Website Update 6-23-2020

Good Tuesday Evening,

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.

Stay Safe Out There!

The Ballistic Assistant