Loyal Readers will have noted my increasing irritation about not having a Mauser (or at least a Mauser-type bolt action) in my niggardly collection (following the Great Canoeing Disaster On The Brazos or maybe it was the Colorado). It was exacerbated by my inability to bring back the Mauser I had bought in Britishland without having to pay a boatload [sic] of money to H.M Government.
So here I sat, Mauser-less — the first time in ages I’d been in that sad condition — and just snarled at people (such as Mr. Free Market and Doc Russia) who seem to have been trying to get rifle manufacturers to go to 24-hour shifts, so much have they been augmenting their own collections. Were I a paranoid man (I’m not), I might have thought it was a conspiracy.
Anyway, all my human sacrifices to Vulcan (don’t ask) must finally have caught the old man’s attention, because in talking to a distributor’s sales rep at one of our local gun pushers’ establishments, I managed to snag a slightly-used demo CZ 550 American at a price which would make people start sticking pins into my effigy, were I ever to publish it. It was severely discounted because… it’s chambered in 6.5x55mm Swedish, “And everybody wants to shoot 6.5 Creed nowadays, and not that old bullet.”
Well, not everybody. And not everybody happens to love CZ 550 rifles as much as I do, either. (Cliff Notes: excellent out-of-the-box accuracy, fabled quality and reliability, controlled-feed action and set trigger.)
So I paid the man, waited for it to arrive, took it home and ordered a scope (which will be the topic of another post once it arrives and I’ve mounted and zeroed it).
But in the meantime… Your Humble Narrator is no longer Mauser-less, and a huge gaping hole in his shooting capability and nearly-empty gun cabinet has been filled.
A CZ bolt gun in 6.5×55 Swede sounds like a perfect combo to me – both the rifle and cartridge have stellar reputations for accuracy. I think you are going to enjoy this one.
I lost a CZ 550 (in 6.5 Swede) in The Great Canoeing Tragedy On The Brazos, but I’ll be extra-special careful with this one…
Congratulations! And in one of your favorites, 6.5×55, too. Way back in your archives is a post about cartridges have not really improved since the early 20th century.
You are the reason I own a number of CZ’s both rimfire and centerfire. Great rifles, well made, and nice blued steel and walnut.
Speaking of Garands, you’d probably enjoy the CMP’s Advanced Maintenance Class where you get to build your own Garand. Not cheap but loads of fun.
I recently found this Youtube vid of Hickok 45 testing a Sako 85 Bavarian in .270:
https://youtu.be/7HRppvh70Xg
The rifle is also available in 6.5×55. It reminds me of the CZ in a Lux style stock, has the set trigger as well. Too rich for my blood, though, it’s a $2,000 gun.
So I have both a cautionary tale and a positive story regarding CZ:
Since I have an old SKS and lots of 7.62×39 ammo, a few years back I thought it would be fun to have a bolt action rifle chambered for the same caliber. I looked around and found a few old Mauser-type guns out of Yugoslavia with suspiciously low prices, and then I found the CZ-527. The 527 is a small-ish, carbine-sized rifle with a short action and chambered in a bunch of different calibers including not only 7.62 Russian but also 5.56/.223. Price was a little higher than the Yugo imports but they looked good to me so I bought one in the Summer of 2015.
The rifle was absolutely GORGEOUS with a beautiful wood (walnut, I think) stock. Shot like a dream, not that I shot it much. Came with scope rings for a scope I never mounted but unlike a lot of modern bolt guns, the CZ also has adequate iron sights from the factory (iron sights AND a wood stock – I know you’d like it, Kim.)
Earlier this year I decided to try trading it for a different gun (long story) and when I took it to the guy I was going to trade with, he said “did you know this has a cracked stock?” He showed me a thumbnail-sized crack right behind the recoil lug.
Needless to say, we didn’t do the trade but I was a little miffed as I had not put more than 20 rounds through this gun, all cheap ComBloc surplus (IOW it’s not like I was shooting some kind of super hot loads.) Pulled the paperwork out and looked at the warranty – 5 years on the gun, BUT only 1 year on the wood.
Well, it never hurts to ask, right? So I emailed CZ America customer service (who got back to me within hours, BTW) and let them know what happened. I didn’t really have much hope, since the wood was almost 4 years OOW, but I thought I’d see what they said. They asked me to send pictures and a day later, they sent me a return auth and a mailing label, and I shipped the gun to their US Headquarters in Kansas City. A week later they sent it back to me, with a brand new stock. Total cost to me: $0.00.
So, while I wasn’t happy that a brand new rifle got a crack in the stock after just a few rounds, I certainly can recommend CZ for their stellar customer service.
It never hurts to ask. I had a pair of boots from LLBean with a pseudo vibram outersole, it looked like vibram but was softer. I didn’t use them for ten years, and when I did, the soles came off because the sole had rotted off. LLBean not only sent me new boots, but also a check for shipping the old ones to them. Llike you, I tout LLBean’s customer service.
Congratulations! That’s a beautiful rifle, and as others have said above, it has a sterling reputation for accuracy.
I think you having restored a Mauser into your safe, and especially one in the vaunted 6.5×55 chambering, just might help mitigate the final few months of the year 2020. Hell, you might’ve just staved off a Biden victory with that one single purchase.
But if you want to assure us of victory, you’ll have to soon get some form of .mil-surp Swedish Mauser in there, too. Gun Karma, it’s a thing.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
I once had a ’96 Swede (Princess Inge), but after Boomershoot several years ago, the Son&Heir appropriated it, with some bullshit reason about me not being able to see the front sight anyway. He also took a thousand rounds of Swedish Hirtenberg mil-surp, “just in case”.
I am SO proud of him.
Looks good, let us know on the scope choice, and the rings for it, as I have one but with the Mannlicher stock, which looks terrific.
I looked up the ballistics on the 6.5 Swede vs. 6.5 Creedmore and didn’t find a very significant difference.
The real difference is the Creedmore is 7mm shorter and based on a .308 case making converting to it not much more than a barrel swap for a large number of rifles.
Is it just a case of everything old is new again?
It’s a case of nothing good after 1955. Ask our host.
I like to reload the 6.5×55 Swede, I have both a Swedish Mauser with a nice clean bore and my retirement rifle that is a CZ 550, 6.5×55 with Mannlicher stock and set trigger and they are so much fun to shoot because they don’t hurt me like the larger 30 cals. That is a bad thing about being old, like an older banana which gets bruised and dark spots and such as that.
re:
‘niggardly’
Niggardly is too much fun!
For several minutes of entertainment concerning the inarticulate and just plain dumb, I ‘highlighted’ the word ‘niggardly’ in your opening paragraph.
On my Android telephone, I hold my finger on the word ‘niggardly’ until a window opens at the bottom of my screen.
After a definition of ‘niggardly’, I was offered the gossip-n-rumors website known as ‘Wikipedia’ with several examples of folks with niggardly-skins (aka ‘thin-skins’) all aghast anybody would dare to express such a figure of speech such as ‘niggardly’ (In public! Somebody could hear! Oh, dear!).
Well, since I am rarely niggardly with my verbosity, maybe I should open a blog instead of being such a niggardly-skate (aka ‘cheap-skate’) and piggy-backing off everybody else’s non-niggardly blogs.
Of course, I would need to stop being so niggardly with my opinions.
Such as my opinion about that poor joe biden nincompoop and his niggardly brains.
And the niggardly ethics of TheMainStreamMedia.
Or the niggardly ethics of the true believers in TheOneTrueCause© as they destroy inner cities such as Seattle and Pornland Oregon… although those dumps possessed niggardly value before the latest niggardly rioters and their niggardly associates.
Accordingly, to achieve my lofty (aka non-niggardly) goals of sharing my version of truth-n-justice, I am investing in a Looto ticket pretty soon.
www niggardly dot com
Coming soon as a blog you can peruse in the comfort of your living room or home-office… or, if you are like me, the warm embracing cocoon of your shower.
But please, for the sake of TheEnvironment©, please be more niggardly than me with the amount of water you use in your shower.
For I admit my non-niggardly showers can exceed a half-hour… but I believe if we all use a niggardly amount of shampoo…
And the saga continues.
PS:
Finally, Oregon is getting a niggardly amount of smoke.
Whoever is in charge was certainly niggardly with the blue sky and clean air these last few weeks.
www niggardly dot com
To contact me, I suppose you do the niggardly at niggardly dot com thing, but I don’t know.
I wish my experience with computers was less niggardly!
Do you think I could merch?
Niggardly T-shirts?
Niggardly bumper-stickers?
A niggardly-themed apparel line for pets?
After I get famous, I hope they name a park or freeway after my niggardly blog.
Its niggardly name in lights… but not niggardly lights, that just wouldn’t do.
Too much fun! I want to subscribe to your blog!
Handloaded to the same pressures as 6.5 Creedmore or 260 Remington, the 6.5×55 Swede will equal or better their performance.
But it’s really not needed to push up the pressure in a 6.5 Swede for 95% of hunting in North America.
A 6.5mm 140gr bullet has a sectional density of .287. Launched at 2600 fps, it will take deer/black bear/boar quite well out to 300 yds, without beating up the shooter. Inside 200 yds(and perhaps farther) it will take elk, if the shooter does his/her part with bullet placement.
The Norwegians use 155-160 gr bullets in their 6.5 Swedes to kill moose. They don’t seem to feel under-gunned.