The 6.5-06 A-Square is a centerfire

Centerfire ammunition

A centerfire cartridge is a cartridge with a primer located in the center of the cartridge case head. Unlike rimfire cartridges, the primer is a separate and replaceable component....

 rifle

Rifle

A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls. The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile , imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the...

 cartridge

Cartridge (firearms)

A cartridge, also called a round, packages the bullet, gunpowder and primer into a single metallic case precisely made to fit the firing chamber of a firearm. The primer is a small charge of impact-sensitive chemical that may be located at the center of the case head or at its rim . Electrically...

 that originated as a wildcat

Wildcat cartridge

A wildcat cartridge, or wildcat, is a custom cartridge for which ammunition and firearms are not mass produced. These cartridges are often created in order to optimize a certain performance characteristic of an existing commercial cartridge.Developing and using wildcat cartridges does not...

, based on the popular .30-06 Springfield

.30-06 Springfield

The .30-06 Springfield cartridge or 7.62×63mm in metric notation, was introduced to the United States Army in 1906 and standardized, and was in use until the 1960s and early 1970s. It replaced the .30-03, 6 mm Lee Navy, and .30 US Army...

. A-Square

A-Square

A-SQUARE COMPANY, LLC is a manufacturer of rifles, ammunition and bullets based in Chamberlain, South Dakota in the United States. The company is one of 19 that are members of the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturer's Institution. The company's focus is on its firearms for hunting large...

 standardized the dimensions of the cartridge and submitted them to SAAMI

Saami

Saami or SAAMI can stand for:*Sami people*Sami languages*Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute...

 in 1997.

Design

The 6.5-06 A-Square uses a .264" diameter bullet loaded into a modified .30-06 Springfield cartridge. The neck is reduced to accept the smaller bullet, the shoulder is longer than that of the parent cartridge, and it has a 19 degree angle leading to the mouth of the case where the bullet is seated.

Uses

The 6.5-06 A-Square has power similar to that of the .270 Winchester

.270 Winchester

The .270 Winchester was developed by Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1923 and unveiled in 1925 as a chambering for their bolt-action Model 54. The cartridge is based upon the .30-06 Springfield...

 and .308 Winchester

.308 Winchester

The .308 Winchester is a rifle cartridge and is the commercial cartridge upon which the military 7.62x51mm NATO centerfire cartridge is based. The .308 Winchester was introduced in 1952, two years prior to the NATO adoption of the 7.62x51mm NATO T65...

, making it suitable for hunting medium-sized game such as deer and black bear.

Availability of ammunition

Currently (2011) none of the major commercial ammunition manufacturers offer factory loaded 6.5-06 A-Square ammunition. There are smaller companies that custom load the cartridge however, and hand-loading can be accomplished using the proper set of dies and using .25-06 Remington

.25-06 Remington

The .25-06 Remington had been a wildcat cartridge for half a century before being standardized by Remington in 1969. It is based on the .30-06 Springfield cartridge necked-down to .257 inch caliber with no other changes...

, .270 Winchester, or .30-06 Springfield brass and making the proper modifications to fit the 6.5-06 A-Square chamber. After firing, the brass from the original cartridge (.25-06 Remington, .270 Winchester, or .30-06 Springfield) will be fire-formed

Fire forming

The term fire forming in firearms refers to the process of reshaping a metallic cartridge case to fit a new chamber by firing it within that chamber...

 to the exact dimensions of the 6.5-06 A-Square chamber.

Firearms chambered for 6.5-06 A-Square

A-Square currently (2011) lists two different rifles factory chambered in 6.5-06 A-Square; the Hamilcar and the Genghis Khan. Several of the major custom barrel manufacturers offer the 6.5-06 A-Square (sometimes listed simply as 6.5-06) chamber as an option for builders of custom rifles.

See also

• List of rifle cartridges
• Glossary of firearms terminology
  Glossary of firearms terminology
  -A:*accurize, accurizing: The process of altering a stock firearm to improve its accuracy.*action: The physical mechanism that manipulates cartridges and/or seals the breech. The term is also used to describe the method in which cartridges are loaded, locked, and extracted from the mechanism....
  
  
• Wildcat cartridges based on the .30-06 Springfield
  .30-06 Springfield Wildcat Cartridges
  Wildcat cartridges are firearms cartridges whose dimensions have been modified. Usually these modifications are with an eye toward improved performance, either measurable or not. This article deals with wildcat cartridges which result from a simple necking down or up of the original .30-06...