Bolt gun chamber

[JASmith]

My advice -- stay with the full SAAMI chamber.

Case life with the Grendel is incredible! I routinely get more than ten loads from the cartridge and the failures are not neck splits. Others have reported even better case life.

Further, there is no accuracy advantage to the 0.295 neck. The compound throat gives much tighter lateral clearances than any neck that can safely release the bullet can offer.

Follow the discussions about accuracy with the Grendel and you will see that the cartridge, even in what many still think os the "sloppy" AR, is excellent with many reporting 0.4 moa and smaller groups. If one is lucky, a bolt gun might equal or better this accuracy, but the chamber will not the factor that causes the improvement.

[SDguy]

My advice -- stay with the full SAAMI chamber.

Case life with the Grendel is incredible! I routinely get more than ten loads from the cartridge and the failures are not neck splits. Others have reported even better case life.

Further, there is no accuracy advantage to the 0.295 neck. The compound throat gives much tighter lateral clearances than any neck that can safely release the bullet can offer.

Follow the discussions about accuracy with the Grendel and you will see that the cartridge, even in what many still think os the "sloppy" AR, is excellent with many reporting 0.4 moa and smaller groups. If one is lucky, a bolt gun might equal or better this accuracy, but the chamber will not the factor that causes the improvement.

When you share your case life are talking in a AR rifle or bolt action? Where do you generally experience case failures? Do you anneal your brass and if so at what round count do you strive for?

[JASmith]

I' m using an Encore with a SAAMI chamber.

Separation at the base at about the 14th refill.

No annealing.

[ricsmall]

I'm just about certain I'm going with the SAAMI chamber. If I don't like it I can send reamer to be reground for smaller neck. As far as brass failure, loading hot will probably render the primer pockets useless as well. I may load a little hotter than normal, but I'm really looking for already stellar performance of the Grendel in a bolt gun. If I want to move a 264 pill that fast I'll pull out the 260 AI. Between mark Hostetter, Dave Manson, Joe smith, sneaky, and a few others, I'm convinced the gains with a .295 neck will be minimal. If it were going to be a heavy barreled paper puncher I'd go the tight neck. BTW, All I need to do to re chamber if I had reamer reground is lopping off length of neck , reshoulder and thread, bolt nose recess,and recut chamber. I will post results as soon as I do some accuracy testing. Thanks for all the replies and help guys.

Richard

[sneaky one]

Good luck upon your quest RS ! Let us know your findings. Lathes are a cool thing, brother. SAAMI, SAAMI !

6.5 Whelonon always says -- KISS. huh? I said???? It stands for a Wisconson saying==== keep it simple stupid. , or stupid simple. Saami, makes sense then.

Plus RS, if we come down to the swamp- we can always share ammo. Win, win for all to keep it all the same. Gmx's baby!

[SDguy]

I' m using an Encore with a SAAMI chamber.

Separation at the base at about the 14th refill.

No annealing.

Thanks for sharing.

Is this with Hornady or Lapua brass or both?

Have you ever measured how much you are bumping the shoulder back when full length resizing? Example I use to compare B4 resizing and after utilizes a fired and deprimed 40 S&W pistol case as a comparison tool. I strive for no more than .002 setback. Have just started with the Grendel so my experience is very limited thus far.

[kmon]

.02 shoulder bump works good in a bolt action from my experience.

[SDguy]

.02 shoulder bump works good in a bolt action from my experience.

I assume you meant .002" as opposed to .020"

[kmon]

I assume you meant .002" as opposed to .020"

Yup Typo

[SDguy]

Neale these will all be built on rem 700 SA. I suspect at least two will use bdl bottom metal and one may use aics mags.

Drift, I thought about that as well but think I'll stay with the original cartridge.

Cory, this is similar to what LR52 talked about in private message. My main concern with an "LBC" type chamber is that everything I've read says its suited to just one or two pills. I don't know how true this is though. I like the idea of a compound throat and .295 neck because I plan to start my son out with 100 grain monos for deer. In the off season I'll shoot some steel with it and eventually go to something like the 127 lrx for longer range deer. The versatility of the compound throat design speaks for itself, so sounds like I need to make a call tomorrow.

Thanks guys,keep me coming.
Richard

I feel like you are on the right track with the standard Grendel chamber with the one caveat that the neck diameter would be .295" as opposed to the standard .300" Some here seem to take issue with that tighter neck and they are not alone. A Gun smith I have chambering and threading another barrel for my second Grendel bolt action seemed to have concerns as well over a tighter neck. We did agree on a match Grendel chamber though he seemed to want to be very vauge as to what the Match chamber would amount to. He had not received the reamer last I spoke to him.

My patience may have ran a little thin and I came across a Lothar Walther Barrel on E-bay and decided to Make an offer that was accepted. That barrel was described as Finished and chambered match grade Lothar Walther stainless steel caliber 6.5 CCS followed by (Grendel). Neck measured .295" Well I purchased a Go head space gauge that gauged the barrel worked out for a perfect drop in barrel. Go gauge with 1 piece of masking tape fit quite snugly when closing the bolt on the single thickness of tape. First group I fired with this rifle grouped 3/4" with Benchmark and 123 grain SST's. Since I have come close to that group though nothing better. I had strived for more velocity with different propellants and better groups. The groups have not improved as of yet. May have to go back and refine that Bench mark load and see if I can improve on the 1st load.

I have tried Factory Hornady Grendel ammo, Reloaded both Lapua and Hornady brass with no issues. Have not looked at any Wolf Steel ammo yet. Has anyone measured the neck diameter on the wolf steel cased ammo yet? What might a guy expect for a worse case scenario for variation on the wolf ammo with the lacquer finish in terms of neck diameter?

[BjornF16]

I have the PacNor "Grendel Match" in my bolt gun with .295" neck...I'm pretty sure it is the PTG reamer. It is accurate. LRRPF52 saw me shooting it at BoomerShoot a couple of years back. If I had the choice at the time, I would have opted for SAAMI chamber.

I'm considering the Grendel Max option. I was disappointed with 127 LRX work ups (not enough velocity; bullet too long for Grendel case). I sent the remaining bullets to Sneaky for rework into 110 gr pills, but I just haven't had time to do another work up with those. I really would like to shoot a greater than .450 G1 BC in mono bullet from my bolt gun.

With Von Gruff's .050" added headspace, could you simply fire form Grendel cases to G-Max?

[ricsmall]

Bjorn, I'm pretty sure if you tried that the case would move too far forward in chamber to even fire. IIRC, Von gruff forms a false shoulder in neck to hold case tight for fire forming. I'm gonna look back at that thread and see

Richard

[Von Gruff]

Yes, I run a 308 expander button through the necks then size down with the .05 spacer epoxied to the shell holder. Simple operation for the handloader but there is no way to use factory ammo. I see the considerably uptick in performance as way more important than being able to use factory ammo though. I did buy a couple of boxes to get my first brass which has since been replaced with Lapua but a de bullet, dump the powder into empty primed brass (any cartridges will do for this) expand and neck the cases, re-powder and seat the bullet again for fireforming loads. Starting from fresh lapua brass I fireform with my cast bullets and 6.5gn red dot so cheap and effective..
Only part of the extra case capacity is gained from having the shoulder moved forward with a water capacity of 38.5 but the loading to 2.405 gains the extra capacity for the 32.6gn of CFE223 that gets the 123gn bullet to 2700fps from my 21 in barrel

[FW Conch]

Von Gruff, just curious, could your Max case be formed by seating the pill long into the lands ?

Thanks...Jim :-)

[Von Gruff]

Von Gruff, just curious, could your Max case be formed by seating the pill long into the lands ?

Thanks...Jim :-)

Jim, like any improved case it would still need to be necked up and then sized to give a false shoulder to hold the case against forward movement and I don't think I would trust to a long seated bullet holding it back sufficiently well. Besides that there is the fact that I designed the cartridge to have the boat tail shank junction of the A Max at the shoulder neck junction of the case so loading long would have very little shank left in the case to have enough grip on the neck to hold it back.
Expanding to 308 and necking back with the .05 spacer on the shell holder is a simple process and one I have done hundreds of times with complete success. On top of that is that you need to have the spacer on the shell holder to continue to handload anyway using the standard Grendel dies.
I felt that one of the advantages of the GM chamber was that the standard dies with the adapted shell holder are all that is needed after the chamber is done.

[FW Conch]

^ Thanks for the reply...Jim :-) ^