At midnight on the 4th of July I read about the 6arc and decided I wanted one for mid range paper/steel (1000 and in) and thin skin hunting inside 400 aka deer and antelope. Put together an idea in my head and it ended up like this.
Geissele upper and SSA e x lightning trigger
Proof 20 inch barrel
Ventum suppressor
Poverty pony lowers I had on my shelf
Smoke composites buffer tube, stock, buffer plate, grip and handguard as well as arca playe (had to support a Nevada company!)
Microbest chrome bcg with JP enhanced 65 bolt
Springco buffer spring and noveske buffer
Spuhr Mount
Bushnell forge optic (had laying around)
Shot today for the first rounds, Hornady match stayed just over an moa, 1 round had a random gust of wind that threw it to 1.5. Hornady hunter shot 1.5.
Berger 105vld hunters with varget ranged from .5 to 1.5 loaded from 25.5 to 27.4. between 27 (.5)and 27.2 (.94) shot the best groups at 100. Will probably load 27.2 since it was 105 at the range today and I'll only be shooting in cooler climates. Velocity was 2630 and 2650 average for the 2 so velocities seemed better then book, brass had very light ejector swipes but nothing I wouldn't run, this was also virgin brass and I have another few thou longer I can run before mag length is an issue.
Fun caliber to shoot, almost no recoil and pretty accurate so hope it maintains that out to distance!
I using the Data from Hornady 11th edition and was curious what Gordon reloading would give me. I'm using a Hornady 87gn A Max, Starline brass once fired and measured water volume 34.6gn. Powder is Vihtavuori N133 with a 10 shot and .20 grain ladder. Why is it showing over pressure for Hornadys max load. If someone can look at it and see if there is something I inputted wrong. Also it is a 26 inch bolt action. Thank You
Midway had these at a reasonable price so I bought 500. I've had excellent luck using the 77 grain .223 SMKs for years, thousands of them. I built this 6mmARC to replace a .223 heavy barrel AR I've been competing with that is a 1/4moa rifle, but I'd lose matches in high winds with those 77 grainers. Anyway, I tried some LVR loads from the higher end to the mid range with so-so results, so I shot a load ladder using Varget, (and a couple of higher end LVR loads), and had better results with the Varget. I wrote the info on the sheet in the garage on the hood of my old jeep and the picture isn't great, and while I had a string of 4 shots close and one a little out, I think I have a good load at 26.1 grains, and again at 26.4 and 26.5 grains. 26.4 grains had an SD of 2.5 I had racked the rifle for 15 minutes prior to shooting the load at 26.4 as the barrel was getting pretty warm. It through the first shot high left after the cool down.
The 107 SMK is touching the lands at 2.275, so I started with 2.260 COAL for this ladder.
Next weekend I'm going for a 10 shot shoot off between the 105 Berger over LVR and the 107 SMK over Varget at 1/4 mile.
Today I took out my new 6mm ARC build to do the barrel break in and used some Hornady Black and ELD Match. Once the break-in was done, I use some HSM ammo to see what I was getting for the FPS( couldn’t find it on their website).HSM 75 gn A Max was 2982fps, HSM 95gn Berger was 2601 fps and the HSM 95gn SST was 2579fps average. These numbers will probably increase once it is fully broken in.Here are the group with the HSM with the Hornady 75gn and 95gn Bergers.
