Sorry, couldn't resist!
After a few months of waiting, stalling, ignoring, and just being lazy I finally got my 6.5 BRX project done. For years I stood by my stance that ARs are the most boring gun in the world. Then I became a little more familiar with the Grendel/264 LBC and I began to soften a bit on my stance. Once I got my little CZ 527 in 264 LBC built I realized that for an itty bitty little case, the LBC/Grendel could really perform pretty well. After shooting the 264 out to about 900 yards I felt like I needed a little more.
With a little gentle encouragement from a few guys who are more than happy to help me waste my money, we decided that I needed to build an AR. The obvious choice was the LBC. Since I consider myself an elitist gun hipster who has to have something that's not too "main stream" the LBC in an AR wouldn't work. While trying to come up with wildcat that would function through an AR-15 sized gun I kept coming back to the 6 BR case. It's the perfect length and it's about as fat as a case can be before you have to deal with a rebated rim in the AR platform. I was familiar with the 6 Dasher and 6 BRX from when I used to shoot bench rest so they seemed like the perfect fit. As it turns out I was a few years late to that party and AR-15 Performance beat me to it. I ordered up one of the ARP 6.5 BRX barrels with the matching bolt and barrel extension and was good to go.
After that I picked up a matched billet upper and lower from Grizz Precision and it all sat in my safe for a few months.
Some recent events re-ignited the project so we finally got around to slapping it together. I can build a Savage on the tailgate of my truck using parts I find on the floor in my garage (which I've done
) but assembling an AR is out of comfort zone so I farmed that work out the a guy who we will refer to as Gunsmith X. This is mostly because he doesn't have time to assemble a bunch of parts for everyone else since he has a bunch of way cooler projects that he really needs to hurry up and finish because I'm tired of waiting and it's taken way to long and now I wish it would just be done so he can move on to the next project because I'm already bored with the next three ideas that he has.
WHOOH! now I have to catch my breath!
So here it is; I don't really know what most of the parts are though. I gave some random guy a bunch of money and told him to build something nice. My only request was that it use an A2 style stock so that it handles better when shot off of a rear rest.
The barrel is a 20" helical fluted Criterion from ARP. The scope on there now is a Sightron SIII 3.5-10. I think it's a pretty good match.
The 6.5 BRX will beat the Grendel by a pretty easy 200 FPS. My formed cases have a 16%+ advantage over my Hornady Grendel brass and come in 17% behind the my 6.5x47 Lapua brass (formed from Win 22-250 cases). I got some brass formed this morning and I'll try and get some full power loads tested later today. Here's a formed BRX next to a Grendel.
You can see where the old shoulder on the 6 BR case was before fireforming. Forming brass was pretty easy. Just run a Lapua 6 BR case over a 7mm expander and then neck it down with a .286 bushing to create a false shoulder. Then I load them up with 31gr of Varget and a 123 A-max. All 30 shots I fired went into about .5" at 50 yards while getting the scope sighted in and forming brass. Fire forming rounds feed and cycle through the action with no problem. The rifle has an adjustable gas block so I followed Gunsmith X's advice and started with the gas block pretty much closed and then slowly opened it until the bolt would lock back after a shot. Every round after the adjustment cycled and ejected perfectly. I'm using a 10 round 6.8 SPC mag and it will hold 6 rounds comfortably. You can cram a 7th in there but the mag bulges just enough that it drags while trying to insert it.
I'm going to load up and head back out as soon as the brass gets out of the tumbler and I get it all annealed. The next round of testing will be full power loads with a 130 Accubond.
