Why did 6.5 Creedmoor make it relative to .260 Remington and 6.5 x 47?

[Heym SR20]

Standard Twist Rate allowing long heavy for calibre bullets - very good for long range, and for big animals such as Elk.

A true short action so can be used in a whole suite of different rifles from precision target and tactical rifles, through semi-auto AR10 style military to sporting rifles.

A modern cartridge so can be loaded to high pressures suitable for modern rifles - this gives good velocities with modest charges of powder, so you get clean consistent burn for good accuracy, long barrel life and low recoil.

First developed for target shooting so quickly gained a reputation for accuracy.

And in military use timing was perfect. Afganistan / iraq showed up the 5.56 and need for more downrange energy. 7.62 has been very superseded by the 338 lapua for the dedicated long range sniper role - also used for anti material role

For the dedicated marksman role, 7.62 is old has just a bit too much recoil for troops trained on 6.56 platforms. 6.5 CM has less recoil, less windage and drop and better energy downrange than 7.62, and very easy to adopt - just swap the barrels on existing 7.62 / 308 marksmen rifles as they wear out.

A thought - if the 280 enfield had been adopted in the 1950’s - which was effectively 7mm-08, and 7.62 never adopted - would this still be the main battle rifle?

 

[25 Sharps]

Long Range Shooting - State regulations concerning the use of lead-free ammunition

State regulations concerning the use of lead-free ammunition

www.longrangeshooting.org

Right, so unless we are talking non toxic shot rather than rifle bullets why is your point? Other than California and a few minor areas there’s no requirement for lead free in the states

 

[Laurie]

the above IS marketing! And if you don’t think marketing can promote a bad product and make it a success, with all due respect you don’t understand the power of marketing! That’s not to say that in this case the product was not a good one, and it’s a better idea to have a performing product combined with marketing...however, you can use marketing to highlight very small advantages and make them seem much more significant!

Well, I know a little about marketing having been a senior marketing manager then PR/Public Affairs ditto for a fair size organisation.

Marketing is about understanding the market and its needs, getting the design and production people to produce product(s) that meet those needs affordably, charging the 'right' price, and getting the product onto retail shelves or other trading arenas. (The three Ps - right Product at the right Price, fully distributed and available to would-be buyers, or Place.) The 4th marketing 'P' is Promotion which in the business is called 'marketing communications', but in public mind means advertising, PR, and all the other 'gimmicks' and snake-oil salesman 'tricks'. When 99% of people say 'marketing' in relation to some subject or other, they think entirely of this aspect. When people on shooting forums who resent the Creedmoor's success say 'It's all marketing', 99.9% also mean the unspoken but implied words 'hype and lies'. The whole implication of many Creedmoor critics is that it is an unworthy 'winner' in the market that only 'won' by unfairly doing down existing designs by huge 'marketing', ie advertising, spend.

Yes, Hornady succeeded here by doing a superb 'marketing' job, that is in the widest sense through seeing a need for a new and better product to meet unfulfilled needs and providing it. If the existing 6.5s were / are so good, why did Dennis DeMille of Creedmoor Sports, a former US Marine Corps shooting team member and US High-Power champion, an archetypal hands-on executive of a company very close to the end users, real shooters, set up the famous Camp Perry evening dinner date to discuss the ideal 'people's high-power cartridge' with Hornady's David Emery? For a start why David E / Hornady and not Winchester or Remington? Because the former already had an outstanding recent track record in innovation, design and getting things into production, whilst the latters' corporate bean counters stifled any bright thought other than those about reducing production costs, and even if they did run with something new, would spend years discussing it, writing position papers and seeing if it could be 'product engineered' to be manufactured cheaper, but not necessarily better. Not that the dinner discussion was necessarily about 6.5s - it was about cartridges per se, but with early 21st century design and technology, 6.5mm was quickly agreed by the pair as the best fit for requirements they'd jointly set out. Step 2 was for them to agree no existing 6.5 cartridge met those needs.

Not everybody would agree on the wider definition of marketing. William Batterman Ruger famously said that Sturm-Ruger didn't 'do marketing', by which he meant that he Bill Ruger and his top team knew what would or wouldn't appeal to American shooters and what they'd buy without Sturm-Ruger spending years and lots of money on market research. Hence in his days at the helm designing and introducing things that no other large shooting company would touch - the No.1 single-shot rifle, the gate-fed single-action revolvers and so on. But if you look at Ruger's development of its mainstay longarm, the original Model 77, this like the 6.5mm Creedmoor is a case-study on really doing the job properly. It is no lucky accident that the 77 was such a successful rifle from year one - every part of it, every aspect of its design was thought through and optimized by people who were hunters and shooters. Nevertheless, Bill Ruger and his team put a great deal of money and time into the narrow marketing definition, ie communications, whether heavy advertising spend or treating shooting journos to freebie hunting trips with Ruger rifles and other PR and press relations work

 

[gixer1]

@Laurie, my post was not to say you didn’t know anything about marketing - my point was that marketing has almost certainly played a major part in the relatively quick uptake in 6.5 CM, and you acknowledge that in your latter post. Yes, it deserves success and has improvements, however the marketing side has helped it be the choice of people that could have bought a chambering that would have just have easily serviced their requirements.

We as a society love a new gimmick...and to a point many chamberings sell on this.

I remember Hornady marketed .223 Zombie Max ammunition - it sold like hot cakes in the US! Not many zombies were killed with it yet it was a cracking gimmick to sell ammunition. And it was more expensive than the normal 55gr 223!

regards,
Gixer

 

[Foxyboy43]

Gosh! Hornady missed a real marketing opportunity there - they could have sold it on the basis that the CM was for zombies to shoot rather than shooting zombies! That said...........
Just my little joke - honest!

 

[Acm]

Right, so unless we are talking non toxic shot rather than rifle bullets why is your point? Other than California and a few minor areas there’s no requirement for lead free in the states

I’m not looking for an argument mate. There are parts of the US pushing for lead free and some places it’s also banned. That’s why most bullet manufacturers produce “California compatible ammo”.
But no worries, not up for an argument on it.

 

[The Bear]

Eh? Are you saying that you have a better understanding of basic concepts?

Please explain.

I have used them all and it'd just a case or selling a different shaped bottle that pours the same milk. I shot my first deer with a swede 15 years ago and my last deer the other week with another different swede but that's not to say I haven't used and owned a lot in between times and still do. Just add "long range hunting" to all enquiries and you will get far more traffic. The creedmoor is a great cartridge but a far better example of marketing something new that ballistically, we already had. people get so obsessed with factors that will never matter to them. Has the short neck on my 300 Win Mag ever required me to use a 300 Wsm, will a 6.8mm kill better than a "270". These are the questions that bombard every day and if people read what was available rather than asked questions repetitively, the internet would be a much smaller place with far more focussed facts and not just here-say.

 

[Laurie]

As has been said here and in many other threads, the three main 6.5s all do the same deerstalking job equally well. There's no logical argument for trading one in and buying another purely on the cartridge - although I suspect that sadly 260 Rem non-handloading owners may end up doing this eventually because of factory ammo availability and price.

Target shooting wise, especially the tactical disciplines, the two Creedmoors definitely offer pluses. I see some really impressive Creedmoor chambered rifles (and their shooters) up at Diggle these days. For the mid and long distance comps, they outclass the 6.5X47 although in the 200/300 yard McQueens (sniper comps with 'windows' in a wall and Fig 12s randomly appearing for 5 second exposures) the 6.5X47 is still very competent and maybe the best option.

I got marginally involved in the UK Creedmoor story by seeing a 'big thing' on the way and trying to persuade our importers we'd likely follow the Americans and see a big switch-over from 308 to 6.5 take place over a fairly short timespan. I largely wasted my time and came to be regarded as 'that bore pedalling this new 6.5 nobody has heard of'. But then when it took off the same distributors had no rifles, no ammo, no brass in stock and couldn't get any by then since the US market was in the same state. Ironically, I don't own a 6.5 Creedmoor, and never have - but I did have a Savage 12 LRP in it on long-term loan from Edgar Bros for review and load development for a while. I shoot 260 Rem, 6.5X55 (or will again when my 7mm-08 F rifle's barrel is shot-out and I put a 6.5X55 barrel that used to be on it, back on again). I also shoot the 6.5 Grendel in a Howa Mini Oryx - and there is a real fun budget paper punching combination. There is a new factory cartridge Grendel spin-off on the way too, the 6mm Hornady ARC designed for sixes up to 108gn and is another AR-15 compatible mini-cartridge design. It might be even more fun than the 6.5G!

 

[25 Sharps]

I’m not looking for an argument mate. There are parts of the US pushing for lead free and some places it’s also banned. That’s why most bullet manufacturers produce “California compatible ammo”.
But no worries, not up for an argument

Neither am I but I’ll eat my hat if the US go coubtrywide lead free in the next 20 years

 

[rem284]

I think with the 6.5cm everything came together for it at the right time. It's debatable whether the cm would have came on the scene at all if the 6.5x47 had the same when it first appeared on the scene. I had ordered a r8 6.5x47 just before mainstream rifle manufacturers was starting to produce rifles in the cm. I dont regret getting the x47 but I think if I had held off a few months my order would have been 6.5cm

 

[Acm]

Neither am I but I’ll eat my hat if the US go coubtrywide lead free in the next 20 years

Hope it’s a tasty one

 

[User00033]

I remember Hornady marketed .223 Zombie Max ammunition - it sold like hot cakes in the US! Not many zombies were killed with it yet it was a cracking gimmick to sell ammunition. And it was more expensive than the normal 55gr 223!

Are you sure about that?

More expensive that what normal 55gr?

Let’s see if you can answer a simple question without losing your bundle and going into abuse mode.

 

[roebuck14]

If you don't reload 6,5 Creedmore
You reload 6,5/47 Lapua

 

[25 Sharps]

Hope it’s a tasty one

Well it’s lead free at least

 

[gixer1]

Are you sure about that?

More expensive that what normal 55gr?

Let’s see if you can answer a simple question without losing your bundle and going into abuse mode.

...said the pot...as he addressed the kettle....

 

[Stalker62]

What time does the Theme Park stop tonight?

 

[User00033]

...said the pot...as he addressed the kettle....

OK buddy, I’ll do it for you.

The Zombie Max was rebranded Z-Max / A-Max sold in boxes of 500. The only difference at any given bullet weight was the yellow tip.

Cost wise, the Z-Max worked out at roughly 50% less than the equivalent bullet with the red tip. For instance, when I bought 5,000 Z-Max, each box cost NZ$143 for 500, whereas a box of V-Max cost NZ$60 for 100.

So unless you’re comparing Z-Max to Hornady’s cheapest bulk softpoints, I’m struggling to understand why they were “more expensive”? Even the cheapest softpoints in bulk work out roughly the same as the Z-Max.

Cracking gimmicks aside, it doesn’t add up.

 

[Cut+Squirt]

Poor response mate.

Thought his response couldn't have been more accurate.

 

[gixer1]

OK buddy, I’ll do it for you.

The Zombie Max was rebranded Z-Max / A-Max sold in boxes of 500. The only difference at any given bullet weight was the yellow tip.

Cost wise, the Z-Max worked out at roughly 50% less than the equivalent bullet with the red tip. For instance, when I bought 5,000 Z-Max, each box cost NZ$143 for 500, whereas a box of V-Max cost NZ$60 for 100.

So unless you’re comparing Z-Max to Hornady’s cheapest bulk softpoints, I’m struggling to understand why they were “more expensive”? Even the cheapest softpoints in bulk work out roughly the same as the Z-Max.

Cracking gimmicks aside, it doesn’t add up.

So you have listed the NZ price...I was in the US....but you carry on...

 

[petesv]

hello gixer1 i see you have fell foul of the man who knows everything old dodgynees he has never been wrong in his life only once when he thought his was wrong and found out he was right , its good to see someone stand up to this self proclaimed know all he seems to have a problem with people who have an opinion other than his, i will not respond to his insults as my father once told me never to enter into a mental conflict with an unarmed man.