Why doesn't the Grendel have the Following of the 6.8 SPCII

[jurassic]

Factory loaded ammo! There's very few factory loads that are suitable for hunting, and even though it's very accurate, I'm not a fan of the SST bullet or Ballistic Tip. Someone needs to load Barnes TTSX bullets, preferably the 100 grn one, or any bonded bullet, a Nosler Accubond would be nice. Small, light bullets need to be tough.

I'm not a hand loader, or paper puncher, and I suspect many aren't. I have a 6.8 also just because of the abundance of factory loaded ammo, something is always available somewhere.

[woohoo]

The 300BO is our real enemy dammit, we've got to get rsilvers to realize it's barely in the same category as a BB gun!!!!

LOL, There are a lot of people out there that think if it's a 30 cal it must be more powerful than a 6.5 or 6.8. and it gets faster with each post. It's slower than a 7.62x39 yet they compare it to a 30-30. By this time next year it will be smoking a 30-06.

[woohoo]

H says the 6.5BRX is a better way to go since the 6.5 uses longer bullets than the 270AR.
The 6.5BRX is based off the 6BR.

Right, Because of the long bullets the case can't be any longer than the Grendel. The BRX has apx 42gr capacity, A 30 RAR necked down would have apx 43.
BR brass is much easier to find than the RAR brass they make once every 3 years. The BRX will push a 123 to around 2800 out of a 20" barrel but again it's a wildcat with no loaded ammo.

As far as the Grendel and supply lines, when a few manufacturers stopped making the 7.62x39 there wasn't an easy source for extractors. Then after the big Os second election everything went completely crazy and all the barrel manufacturers are so busy it's near impossible to get 6.5 barrels made. There are very few barrel manufacturers to start with and some of those I would not use, others have a waiting list over a year long.

[XcountryRider]

Right, Because of the long bullets the case can't be any longer than the Grendel. The BRX has apx 42gr capacity, A 30 RAR necked down would have apx 43.
BR brass is much easier to find than the RAR brass they make once every 3 years. The BRX will push a 123 to around 2800 out of a 20" barrel but again it's a wildcat with no loaded ammo.

As far as the Grendel and supply lines, when a few manufacturers stopped making the 7.62x39 there wasn't an easy source for extractors. Then after the big Os second election everything went completely crazy and all the barrel manufacturers are so busy it's near impossible to get 6.5 barrels made. There are very few barrel manufacturers to start with and some of those I would not use, others have a waiting list over a year long.

The Demand for Grendels is going up but the supply of barrels and bolts is riseing slower than the increased demand. Satern reports that Grendel is by far the biggest demand for there barrels.

[XcountryRider]

We have a new bolt supplier with Maxxiim now online so that will take up slack so the barrels can now be sold with bolts. Satern is now ordering bolts from Maxxim as well. We do lack a entry level plain jane Grendel for the new guys. Not every Grendel needs to be some AA vanity stick.

[Smith5361]

LOL, There are a lot of people out there that think if it's a 30 cal it must be more powerful than a 6.5 or 6.8. and it gets faster with each post. It's slower than a 7.62x39 yet they compare it to a 30-30. By this time next year it will be smoking a 30-06.

Sady I think my dad is one of those folks but atleast he touts its suppressability more than anything.

[Nukes]

Sady I think my dad is one of those folks but atleast he touts its suppressability more than anything.

Last week I had an interesting conversation with an engineer-turned-specialty-ammo-manufacturer. He also services the local public servants' high-end (Noveske) .300 Blackout guns. He commented that a majority of their guns had stoppages after only 30-60 rds. due to significant residue in the throat. He recommended using Bore Shine in the throat region (to reduce the imperfections that catch the residue) and frequent cleaning (ugh) to minimize the problem. He opined that the major deficit of the .300 Blackout is that there is not yet a powder tailored to the cartridge. Of currently available powders, his favorite is WW 296, the .44 Mag powder. He expects velocities to rise significantly once there is a powder targeted for the .300 Blackout.

An aside—he stated that the deposits were primarily calcium carbonate (chalk, marble). Until that discussion I had not realized that any electrolytes were used in smokeless powder. Learn something new every day. Besides physically removing the residue, aqueous black powder cleaners should also work well.

Because I have some concerns about the ratchet design of the AAC 762SDN6, I asked about the residue problem. Apparently the can problems observed have been due, not to residue, but to careless attachment that leaves the ratchet riding on top of a tooth with the attendant lack of muzzle/can concentricity leading to baffle strikes.

Gemtech has introduced a new intriguing 7.62 can that is only 14 oz., the GMT300. The baffle stack has very interesting geometry. Doc Dater says that full production will begin in about a month, just in time to start taking orders at the SHOT Show.

[woohoo]

I sort of get that but i think the 270AR has to much potential for a small special project.

testing today 20"barrels-max loads with H335, accuracy will likely be 1/2-1gr lower.
110gr HPBT=3045fps
120SST=2977
130 Berger=2889fps
85gr TSX=3450fps

[bwaites]

Read the last two editions of Shooting Illustrated and all the issues with factory ammo, accuracy, and stoppages in two different 300 BO rifles. Very interesting!

[XcountryRider]

testing today 20"barrels-max loads with H335, accuracy will likely be 1/2-1gr lower.
110gr HPBT=3045fps
120SST=2977
130 Berger=2889fps
85gr TSX=3450fps

That 120SST is going to be pretty freaking awesome. Do you have any pics of the loaded rounds? I'de like to post them on my Hunting with AR facebook page.

[MrFrankZ]

I would also like to suggest not getting into a ballistics comparison with the 6.8 folks, and adopt a more unified approach to the new consumers.

We look like complete jerk-offs when we start splitting hairs over BC vs. mv, my dog is bigger than yours, my dad can kick your dad's fat nasty a**, etc.

It really turns a lot of people off who might otherwise have been more open-eared to what we have to say, and the merits of these cartridges for the AR15.

The main thing we want to do is get more and more people shooting, hunting, and being responsible gun owners who are friendly, and not like two preachers stuck on an airplane trying to save each other from their fervent beliefs, while the rest of the passengers suffer the dialogue.

People who enjoy freedom + gun owners + hunters or competitors = friends in my book.

Was anyone else humming the battle hymn of the republic while reading this?

[Nukes]

Read the last two editions of Shooting Illustrated and all the issues with factory ammo, accuracy, and stoppages in two different 300 BO rifles. Very interesting!

What is the gravamen of their findings?

[XcountryRider]

Was anyone else humming the battle hymn of the republic while reading this?

[video=youtube;ROxvT8KKdFw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROxvT8KKdFw[/video]

[LRRPF52]

I believe There's a couple things that have caused it. First, A A'S not allowing anyone else to make the 6.5 for years, hurt it.

Second the "marketing". More people hunt, than target shoot. I'm not talking about the two cartridges actual abilities, they are both fine performers. 6.5s are excellent hunting cartridges, and with some of the 120 and 130 great bullets out now, 6.8s can hit steel out to 1k as well. But! The 6.5 has always been touted as a long range target round, and the 6.8 has always been touted as a hard hitting medium range hunting round. I have a 260, 270, 6.8 and 6.5. I enjoy all of them. I bought parts and surprised my brother yesterday, and today we built his own 264 lbc. Tomorrow, he and I are going to build my 12.5 inch 6.8 pistol. There's plenty of room for both cartridges IMHO, I think there's a great future, and I think the future holds some amazing promise with rounds like the 6.5BR and 270AR that I can't wait to get ahold of.

The 300BO is our real enemy dammit, we've got to get rsilvers to realize it's barely in the same category as a BB gun!!!!

AA licensed anyone who wanted to make Grendel's, as long as they would adhere to the Grendel chamber specs before it was approved by SAAMI. Otherwise, Les Baer, Satern, Templar, PF, J&T/Double Star, etc. would not have been making Grendel barrels, uppers, and rifles. By the time Hornady submitted the cartridge to SAAMI, you had a standardized chamber design from the start.

On the other hand, we saw an example of how not to do it, even from a big industry name like Remington, where they screwed the 6.8x43 over bigtime by submitting a reamer with an 80 degree leade angle into the rifling, and cranking out volumes of Large Rifle Primer brass. If it wasn't for companies like AR Performance, Noveske, Bison, & Wilson Combat, that chamber still would be the dominant one on the market, with companies cranking out barrels with that reamer design.

One of the main reasons the Grendel came to be was as a medium game hunter in the AR15. I have seen a lot of its critics control the argument by saying the Grendel is only good for target shooting, needs long barrels to be of any use, and doesn't have any good hunting bullets for it. This gets passed around, washed, rinsed, and repeated online, but the Grendel was always meant to be a great white tail cartridge.

The competition and rivalry between these new cartridges is par for the course, and has made them all better because no customer wants to feel like their pee-shooter is inferior to the next person's, so they demand more and more support, products, and performance. Once it crosses the line of degrading others, personal attacks, libel, trashing one's business, etc., and we all look like pigs in a bath of feces.

There are still many people in the industry who feel a sense of literal disgust and hatred for any number of these calibers. With the Grendel, one of the main reamer-makers will do everything in his power to make sure even renowned barrel makers don't use a Grendel reamer, because he doesn't want to cut that compound angle for the freebore on the SAAMI drawing, and will tell the barrel-maker that this other non-SAAMI chamber is "just as good", "they'll never notice".

I would like to avoid that kind of market environment, and steer people towards the positive aspects of how the cartridge can really give them much more performance from within the AR15 frame than they ever thought was possible.

[XcountryRider]

AA licensed anyone who wanted to make Grendel's, as long as they would adhere to the Grendel chamber specs before it was approved by SAAMI. Otherwise, Les Baer, Satern, Templar, PF, J&T/Double Star, etc. would not have been making Grendel barrels, uppers, and rifles. By the time Hornady submitted the cartridge to SAAMI, you had a standardized chamber design from the start.

On the other hand, we saw an example of how not to do it, even from a big industry name like Remington, where they screwed the 6.8x43 over bigtime by submitting a reamer with an 80 degree leade angle into the rifling, and cranking out volumes of Large Rifle Primer brass. If it wasn't for companies like AR Performance, Noveske, Bison, & Wilson Combat, that chamber still would be the dominant one on the market, with companies cranking out barrels with that reamer design.

One of the main reasons the Grendel came to be was as a medium game hunter in the AR15. I have seen a lot of its critics control the argument by saying the Grendel is only good for target shooting, needs long barrels to be of any use, and doesn't have any good hunting bullets for it. This gets passed around, washed, rinsed, and repeated online, but the Grendel was always meant to be a great white tail cartridge.

The competition and rivalry between these new cartridges is par for the course, and has made them all better because no customer wants to feel like their pee-shooter is inferior to the next person's, so they demand more and more support, products, and performance. Once it crosses the line of degrading others, personal attacks, libel, trashing one's business, etc., and we all look like pigs in a bath of feces.

There are still many people in the industry who feel a sense of literal disgust and hatred for any number of these calibers. With the Grendel, one of the main reamer-makers will do everything in his power to make sure even renowned barrel makers don't use a Grendel reamer, because he doesn't want to cut that compound angle for the freebore on the SAAMI drawing, and will tell the barrel-maker that this other non-SAAMI chamber is "just as good", "they'll never notice".

I would like to avoid that kind of market environment, and steer people towards the positive aspects of how the cartridge can really give them much more performance from within the AR15 frame than they ever thought was possible.

Thats the party line for sure.

[montana]

Last week I had an interesting conversation with an engineer-turned-specialty-ammo-manufacturer. He also services the local public servants' high-end (Noveske) .300 Blackout guns. He commented that a majority of their guns had stoppages after only 30-60 rds. due to significant residue in the throat. He recommended using Bore Shine in the throat region (to reduce the imperfections that catch the residue) and frequent cleaning (ugh) to minimize the problem. He opined that the major deficit of the .300 Blackout is that there is not yet a powder tailored to the cartridge. Of currently available powders, his favorite is WW 296, the .44 Mag powder. He expects velocities to rise significantly once there is a powder targeted for the .300 Blackout.

An aside—he stated that the deposits were primarily calcium carbonate (chalk, marble). Until that discussion I had not realized that any electrolytes were used in smokeless powder. Learn something new every day. Besides physically removing the residue, aqueous black powder cleaners should also work well.

Because I have some concerns about the ratchet design of the AAC 762SDN6, I asked about the residue problem. Apparently the can problems observed have been due, not to residue, but to careless attachment that leaves the ratchet riding on top of a tooth with the attendant lack of muzzle/can concentricity leading to baffle strikes.

Gemtech has introduced a new intriguing 7.62 can that is only 14 oz., the GMT300. The baffle stack has very interesting geometry. Doc Dater says that full production will begin in about a month, just in time to start taking orders at the SHOT Show.

Great info and the GMT300 looks good.

[woohoo]

AA licensed anyone who wanted to make Grendel's, as long as they would adhere to the Grendel chamber specs before it was approved by SAAMI. Otherwise, Les Baer, Satern, Templar, PF, J&T/Double Star, etc. would not have been making Grendel barrels, uppers, and rifles. By the time Hornady submitted the cartridge to SAAMI, you had a standardized chamber design from the start.

There is a lot more to it than what you said in the rest of the post. E- should have been a PM

[XcountryRider]

There is a lot more to it than what you said in the rest of the post. There are more than a few companies that have a grudge with AA for one reason or another. Some of those will not turn out Grendel products for AA for anything. Those and others will do anything they can to compete with it. I've had more than 1 call from a company that has asked me to produce barrels to try to hurt 2 other businesses. In the firearms business if you piss off the wrong person your secrets will not be secrets long. Robert Whitley (6mmAR) seems to be another one that gets hate mail. I'm very careful about who I send my reamer drawings to now.

Concur I've spoken to some that had contracts with AA and they tell a different version than Paul's above and they will not do business again from AA. The story of the Grendel is more complicated that it needed to be. The round is brilliant but the personality driven drama hindered its adoption.

[SHORT-N-SASSY]

testing today 20"barrels-max loads with H335, accuracy will likely be 1/2-1gr lower.
110gr HPBT=3045fps
120SST=2977
130 Berger=2889fps
85gr TSX=3450fps

woohoo,

What is your estimate of the PSI level of these hot loads?

[LRRPF52]

Concur I've spoken to some that had contracts with AA and they tell a different version than Paul's above and they will not do business again from AA. The story of the Grendel is more complicated that it needed to be. The round is brilliant but the personality driven drama hindered its adoption.

Is that the same source that told you I'm an online marketing rep for AA? A lot of these issues are understandable when you consider that a supplier spends weeks, if not months, making a product for another business, totaling tens of thousands of $, only the lot is a total QC failure. I've seen it at a company I worked for in another niche market, and it was ugly. We had to reject an entire production batch of products we were going to debut at SHOT, because they were a colossal failure, and wasted thousands of dollars of our top-end sub-components, and we had to pull a magic rabbit out of our hat 1 week before SHOT. Needless to say, I didn't really sleep much that week, and spent the time working slave hours to correct the mistakes, starting from scratch.

We never did business with that supplier again, and they probably cursed our names, even though they were entirely at fault. If you called them and asked about us, I can only imagine what they would say, but I guarantee you they wouldn't volunteer their huge, show-stopping mistake to you.

H, what would you do if a machine shop that makes and heat-treats your bolts sent you a batch of hundreds of bolts, and they were grotesquely out of spec?