willbird

It all adds up but a pencil profile barrel IMHO removes about the most weight for the lowest cost. Example faxon 308 16" Pencil is 28.48 ounces Wilson Ranger 16 Recon Tactical 7mm-08 is 37.8 oz. 8.6oz difference. Heavier profile has advantages though :-), life is about balance :-). Bill

Barrel blank arrived :-). Looks nice. Reamer should come USPS tomorrow :-). Bill

I agree about not mixing PSA into the mix. If you want PSA I think they are fine (if you buy them on sale) but I would go ALL PSA. By "fine" I mean worth the price you paid shipped. IMHO PSA "cheap" is due to economy of scale...they make a lot of parts, and buy a lot of the parts they do not make. I kept my eyes open and got my Gen 2 complete lower with magpul furniture and EPT trigger for maybe $159 shipped. Stripped Gen2 uppers, or even uppers with all the parts installed are not avail as far as I have seen tho. But FWIW I have pretty much decide to do all Aero Precision going forward. All the parts wanted/needed are avail, and on sale if you keep your eyes open :-). Having a spare M5 lower around is a perfect excuse to build another gun :-). Granite Ridge often has some decent deals on upper-handguard combo's. Bill

FWIW IMHO that will all work. The only caveat I know of with bolts is that the Nickel Boron plated ones some have experienced short headspace with them. So if you are planning on using one I'd have the bolt headspaced with the barrel by the mfg. Bill

Fedex brought me a package with an empty reamer tube. Package had a hole where the tool escaped. Fedex taped over the hole after the tool escaped. Creedmore sports said they would ship replacement today. Lesson there is to wrap stuff up so it cannot punch a hole through all of the packing materials. Bill

Also a little trickery was involved to not let the hydraulic pressure blow the printer out :-). This would work but I used a cruder method :-) https://www.rcbs.com/shell-holders/competition/16-38280.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIspf19bDX5wIVBdbACh0ibQ-sEAQYASABEgL-lfD_BwE

Maybe should explain the .005 shorter than the brass for a headspace gauge. This is an Ackley thing, the parent ctg head spaces on the corner of the new shoulder angle, so .005 shorter helps ensure that the ctg fits tight while fire forming. There is a bit of give to that fit so it is nothing like a round with equal shoulder angle to the chamber being .005 long on headspace. some folks neck up then back down to get a small false shoulder. In this case we could just neck down 260 brass maybe. The hydraulic pre form also works, Hornady makes dies for $180 or so. Honestly just firing live rounds as PO Ackley intended works great in my experience. where there is no parent ctg to begin with I like to set things up about .002 shorter than the brass, then use Redding competition shell holders. In the case of the 6 Willbird I'm using the 6 creedmore dies to begin with so the shell holder is .150 or so from the bottom of the die. That perhaps will not work for successive reloadings (we will see) and I may need to have a die made. Bill

Made a shoulder bump gauge and a headspace gauge .005 shorter than the ctg case in the gauge Use the 6 creedmore full lengthg size die to do a crude hydraulic shoulder bump. Set the die up .005 longer than the headsapce gauge, filled it with marvel mystery oil (it was handy hehe) and put a gage pin inside the case mouth, hit the gage pin with a big ass dead blow hammer :-). This gave me headspace of about +.005 from the gauge, bumped that back with the die.

Leaving out the barrel profile and gas port to begin with will allow me to re do chamber if there is a want/need for some reason.

Will use a Green Mountian 1/10 chrome moly barrel. Build 1.2" and 24" long to begin with....no gas port. A 243 AI 40 degree more less is a 6mm remington as far as case capacity goes. This case will be a touch smaller. Most data I am seeing for 6mm says they used 24" barrel. We should be able to use 243 win maximum loads as a starting point, and work up towards 6mm data, if we reach the quoted 6mm velocity for a given powder we should be near maximum even if we have not seen any pressure signs yet. Final plan is 18" pencil with either rifle gas or rifle minus 1". Goal is a light, short and handy 6mm varmint rifle :-). Focus will be on 75 and 87 Hornady Vmax bullets. Bill

My first fit and chamber of a rifle barrel was a wildcat 6-284 with 1/8 twist. Built up on a remington 40XC action. I have shot it a lot and have really liked it. Also built a 22-250AI which I really like. The 6-284 as is really qualifies as an "improved" ctg for the most part. Recently I got an itch to build a light to medium bullet 6mm on the AR308 platform. Looked at some off the shelf options including plain Jane 243, 6mm competition match, and some other similar variants. Or just a 6mm creedmore. The current vogue of making up ctg to use really high BC bullets is interesting, but the same rounds when loaded with lighter more explosive on impact bullets end up being really short, lots of magazine space left. We also hear a lot of "ackley cased do not feed well in semi auto". Well Hmm the 6.5 creedmore pretty much IS a 30 degree shoulder "improved" case, and the 6mm creedmore is too. Something caught my eye and I did a bit of autocad work and came up with this. Naysayers need not apply, it is happening, parts and tools on the way. Basics are just run a 6mm creedmore reamer in about .149" deeper, then use 243 win brass or 260 brass necked to 6mm. Case capacity will be more than 6mm creedmore, more than 243, a touch less that 243AI 40 degree. One downside to off the shelf reamer is that the necks of the 243 brass are about .025" too short, but I'm not losing sleep over that. if it works as well as I hope I will send the reamer to have the neck shortened and the throat altered. 6Willbird on left, standard 243 in middle, 6 creedmore on right.

How about 260 or 243 ?? I know not exactly what you asked but if I had a G2 I would grab one of each of the 16" ;-). https://www.cdnnsports.com/catalogsearch/result/?order=relevance&dir=desc&q=DPMS+G2 Bill

I had a look at my Toolcraft, you could push the pin out with the bolt fully pulled out but it feels sort of like something encourages it to stay centered. Bill

Loading the sketch in here for info sake. The dimensions are from the front of the upper receiver.

I far prefer Hodgdon Extreme powders. Far less velocity/pressure change with them. I think I saw some other powder mfg are heading that direction too.

That audible "WACK" when the bullets hit :-). I hunt at a friends house and the house is at the other end of an 80 acre farm from where the marmots live, when I stop back at the house he can tell me how many rounds I fired and how many marmots I hit or missed :-). 98's 260 would probably work great if say Nosler or Hornady made some lighter varmint oriented bullets. There is a 90 grain 6.5 Speer TNT that has a .281 BC. 95 vmax is .365 BC...google is saying 3200fps from a 22" barrel. the 87 grain 6mm vmax is hitting a .400 BC tho :-). One thing does not preclude the other :-), maybe a 260 and a 6mm something both :-).

Pretty much 6mm creedmore is 6.5 necked down :-). Far more varmint style bullets for 6mm...all the way down to 55 grains but I prefer 75 grains or so. The varmint 6mm stuff brings a higher BC to the table than a .224 varmint bullet typically. if you can get a 75 vmax to 3700 or so (the 6mm creedmore will not) it has about the same impact energy at 400 yards as 220 swift does at the muzzle :-). A 6mm 55 grain nosler ballistic tip actually has a higher BC than a .224 55 grain ballistic tip, and internal ballistics suggest equal or higher velocity from same case volume and pressure ?? The 6mm varmint stuff hits so hard it gets addictive :-). Heavier bullets with more BC really perform at longer ranges, but for 300-400 yards the lighter stuff is less likely to bounce off somewhere on the exit side of the target, IMHO. Bill

I have a lot of experience with 6-284 in a bolt action. That gun is a 1-8 twist and shoots well sub 1/2 moa from bipod with bullets from 107 to 75 grains. The "twist too fast for light bullets" does not seem to matter a bit for that rifle, it will run a 75 vmax 3500 fps or so. Thinking about building a short, light, handy 6mm creedmore for woodchucks. Bill

I work for corporate America. There has always been an "evil somebody" that small local business complained about. Sears and Roebuck since 1893 as just one example. Growing up in 1970's small town Ohio the small local grocery store DOUBLED the price of sugar during canning season :-). Bill

they are saying 7.93 lbs. 18" MID-LENGTH .308 WIN STAINLESS STEEL 16.5" M-LOK

Palmetto State Armory is proud to introduce a lighter weight version of the PA-10! The PX-10 is designed to bridge the gap between the larger build of an AR-10 and the slimline feel of an AR-15. The new PX-10 18" Mid-Length .308 Winchester Stainless M-Lok Lightweight MOE CTR EPT Rifle is the perfect solution to give you the power of the .308 cartridge without the heavy & bulky feel of a traditional AR-10 platform.

https://dsgarms.com/upper-receiver-parts-arm10007005 Looks like they might have some in stock. Bill

You can find them elsewhere but I'd make sure that you are actually getting the proper part. I was looking all over trying to find a picture somebody posted that showed all of the different lengths avail. Neighbor just bought an Aero upper and Aero seems to have gotten it exactly right with 18" rifle gas as far as tube length. :-). Bill

Armalite carbine gas tube is 12-1/16" long Ar15 mid length gas tube is 11-3/4" long. My Bear Creek 18" which they call a "mid length" had a gas port location which left the AR15 mid a lot short and the Armalite carbine a bit long, a bit long worked great. Bill

Don't buy a CMMG 350 legend barrel, it has about 4 angles of suckiness. Many other options now. it was $180 from Brownells when there were not a lot of other options. I'd throw down for a Faxon now. Several places list them cheaper than Faxon MSRP. Bill