Hey Everyone!
Here's my home built 12.5" Pistol and this is a breakdown of its first range trip. I was testing a bunch of defensive ammo to see what it liked and was all shot over a long lunch break before ammo dried up. ;)
My purpose for this pistol was to create a lightweight HD 5.56 that my wife could handle that would also make a good all purpose ranch gun if needed to deal with coyotes or bobcats. I went with FDE because if it ever got dragged into a court, I wanted it to be anything but black. I decided reliability was the most important factor and that balance is more important than overall weight.
I have a 10.5" that's too loud. Using my GoogleFu, it seemed that there's a significant enough jump in velocity from 11.5" to 12.5" to make me decide on a 12.5". During my parts acquisition process, I was having trouble finding a good 12.5" pencil barrel. I'm of the opinion that Gov't profile barrels are stupid for Civilian guns. All they do is add a bunch of unnecessary weight to the end of the barrel on an already front heavy platform, so I refused to encourage their manufacture by buying one. I was really hoping Faxon made a 12.5" Gunner or Pencil but in the end, I couldn't find one under 20oz. Ideally, I wanted a 1:8 twist but I've been interested in a trying a Triarc TRACK barrel for a while so I decided to give it a shot. If anyone makes a 12.5" pencil in a 1:7 or 1:8 twist let me know, I might change barrels later and use this one on another build. I noticed that there wasn't much in the way of info or reviews on Triarc's barrels other than people saying they're great or meh and making claims but no proof. I'm here to provide a sample.