6mm Lee Navy

[snoopy001]

Good day
A friend of my told me to help him by searching informations regarding the brass , bullets and die set with his last rifle purchase few days ago.Kindly someone here out is familiary with the 6mm Lee Navy?
I think that cut be not easy to find all the staff but i will a try to help him so far i can .

Thanks in advance for any helpfull information

 

[hpshooter]

Good day
A friend of my told me to help him by searching informations regarding the brass , bullets and die set with his last rifle purchase few days ago.Kindly someone here out is familiary with the 6mm Lee Navy?
I think that cut be not easy to find all the staff but i will a try to help him so far i can .

Thanks in advance for any helpfull information

I believe that there was an article in the American Rifleman in the last 18-24 months on reloading this cartridge.

 

[jonbearman]

Possibly Old Western Scrounger might have ammo if they are in business. Put an ad in our classified and maybe someone might have what you need. C&H products makes a lot of custom dies etc, give them a call as well as Lee might make them.

 

[Ggmac]

I believe the 220 swift was based on this cartridge . If so a set of dies some 220s brass and some conservative loads (40,000 psi) with round nose flat bases .

 

[hpshooter]

November 2014 American Rifleman Loading Bench sections covers forming cases from 220 Swift brass and loading the Lee Navy cartridge. Article is available online at no charge through nxtbook.com, pages 44-49. Not quite the 18 to 24 months ago I originally posted! Cover of this issue has facing pictures of Odummer and Dumberg.

Search engines are your friend at times. Did find a thread on Milsurplus guns about a blow up using modified 30 40 Krag brass, not much meat left in case head around primer pocket after modifying the extractor groove. Evidentially, someone markets modified 30 40 brass for the Lee Navy (or did)

 

[1911nut]

Here’s a source, a bit pricy but not easy brass to come by.

https://www.rccbrass.com/6mm-u-s-navy/

Here’s loaded ammo.

https://www.buffaloarms.com/6mm-lee...-ammo-87-grain-soft-point-box-of-20-amo6mmlee

 

[1911nut]

Reloading dies are harder to find.

Huntington lists a special order:

https://www.huntingtons.com/store/product.php?productid=19501

Also you could send a couple fired cases to Whidden to have them make dies.

 

[Kurz]

The subject of the 6mm Lee Navy, the US military’s shortest-serving cartridge, and also its first metric rifle cartridge, was raised in the comments section of the most recent installment of my series on the Lightweight Rifle Program of 1945-1957. There was some confusion over what, exactly, the 6mm Lee Navy was: Was it a modified 6.5mm Carcano, was it rimmed, or semi-rimmed, or was it rimless? One might think this debate is easily solved by just looking at a round of 6mm, or a rifle that fires it, but there exist multiple different kinds of 6mm ammunition, some rimmed and some rimless, and the .220 Swift, which is based on the 6mm Lee Navy, is semi-rimmed.



Looking at production ammunition for the 6mm Lee Navy, we see that the round the Navy eventually used was indeed rimless, but Wikipedia’s article on the 1895 Winchester-Lee rifle raises the question of what round was initially adopted – was it rimmed or rimless? Fortunately, we can find out for sure by looking at the Annual Report of The Secretary of The Navy from the relevant years of 1894-1895. We see in a discussion of a prototype turn-bolt Luger rifle in late 1894, before adoption, the 6mm Lee Navy was indeed rimmed:





https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2015/09/05/6mm-lee-navy-rimmed-semi-rimmed-or-rimless/

 

[DRNewcomb]

I believe the 220 swift was based on this cartridge . If so a set of dies some 220s brass and some conservative loads (40,000 psi) with round nose flat bases .

This is what Barnes says in Cartridges of the World (6th ed) but he also shows the 220 Swift as a semi-rimmed cartridge with a rim diameter of .473", while he reports that the 6 mm Lee Navy is rimless with a rim diameter of .448". The closest two rimless cases listed are the 6.5 mm Carcano and MS at .448" and .450". All the cases are shorter than the 2.35" Barnes lists for the 6mm Lee Navy.

 

[snoopy001]

Many thanks all of you , great help !!