A Swede for Tricia

My wife Tricia is a patient woman. And just as the cobbler’s kids have no shoes, she was the last to receive a project from my bench. It was time to fix that.

Years ago, while wandering around the Bozeman gun show, Tricia and I found a Ruger M77 Express in 30-06 that she just couldn’t live without. So with a proper “elk gun” already in her arsenal, we set out to build her the ideal rifle for pronghorn and deer.

Identifying the quarry helped to quickly narrow the litany of potential chambering for this project. I’ve been a huge fan of the .270 Winchester for years, but that was ballistically too close to the ’06 to be a viable choice for this build. The latest 6.5 craze caught my attention, but the Creedmor was immediately ruled out. Yes, it’s a fine cartridge, just too trendy for my tastes. The .260 Remington seemed interesting but not enough “quirk”, and the 6.5-284 Norma and 6.5-300 Weatherby were deemed too snorty. Ultimately, we settled on the 6.5×55 Swedish Mauser because it ticked all the boxes: sufficient power for our purpose, ample reloading supplies, and it’s uncommon enough to be a topic of conversation at hunting camp. Check, check and check.

The 6.5×55 Swedish Mauser was first developed way back in 1891. Out of reverence for the historic firearms so chambered, SAAMI approved pressures for this cartridge are a bit anemic by today’s standards, especially compared to the approved pressures for its peers in the 6.5mm cohort. Check the Swede’s case capacity against that of the .260 Remington, or 6.5 Creedmor and one can quickly see that the 6.5×55 is capable of more than the factory rounds give it credit for!

At some point along the way, I had obtained a clean pre-64 M70 action. Using this as the basis of our build, I reached out to Dennis Erhardt at Frontier Gun Shop to thread and chamber a barrel. We selected a 23″ #2 contoured Douglas Air-Gauged barrel for this build, with a 1:8″ twist rate to best stabilize the heaviest 6.5 bullets we might choose to utilize. As an aside, it’s those long, heavy for caliber bullets (140 grains and up) that gave the 6.5×55 its well earned reputation for felling Scandinavian moose. Knowing how our deer hunts can quickly turn into elk hunts here in Montana, I quickly developed an appreciation for the Swede’s understated competency!

Even with its bullets seated all the way out, the 6.5×55’s overall cartridge length specs at 3.150″. That’s a bit shorter than the 30-06 and its 3.340″ OAL this action was built for. Regardless, feeding issues were minor and easily resolved through a simple modification to the follower spring. John McLaughlin at McLaughlin Custom Firearms detailed the original trigger until it broke like glass at just over 3 lbs of pressure.

Jim Bisio of Heritage Walnut machined a lovely quarter-sawn english walnut blank to fit our build. The grain in the wood was stick-straight with tight pores, and it carved like a bar of soap. A real pleasure to work with! An ebony forend tip, Fisher two-screw grip cap, and a pair of Bisio’s ball head sling studs rounded out the additional stock features.

The length of the forend is in keeping with the “golden ratio” of proportion and the double-hook cheekpiece was scaled to compliment my wife’s 13.00″ length of pull. There’s virtually no drop at heal in the stock as this rifle will always wear a scope.

Gordon Alcorn at Alcorn Engraving engraved the caliber designation and maker’s mark on the barrel, and added a lovely American-style scroll motif on the original floorplate. All metal was slow rust blued, with the exception of the extractor, which was nitre blued.

A set of Leupold “low” rings secure a VXi 2.5x-8x scope, which with its 36mm objective is proportionate to the overall scale of the rifle.

It’s intensely satisfying to see a rifle from my bench out in the field, and doubly so when it’s my wife behind the trigger! Since completion, Tricia and her Swede have taken both pronghorn and whitetail deer with no signs of slowing!