Ron Spomer On The 6.5 Grendel
BY Herschel Smith
3 years, 2 months ago
Ron Spomer does the 6.5 Grendel.
I’ve done the AR-10 scene and didn’t like it. An AR-10 is heavy, unwieldy, and stiff recoiling – everything the AR-15 isn’t, negating the very advantages of the AR-15 platform. I wasn’t all that pleased or impressed and sold what I had.
On the other hand, a 123 grain bullet travelling this fast in an AR-15 size package is very appealing. Folks like Pat Hines may say “I told you so.”
Also, if you can make it past the two idiots to get to the knowledge of Ryan Muckenhirn, this is a good video on the virtues of the Grendel round, including out of a bolt action rifle. Posted eight months ago.
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On September 27, 2021 at 8:28 am, Pat H. Bowman said:
I watched Ron’s video the other night. Just getting into the Grendel and am quite impressed. I worked up a 120 grain Gold Dot load in no time, along with a 120 grain target load. It’s quite accurate and with a can, a joy to shoot.
Like you, I’m not thrilled with my AR-10 in 308. It’s heavy, and I’m constantly dealing with various malfunctions. And accuracy is only so-so, despite extensive load development. My Grendel and 6mm Creedmoors on the other hand are laser beams.
On September 27, 2021 at 9:29 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ Herschel
Re: “I’ve done the AR-10 scene and didn’t like it. An AR-10 is heavy, unwieldy, and stiff recoiling – everything the AR-15 isn’t, negating the very advantages of the AR-15 platform.”
Many folks mistakenly believe that scaling up from from an AR15 platform to an AR in .308 is easy since they share so many features in common. That would normally be a logical assumption, since they share a common ancestor way back in the 1950s, Eugene Stoner’s first AR10 rifles for Armalite.
However, today’s firm of Armalite is not the same one as the one back in the 1950s-1960s. Ex-Army Ordnance officer Mark Westrom purchased the rights to the dormant Armalite name in the early 1990s, and now produces firearms under that imprint. Westrom’s firm does make AR10s today, and some regard them highly, but they are not the same rifles as the ones designed by Eugene Stoner, James Sullivan and others more than sixty years ago.
Westrom and his people beefed up the original svelte 1950s AR10 design, which weighed just over seven pounds w/o the magazine, and made other changes as well, to make the design more-palatable as a military service rifle candidate in the 1990s, but Westrom’s design lost out to Reed Knight’s SR25, and the rest is history. Long story short, a “new” Armalite twenty-inch barrel AR10 similar in appearance to an AR15 or M16A2 weights nearly ten pounds, and is by no means a bargain in terms of weight or heft.
The picture gets even more complex, because Armalite produced two variants of the AR10 during the Westrom era, the AR10 A-series and the AR10 B-series. The former take stanag SR25 and other industry standard magazines, such as Magpul, but the latter take only proprietary Armalite magazines, which are based upon – but not identical to – M14 magazines. “A” and “B” series rifles have somewhat different internal architecture as well; for those interested, Armalite has a couple of videos up on You Tube concerning these.
Adding even more complexity and confusion, unlike the AR15 & M16 – which were adopted by the U.S. military and standardized – the AR10 or “AR-308” has never standardized around a defined set of design characteristics. Therefore, multiple manufacturers now make/sell AR-platform rifles chambered in .308, virtually all of which are proprietary in some manner and therefore unique only to that maker.
DPMS started the ball rolling in the early 2000s, with their widely-popular and award-winning LR-308. Rock River Arms, Windham Weaponry, Smith & Wesson, and a host of other firms followed, including high-end makers such as Patriot Ordnance Factory (POF) and Daniel Defense, as well as BCM.
Two broad classes of receiver design exist, the DPMS pattern and the Armalite pattern. But apart from that, most manufacturers design into their AR-308s unique features or parts which compel you to buy only their magazine or spare parts. It is not even possible to swap uppers and lowers as AR15 owners routinely do; you can get into tech mismatches there, too.
Herschel, if you have cause to reconsider your opinion of the platform, POF supposedly offers an AR chambered in .308 which is as light as a carbine in 5.56/.223, yet comfortable to use and light to carry. I do not have personal experience with one from my time in the retail FA industry, other than magazine articles… but thought I’d pass along the info anyway.
Far as military use of the platform is concerned, Knights Armament has that market cornered. The AR10 never won acceptance as a general-issue infantry rifle, but Reed Knight did manage to sell a whole lot of his company’s rifles to mil.gov as precision weapons, a role in which they have apparently excelled. Ask your son about that one; I bet he knows something about it.
On September 27, 2021 at 9:46 pm, Herschel Smith said:
@Georgiaboy61,
I think I just want a somewhat smaller cartridge than .308 or 6.5 Creedmoor, in other words, not as heavy and wieldy and as heavy recoil as the AR-10, but somewhat more than the 5.56.
6.5 Grendel fits that role nicely.
On September 27, 2021 at 10:41 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
Re: “I think I just want a somewhat smaller cartridge than .308 or 6.5 Creedmoor, in other words, not as heavy and wieldy and as heavy recoil as the AR-10, but somewhat more than the 5.56. 6.5 Grendel fits that role nicely.”
Read you five-by-five, but thought the background would be interesting to you anyway. I agree, by the way, about 6.5 Grendel. It’s an intriguing cartridge design. I’d be a lot more enthusiastic if it was more widespread, though…. might as well be “unobtainium” around where I live.
For the record, I agree with you that AR10s & AR-308s are a pain, for all of the reasons listed in my previous message. You’ve got to really want to go there for the hassles to be tolerable. Some of the young guys who had ’em in the sandbox like ’em a whole lot, but I am neither young anymore, nor a member of Uncle Sam’s club for boys. Let those young cats haul those heavy suckers around…
On September 29, 2021 at 5:24 pm, john jay said:
re: ar-15 cartridges
herschel:
you should give the 6.8 rem spc a tumble. it is nice and mild mannered to shoot, and i should think quite lethal. and, plenty accurate, and easy to reload.
now, i am going to commit heresy, and suggest that italy’s wwii infantry rounds would make pretty good ar-15 fodder, the 7.35mm round in particular. they are not long-ish range target rounds, just well conceived infantry rounds out to 350 yards or so. i am pretty sure that i would not want to be shot with one of them.
john jay
p.s. has there ever been an “ar-10” sold to the u.s. of a. per contract specs defining what an ar-10 “actually is.” my understanding is that dpms has basically “standardized” the specs to an “ar-10” and that the rest of the industry more or less follows along, … , but does it exist by govt. “definition” of the specs?
On September 30, 2021 at 2:18 pm, Pat Hines said:
First, let me say thank you, Herschel, for the honorable mention.
The first AR I put together was in 6.5 Grendel, since it wasn’t yet SAAMI approved and there was some discussion about whether or not Mr. Alexander would submit his cartridge to them for that purpose. He did that, though I don’t remember the year. I took a chance. Alexander Arms was a sole source for ammo at first, not cheap either, then Hornady sort of came to the rescue at about $20.00 a box give or take. I picked some cases of that, then the real low cost Russian steel cased stuff came on the market at less than $6.00 a box, I jumped a number of cases of that. You still have to do spot checks on ammo availability to find bargains, then quickly make your move.
I did all sorts of research on the round, and the 6.8 Remington too, but never found any reason to go with the 6.8R. Y’all may know that anything in either 6.8 or .270 is a sort of bastard 7mm (.284), right? I don’t know what Winchester was thinking when they created the .270W. To this day, the variety of bullets in 7mm/284 is much larger than .70.
Okay, back to the 6.5G. My rifle has a 16 inch stainless barrel, not the optimum length, but not too bad for velocity loss, Alexander preferred barrels of at least 24 inches, fine for the target shooting fraternity, not as handy tactically.
Because the ballistics are similar enough to the 7.62/308, you can use a Trijicon ACOG TA11H-308G, note this has a green illuminated portion of the reticle center. During my extensive research I found that the US army had researched reticle illumination colors and determined green to be most visible, then red, with amber coming in a distant third. The green was well above red, so I went with it. https://media.fotki.com/2vn8yk8qxQKds.png
Last, though not least, I like the 6.5G a lot, but still recommend everyone have a 5.56 weapon too.
https://youtu.be/FaradX7Pccs
On September 30, 2021 at 2:24 pm, Pat Hines said:
Here’s the photo album I put together some 11+ years ago on 6.5G ballistics and stuff.
https://public.fotki.com/fastpat/self_defense/ar-rifles-1/grendel-ballistics/
On September 30, 2021 at 4:02 pm, Herschel Smith said:
@Pat,
Can’t get to it. Asks for password.
“Last, though not least, I like the 6.5G a lot, but still recommend everyone have a 5.56 weapon too.”
But of course. It’s America’s gun.