That reply has one or two slight errors that need some clarification.

1. Les Baer never paid a single cent to Alexander Arms to build Grendels.

2. If we did crank up the "fee" it would still be a total value of nothing. We do not actually charge anything for building Grendels or the ammunition. The license was concerned with standardization of the caliber in the absence of SAAMI. A situation that is now remedied.

3. The LBC chamber is not any more accurate, in fact Grendel chambers report more accuracy with a wider range of loads on average.

4. There is no industry load data verified for these non Grendel wildcat chambers and little if any ammunition.

The SAAMI specification is for the 6.5 Grendel. The round was sponsored by Hornady and the technical sign off is for the Grendel dimension under the Grendel name. The information proffered in respect to alternative designations and dimensions is not correct We are somewhat well placed to have this information first hand both from Hornady and SAAMI.

Regarding comments about testing the chambers it is interesting to see this brought out by Tim-W, a gentleman who is intrinsically involved with the 6.8 SPC. Perhaps his testing is not as extensive as is required to fully determine which design offers the best utility across the board. This is understandable as he is primarily concerned with other cartridges.

Conversely as the company who actually draw and created the Grendel, tested multiple prototype chamber designs (including tight necks and traditional throats) not in just singular barrels but in runs, we are probably better placed than anyone to proffer the observations on the chamber designs and what works for this cartridge.

Alexander Arms never charged a fee to Les Baer to build Grendels. The licensing was always an issue of meeting a quality standard, and never involved a fee. Les Baer is free to build whatever he sees fit to build. When he chose to use the trademark Grendel name, he was required simply to build it to the Grendel specification, nothing else was required.

There are no trademark issues so nothing needs to be resolved.

Grendel sales are actually very good and the caliber is booming.

"Wonder" is supposition with no factual basis. Tell me again about the SAAMI process?

We ran a labour day special on lowers. It was extremely well received. 100 only to the first customers with a limit of 2 per person.

We also ran a special on a once a year loading for the Grendel with custom 115 grain Berger projectiles. It was also well received to the extent we oversold. We may actually extend this offering for all those who missed the opportunity to get in on this. We may not be able to quite match the price this time as those Bergers are quite expensive. The ammunition uses Hornady 6.5 Grendel brass and the bullet has the hunting style jacket. Berger agreed to run a custom weight especially for this Alexander Arms loading. Anyone interested should keep an eye on our web site

I am a little familiar with SAAMI and its interaction. We shared a very nice conversation/dinner with Remington about the mechanics and obviously Hornady held our hand all the way through as they were the sponsor. Pushing the Grendel through SAAMi was an eye opening experience as the technical examination includes many aspects that the average observer does not consider. It was a relief to see the chamber and cartridge emerge unscathed and in the same format they entered.

Quiet now Mr. Fortier. I need the sympathy vote, you'll take the edge off the panhandling gig

Actually we are doing well but SHOT show is not really our thing. We tend to roll out at the NRA shows which we attend religiously and where we get the best response as these are open to the public who are really the customers. Usually we just walk the SHOT show and meet with those who we need to see. Fortier alluded to our recent new staff member who we are really pleased to have on board and who is absolutely top notch in his field. This is another step forward for us and the products we manufacture. We expect to be able to formally announce some fairly exciting events and changes in the next few weeks.

While this is not really a variant in the correct sense and should be placed on a different section, but you asked, we have just concluded and launched our 17 HMR conversion and also full AR rifles in this caliber. This product is our latest and also is unique to our company. It offers a more powerful alternative to the 22LR conversion and easily allows targets at 200 to 300 yards to be engaged. While obviously not as cheap as the 22 and not intended for the same type of training it does allow the effects of shooting to longer distances to be examined without the cost associated with a full centre fire. The cartridge is well know in its application to smaller game which gives the rifle a hunting ability in its own right without excessive noise or muzzle blast.

We have been examining the possibility of a 22 WMR but I think I have explained that the conversion from 17 HMR to 22 WMR is nearly as fraught as moving from 22 WMR to 17HMR. Our initial testing indicates that a good conversion would take considerable time and effort so this has been somewhat sidelined while we work on the projects we had scheduled. We have a new large caliber long range weapon system just entering prototype stage and which is now taking a lot of engineering effort.

Sorry I missed the answer about Lapua, Yes we just received the next shipment from Lapua and will continue to work with them not only on the Grendel but also some others. Lapua are an exceptional company to work with and as the Grendel grows we will be moving forward with them.

This morning I spent some time looking at a newly arrived case of Grendel from the new supplier. There is a lot of work to conclude before much more can be posted but again yes we have a new entry in the ammunition field. Not going to be anything like the Lapua we use in our manufacture but I am sure a lot of shooters will welcome this when it starts to hit the shelves.

Yes that summary is correct. The Grendel uses two angles in the throat which allows the bullet to centre in the bore by sitting into the rifling, but set up such that it does not raise the pressures. 6.5 calibers obey a basic rule, "bullet in middle of bore = good accuracy, bullet off centre = bad accuracy. With the case so short the chamber must be incredibly tight to get the gun to shoot well with everything centering from the case. The design is taken from the 6.5x55 which has the long shallow throat running back to the neck transition and also the 303 Enfield. The benifit is that it allows a very loose chamber which is conducive to use with semi automatic, fully automatic mechanisms and laquer coated/sealed cases. It provides an excellent level of accuracy ( as good as anything tested) and we were surprised to see that it is also headspace tolerant.

The neck is 0.300" diameter and the equivelent freebore( not realized for seating bullets) is 0.178"

The 264 uses a regular freebore of 0.120" length and a 0.295" neck. This configuration was amongst those originally tested and when applied in a high end barrel can, by careful component selection, provide excellent accuracy. In our tests in several hundreds of  barrels the chamber was not a robust solution for a production gun that might not sport a hand selected cut rifled barrel. Being part of the very early tests we also did not take the time to thoroughly match the chamber to the case dimensions. This has shown up to some extent with the rash of these clone chambers that would not accept the Hornady Grendel ammunition and brass. Problems ranged from interferance at the neck shoulder junction  to headspacing on the case mouth.

The Grendel bolt is actually also the Beowulf bolt. Originally faced with the 0.058 thick rim, which is desirable for bigger cases for a more robust purchase, this demanded that the extractor slot be widened. The back of the slot must be level with the bolt face so material can only be romoved forwards which leaves an intangibly thin extractor hook. The solution has its origin in the early Colt Sporter and the reference surface is moved backwards to allow the slot to widen without removing the material from the hook. We have probably, over the years made well over 60,000/70,000 of these units. The bolt tail is extended by the equivelent amount to allow compatibitiy with the regular firing pin. The striking position for the hammer remains well inside the possible tolerance stack. Generally there are a lot of these bolts as most of the large machine houses now use our prints for this bolt size. I would expect the 264 to use this style of bolt as the prints were furnished to LBC as part of the drawing pack together with a list of the suppliers.

Again I did not fully answer the question. The 123 grain is a flagship projectile but is not always optimum. Despite the slight drop in Bc by moving to lighter bullets the additional velocity gain can quickly offset this in the 107-110 grain range. The loading densities are frequently more appealing and for the handloader with canister powders this is an easier palce to start.

Conversley for hunting applications (bigger game animals) going heavier is, for the intermediate cartridge, better. Sectional energy is required for less than optimum shots frequently encountered in the field. The 120 through 140 grain range is well suited for this caliber and easily loaded

Thank you for the interesting reference

We are not going to field a 17 HMR, we are already fielding it. The unit uses an 18" barrel with a 1/2-28 threaded muzzle. This was shown in our testing to be about the most efficient for the cartridge. We have run this both with and without suppresion with no function issues. It worked out to be quite an involved conversion as we needed not only the upper but also a mag block, extended mag latch, recoil cassette, magazines and even a chamber brush. The uptake has been nothing short of stellar for this product so perhaps I worried too much about the costs. Demand has been so high that we now run a 17 HMR designated lower in which the block is cross pinned so it is legal for California without the use of a mag button. Mags are 10 round currently.

Interestingly this has taken nearly 3 1/2 years to get to a position where we are actually confident with the design during this time we built upwards of 20 prototypes not including some rebuilds and shot well over 50,000 rounds of ammunition. The longer pressure duration is problematic and demands a careful system balance if it is to work well. To date the only field problems seen have been in guns fitted with two stage or target triggers ( the stock conversion is designed for regular hammers). The lighter hammer and spring weights allow excessive bolt acceleration which causes the bolt to loose control of the empty case at too high an incident. We have just completed testing a heavy replacement buffer which will be an optional replacement for those customers who wish to run such fire control groups.

The 22 WMR you are interested in, was easy to balance for bolt speed but this cartridge does not want to feed reliably. The long parallel case can be persuaded to shuck from the magazine into the chamber but lead nose bullets cause failures. Working prototypes are easy, but a production route for the ramping on the barrel is not easy to achieve in a robust manner suitable for mass production. This is not to say the project is abandoned just we are already scheduled to work on the new weapons system and never intended to dive into the 22 WMR.

The information is probably available on this forum if you ask in the rimfire section. We are aware of Remingtons position.

Our challenge in this system was to isolate the problems and negate or solve them. One cannot stop the occasional rim failure but the gun design should easily absorb the effects without damage to itself or the shooter. Additional work to ensure safety is a must and the situation with Remington left an extremely critical customer base so any new weapon must be as close to perfect as possible. It was not an option to launch a system with teathing problems and then rectify these as they became prevelent. Regardless we have have seen the fire control problem (target triggers) which we did not anticipate. The development time reflects the amount of testing required.

The 17 HMR cartridge is no more or less dangerous than any other rimfire. Peak pressure is 26,000 psi  and most cartridges work as designed. There is a slight incidence of rim failure per any rimfire and there are also odd squib loads. (about 1 in 10,000). The gun must be well balanced and this will tend to show the variation of loading in any particular batch (ejection patern) The round exibits a strange recoil impulse which is abusive to the recoil spring  if the unit is not well designed.

The earliest work on necking rimfires I know of can be traced to the Eley facility. They built a 20 cal (not verified) on the 22 LR case but not as a commercial venture. I am not aware of any larger caliber rimfires which were necked but this is a lack of knowledge rather than a definative statement. Research into the early inside primed cases may show such cartridges existed before Eley's work.