Good Monday Evening. We worked through the weekend and managed to knock out a post this weekend. I am proud to present a true website update. It’s been a few weeks, for that I do apologize.
With Hornady’s announcement of the 6mm ARC I wanted to do some comparisons to other “Long Range” AR-15 cartridges. Hornady is a marketing powerhouse, and sometimes the excitement around a new bold cartridge masks the actual utility of the cartridge. Is Hornady actually breaking new ground here? Or are they rehashing something that has been done before? We take a closer look in this write up.
While I did not mention it in the conclusion, it should be noted that many cartridges introduced commercially are introduced first as a wildcat. This 6mm ARC cartridge appears to be no different, as the 6mm AR has been a wildcat for years prior to Hornady’s “Ground Breaking” introduction. However as discussed, dimensionally it is different from the 6mm AR, and while you may be able to chamber a 6mm ARC in a 6mm AR rifle, it may not be safe to do so. I strongly suspect, Hornady took the existing 6mm AR tweak the design a bit, and called it there own prior to introducing it to SAAMI. This is typical industry wide when a wildcat makes the transition into a SAAMI cartridge. (See 6.5 Creedmoor)
I hope you enjoy the article, let me know your thoughts and what you would like to see. I enjoy doing these comparisons, so if there is a cartridge, or cartridges you’d like to see, let me know. You can email me at jayandrew338@gmail.com, or check us out on Facebook. As I work on projects, you’ll see them on our Instagram page, follow us to see what we are up to.
I apologize for missing my typical Monday update. It’s been a pretty crazy last couple of days. It is taking a bit longer then I would have thought to get over this infection, but we are on the mend. Hopefully we will be back to normal shortly.
Hornady has recently announced a new cartridge, the 6mm Advanced Rifle Cartridge (ARC). From what I have seen so far, it looks to me that Hornady took the 6mm AR wildcat that has been around for sometime, and decided sponsor it’s submission to SAAMI for standardization.
This cartridge was accepted by SAAMI in the June 2020 meeting, and the specs are listed below.
When ever a new cartridge is introduced I am usually pretty skeptical. Sometimes I have serious questions as to why. Given the time, effort and money involved in getting a cartridge accepted by SAAMI, you would expect a new cartridge to fill a niche, or accomplish something other cartridges cannot, but besides marketing, the performance advantage is not always obvious.
In this case there is a slew of wildcat 6mm (.243) cal cartridges for the AR but nothing that has been formally adopted by SAAMI. So this is legitimately filling a gap, albeit a small gap, in the cartridge line up for AR-15’s. It will be interesting to see how this stacks up against the 6.5 Grendal, or the .224 Valkyrie. Both cartridges are SAAMI accepted cartridges geared towards long range shooting from an AR-15 platform, to varying degree’s of success.
Another cartridge that was recently accepted by SAAMI was the 12 Gauge mini shot shells that have gained some popularity. These 1.75in long shells allow you to effectively double the magazine capacity of standard 12 gauge shotguns. They also have reduced recoil, and from what I have heard, turn shooting a 12 gauge into a completely new firearm.
With all the chaos going on, it can be easy to miss little announcements like these. It is a small comfort to see the firearms companies are continuing to develop new products. I personally look forward to seeing a Semi-Auto shotgun that can cycle the 1 3/4in shells and standard 2 3/4in shells. Another development I’d like to see is increasing the pressure on the shot shells.
Pressure on shot shells have not really changes since their inception, the 1 3/4 increases the magazine capacity but sacrifices performance of the 2 3/4 shell. If we increase the SAAMI Max Average Pressure (MAP) from 11,000psi to 20,000psi we can claw back some of the performance loss. This isn’t just a simple change, shotgun actions and barrels would need to be built stronger, and the cartridge would need to be different to prevent chambering in conventional shotguns. Obviously the appeal of the 1 3/4 shells is they can be used in any standard 12 gauge. A higher pressure cartridge would mean a new dedicated shotgun. This becomes a hurdle to it’s success.
This has been a bit of a longer update then usual. I have not been able update the website, over the last few weeks. Between a new job, fighting off a staph infection and just being swamped with a few other things, the website has taken a bit of a back seat. It is not forgotten, I just have not been able to put the time into it that I would have like. Once things settle down a bit, we’ll keep working on the projects we’ve been working on and hopefully post a few conclusions there.
Thanks everyone for the well wishes and for the feedback. As always if you have questions, comments or suggestions, you are more then welcome to email me at jayandrew338@gmail.com, check us out on our Facebook page or follow us over at Instagram.
This past week did not go as planned. I thought I was nearly out of the woods as far as my ankle was concerned. Fate had other plans. I started getting sick on Tuesday, and by Friday I was having emergency surgery. Turns out I developed a Staph infection which pretty much knocked me on my butt, and is still kicking my butt.
As a result I have not gotten anything done in regards to the website this week. I apologize, definitely not what I was hoping to report. Such is life sometimes and I am glad the outcome is not as bad as it could have been. Even still I’ve gone back to almost square one on my healing. I’m back to crutches and have to take it pretty easy for awhile. We will try and get updates done in the mean time.
We do have some exciting news, we will be moving closer to the new job and into a place that has a proper garage and workplace. Which means for me, a little more time and independence on some of the projects I am able to work on. I am excited to be able to set up the hand loading equipment again, and work on stuff from home rather then a corner work space at work.
In the end all good news for the website. Just, with all good things, it will take some time.
That is all for the update this week. As always if you have suggestions, comments or questions you can email me directly at jayandrew338@gmail.com, check us out on Facebook or look us up on Instagram. Thanks for subscribing!
Two days ago, launched one of the greatest military operations of all time. The scale of which is unmatched in modern history. Unfortunately due to COVID, this was the first year in the 75 years since D-Day, that a memorial was not held.
Over the weekend I participated in a Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) match. While I do not own a M1 Garand, I was able to admire many marvelous examples of these historic rifles. I shot my M1A along side, a Johnson rifle, Mauser, Springfield, and other fine examples of both modern and historic military rifles. There is something about a rifle, that connects the shooter with the history, and I believe shooting it well honors those who used the rifle to preserve the free world.
This past week we did do a bit of an update. We had an opportunity to try our bullet lube, and while there are some tweaks I’d like to make to the formula, it worked splendidly. We want to try to dilute it down to from a 1:5 ratio of lube to alcohol to a 1:10. Here’s where the update was posted.
The recipe I used probably made a life time of lubricant which should be good for case sizing and bullet sizing. There’s a few more tests we want to run it through, but the results are promising so far. We’ll continue to update things as we put it through it’s paces.
We still have updates to write on how polishing the Lee die went, and it’s results. It has occurred to me that if we’re going to do all the work of polishing the die, we probably ought to discuss making our own die. I suspect we can tweak this die design a little bit to make something that is as good as the Lee dies, but with a few tweaks to make things a little better.
Life continues to be busy, but we’ll continue to do our best to bring updates on our projects as I am able to work on them. As always if you have comments or suggestions please reach out to me at jayandrew338@gmail.com, or check us out on Facebook. If you want to see what we are up to in real time, we occasionally post photos on our Instagram page. Thanks to all those who subscribe!
While I haven’t formally updated the website in the past week, I did want to do some informal updates to you all with the promise I’ll be formalizing the updates this week. The home made sizing lube at the 1:5 ratio worked splendidly and provided a little bit of lubricant to help ease the bullets through the polished Lee Bullet Sizing Die. What has yet to be seen is if we can use our homemade sizing lube with a standard factory sizing die. We also want to see if we can dilute the lubricant down to a 1:10 and still get satisfactory results. My aim is to use just enough lube to do the job, and not have a bunch of residual lubricant to clean off. There is still some work to be done to wrap up these projects.
I made a mistake, I should have check the bullet diameter as it dropped from the mold prior to coating with the Hi-Tek coating. Part of the reason the bullets were stiff going through the sizing die is undoubtedly the fact they are .005 over sized.
As you can image I have been quite busy over the past week getting settled into a new job. Couple this with a fairly long commute and it has given me very little time to work on any thing else. Which is why there isn’t a formal update to articles over the past week. I’ll likely have to shift gears and steer away from some of the more involved projects for awhile and work on projects and write ups that do not require much in the ways of workspace or tooling. We will have to see what time allows for.
Its remarkably hard to take a picture of the surface finished of the inside of a die. Rest assured it is improved over factory.
In the mean time, stay safe out there. I, like many others, have been watching keenly the happenings going on in our country. I do not doubt that the events and the consequences of 2020 will be felt for sometime to come. Be vigilent.
As always if you have comments questions or suggestions you can email them to jayandrew338@gmail.com, or hop on to our Facebook page. We are also on Instagram and post photos of what we are up to long before they hit the site.
