDX at 2849 fps out of a 20" barrel. This was very hot load with significant casehead expansion on the brass, and I backed down to very safe 45.7 gr at 2678 fps. H4831sc has very linear and predictable pressure increases in 6.5CM. A quick modeling in Gordon's reloading tool suggests that 11% case volume increase would allow for 50 gr of H4831SC at 65K PSI with a muzzle velocity around 2730 fps, which I think is overly conservative (low). Based on my testing with H4831SC, I think a 150 fps increase within the SAAMI max 62K psi would be very achievable in NAS3 brass.

 

[RME]

Shellshock has some conflicting info on reloading, saying both that the cases are and aren't reloadable. Very strange.

Just doing a little bit of reading on it the other day my understanding is that they're a one time use only. So you'd buy the cases, load them once, and toss 'em.

 

[av8nAK]

Just doing a little bit of reading on it the other day my understanding is that they're a one time use only. So you'd buy the cases, load them once, and toss 'em.

I’ve seen people say they’ve had luck reloading several times with .308 stuff. Not sure what sort of dies they were using. It sounds like using a wax similar to what’s required for the 7BC was recommended. While you can get empty cases for 5.56, 300BLK, .308, and .338LM, there isn’t an option for 6.5. However, they do make the stuff; they just sell it to other companies who load it and want to sell me loaded ammo. I don’t want loaded ammo unless I can reload it after I shoot it. I’d buy single use cases for a specific purpose if I could get them. I emailed Shellshock. No reply yet.