Looks good Cold.  What are you calling that camo pattern.......new one on me?  What kind of bullet grain are you going to use and at what fps?

Very nice.

Would that be predators like foxes and yotes or Predators like the movie?  It looks like it could go either way.  Very nice rifle, and even nicer goodies, both inside and on top.  I will be very interested to see how your 6 stacks up against the 6x45, bullet performance wise.  I am betting that you will be able to run all of the fun, heavy sexy streamlined bullets that I can only dream about with the 6x45......

Speaking of dreaming, I really do need to paint my QCB affair, and all of my barrels and optics, but I cannot get up the nerve to try.  I just cannot get the gumtion worked up to paint my NF scope.  Maybe I will, after seeing yours.  I am torn between the "operator" krylon approach, and the showroom "carshow" approach you have taken.  Yours looks VERY nice.

Craig

Quoted: Here is the link (note you need to be a member to read the boards, registration is free)6.8 SPC necked to 6mm

I just registered! Now I wonder why it seems the sun is growing dark and the moon is turning blood red? Did I do something wrong???

John

| 6.5 Grendel: The State-of-the-Art Combat Cartridge. |

www.65grendel.com

John,

Play nice, now! We need all the brotherhood we can find if we are going to keep our rifles after the next election!

Bill

OOhh, purple and yellow.  My college colors.  Probably not for my gun, but I can appreciate competition guns standing out a bit.  Syops stuff and all.  I have played with Moly Resin on 1911's and a bit on my QCB, but only in black.  It is good stuff, but I get a little hinky when I think about baking a Night Force scope at 300 degrees  I am an old hand at rattle can stuff, for Bow Hunting.  If I end up hunting deer or elk this year with the 458, I likely will break out some paint.

Thanks for clarifying the post.  I thought it was your gun.

Craig

That is suppose to be a very good comp round.  John Hollnger did is doing a lot of work with it.    He calls it the 6 mmWOA.  At first they were only using Hrdy case as that was what they could get I guess but now with the stronger and larger capacity SSA cases it allows for another 2 grain more of powder whihc is a good amount in such a small case with the light 6 mm bullets. Since the LR shots are single load using the high BC long bullets is not a hindrance.

purple and yellow? why no pics? tease

Heck, the first thing I did to this 6mm SPC rig the day I got it was break it down and DuraCoat it, new NightForce and all.  I bought it to use and a bit of paint on it doesn't affect that any.  I prefer the camo look anyhows.  I have only been shooting for load development thus far and nothing over the chrono, but I anticipate that it will shoot a 55 grain Nosler around 3500.  I had this gun built to shoot coyotes with and will be shooting the lightweight bullets out of it for the most part.  Everything will be under 75 grains with the 55 grain Nosler BT as my number one favorite.  A lot of folks getting this caliber are doing it to punch paper.  I will be punching fur.

For those that mentioned Krylon, the rifle pictured below is a Krylon jobber.  Krylon works, but it nowhere near as durable and easy to work a good pattern as something like DuraCoat is.  I just ain't going to spray a 4K dollar gun with Krylon although it is effective and lasts fairly well when prepped right.

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii66/abowhunr/Remington243_2.jpg

Another Krylon Jobber on the AR15 bushy

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii66/abowhunr/AROnGrass.jpg

A pair of twin coyote killers in DuraCoat.  Both .204 Ruger

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii66/abowhunr/TwinCoyoteKillers.jpg

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii66/abowhunr/204AR15_Two.jpg

The same bolt gun as shown above, but this time in digital DuraCoat

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii66/abowhunr/90ec58d1.jpg

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii66/abowhunr/9c7a2fde.jpg

A BushMaster Predator wearing a DuraCoat pattern.

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii66/abowhunr/cgAR15_1.jpg

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii66/abowhunr/cgAR15_2.jpg

As you can see, I ain't afraid of no paint :)

Have fun and good shooting to all.

Quoted: Quoted: As you can see, I ain't afraid of no paint :) Have fun and good shooting to all. Want to paint my 50? Nice, very nice, paint jobs!

I agree!  I don't typically like painting guns, but those look truly professional!  Damn nice sticks...

ARPredatorhunter,

Welcome aboard, and thanks for sharing your passion with us.  Being a VHA member, and a bit of a varmint addict, I can understand why the light bullets screaming down range.  But, I see that you have the 204 to cover thin skinned pelts pretty well, so why the 6 with light bullets?  If you can get the 55's clocking 3500 fps, that will indeed be pretty exceptional performance.  In doing the math with my 6x45 against the 556 I seem to recollect that you actually loose some ballistics performance by not using a bit of the weight advantage of the larger caliber.  Perhaps your speed will help overcome this?

I am also curious as to the twist of your barrel, and whether or not you had your throat/leade fiddled with to accomodate the lighter bullets?  And, how is the sight picture upon recoil with this puppy.  I find myself always trying to balance bullet weight, recoil and sight picture when deciding on calibers and projectile weights.

Thanks, and again, you have some pretty darn nice hardware there.

Craig

I am also a long time VHA member.  The 204 was a spur of the moment purchase from my buddy and it is a backup gun and possible woods gun in my thinking.  I mostly bought it so that if I had a buddy who wanted to go hunting and didn't have a good gun then they can use this one.  It shoots about 1/2 inch groups easily and that will work.  The 6mm SPC will be my number one go to coyote gun.  I prefer the 6mm for coyote hunting over the 204 or 223 etc.  I have spent a lot of years hunting with a 243 shooting that same 55 grain bullet except it was going about 4100 fps so this 6mm is a step down, but that is just fine with me.

Frankly, I just wanted to have a custom predator rifle built and an AR15 is just near ideal.  Now the choice of the caliber for me was to have a 6mm of some flavor that would fit within an AR15 platform and I mostly chose this particular setup just because.  There are other choices like the 243 WSSM and 6mmAR that would shoot faster, but I like to watch my bullets hit the target so that weighed into. This caliber coupled with the heavy gun I had built allows this easily.

People who had this caliber really loved it and it has a history of being pretty accurate which is important to me.  99% of all my coyotes are killed under 500 yards with the likely average distance being 150 - 200 yards.  I already know that this particular setup is not an ideal setup for most coyote hunting, but I like this style of rifle so that is what I got and to heck with practical.  A large part of it all is really likeing what you are carrying so again ... to heck with being practical.  I carried around a near 20 pound coyote rifle for the past 10 years so this is actually lighter at 13 pounds :)

The 204 setup is actually more close to ideal for a calling rifle for most folks, but for what I do the heavy accurate gun works well nuff.  I also like the extra wallop that comes from the 6mm over that of the 204 and the fact that I can gear it up a bit and shoot some long stuff if I choose to.  I should be able to stabilize up to about a 95 grain bullet.  I already know that 70 grainers will punch a 5 shot hole less than a half inch at 100 and that is just testing stuff, and I may well end up shooting them when all is said and done.

The twist of the barrel is a 1:10 and I explained to the gunsmith that I would be mostly shooting only mag length or shorter ammo and my preference is to shoot nothing heavier than about 70 grains with a strong preference for 55 grain Noslers.  The 55 grainers will certainly get to at least 3500.  The gunsmith shot a lighter load with a 58 grainer and it was already pushing that.  

You talk about the balance.  Well this gun IS the balance to me.  It has it all.  I did my little bit of homework and decided upon this as my new baby and I don't regret it at all.  It will serve it's purpose well for years to come.  Anytime you can get a mag fed semi auto to shoot under a half inch 5 shot groups while shooting from the prone position off of bipods then IMO you got a winner.

Quoted: Would that be predators like foxes and yotes or Predators like the movie?  It looks like it could go either way.  Very nice rifle, and even nicer goodies, both inside and on top.  I will be very interested to see how your 6 stacks up against the 6x45, bullet performance wise.  I am betting that you will be able to run all of the fun, heavy sexy streamlined bullets that I can only dream about with the 6x45...... Speaking of dreaming, I really do need to paint my QCB affair, and all of my barrels and optics, but I cannot get up the nerve to try.  I just cannot get the gumtion worked up to paint my NF scope.  Maybe I will, after seeing yours.  I am torn between the "operator" krylon approach, and the showroom "carshow" approach you have taken.  Yours looks VERY nice. Craig

 I understand your concenrs of camoing an expensive scope. You might check out the guys who paint custom bikes or cars in your area and see how much they would charge you for a pro job. The bike guys are experienced with small part painting.

Thanks for the detailed reply.  Boy, we do indeed have a lot in common.  I always wondered, after my first varmint outting with an AR why the VHA magazine was not full of AR articles.  For a varmint gun, the platform is very hard to beat, especially in a big PD town.  The ability to reach pretty far out there, the ability to see and call shots, and follow-up shots with a quality trigger and glass that almost have to be seen to believe, man, what's not to love.

My 6x45 is also a 1:10, and I have managed to stablize up to 110 grains (Speer Grand Slam).  Where you have me beat is with the pointed high BC bullets that I cannot use for magazine length bullets, in the 90-95 grain range.  I ordered my 6x45 as mostly a antelope rig, with the ability to do double duty on varmints.  I have been very happy with the Barnes 85 TSX, as it fits nicely in my magazines.  My groups have not been quite as tight as yours, but only slightly larger.  I have not played with anything lighter than about 70-75 grains, but your post has got me thinking that I might need to try some 55 grain bullets.  I have been a little hesitant to get too crazy with my 6 for varminting, as I have a BM 556 NM chrome lined barrel that I tweaked handloads to the point of pretty consistent .5 moa groups with Ballistic Silver Tip bullets.  Along with what I posted above, it is hard not to like a barrel/AR combination that allows me to shoot high volume without worry of cleaning or destroying a barrel.

I am running an MGI QCB upper on my system, for all of my barrels and calibers, with a Night Force Scope and Geiselle trigger.  I too do not get too hung up on velocity, as the scope makes long range adjustments and shots pretty easy.  I have not been too terribly excited about the 6.8 in its native configuration.  Nothing wrong with it, just not anything I feel is worth my effort to stock up on new mags and bullet size/weights.  Your posting of the 6.8 necked to 6mm certainly has got me thinking.  Thanks.

Craig

edit- 24K,

Thanks for the tip.  I live in a pretty small town, and am not sure I would trust anyone here to do a proper professional job.  And I am pretty sure with the politics here that if I walked into our one and only bike shop and asked about painting a gun we would end up in a shouting match about the war, Rumsfeld and guns  I have the moly resin process nailed down pretty well, my biggest problem is that I have one upper and lower and 5 barrrels.  I have been mulling over whether everything would need to be painted.

Now if you really want to get the thinking cap on then think about a 22 SPC.  The gunsmith is talking about building one of those up too after he builds himself a 6mm SPC like mine.  He says the 22 SPC ought to be able to get near 22 250 ballistics in an AR15 platform, and I might end up with one of those myself if he goes ahead and has the reamer done.  

As for painting things like you are talking about.  Camo everything except for the swap out parts and then solid color those.  You might even do them in a different color to distinguish by sight.  There are a lot of folks that will camo paint up your gun for ya if you sent the thing out to them.  A bit pricey though.  There is also an even pricier option of having the thing film dipped for an exact camo match to popular patterns.

Quoted: Now if you really want to get the thinking cap on then think about a 22 SPC.  The gunsmith is talking about building one of those up too after he builds himself a 6mm SPC like mine.  He says the 22 SPC ought to be able to get near 22 250 ballistics in an AR15 platform, and I might end up with one of those myself if he goes ahead and has the reamer done.   As for painting things like you are talking about.  Camo everything except for the swap out parts and then solid color those.  You might even do them in a different color to distinguish by sight.  There are a lot of folks that will camo paint up your gun for ya if you sent the thing out to them.  A bit pricey though.  There is also an even pricier option of having the thing film dipped for an exact camo match to popular patterns.

Have you price checked the film dipping method?  I don't think I've ever seen a firearm done with that process, but I've seen some other stuff done...

Yes I have price checked the film dipping.  It will run you near 5 bills to get a full out job done on everything scope and all.

Quoted: Yes I have price checked the film dipping.  It will run you near 5 bills to get a full out job done on everything scope and all.

Eeeek, I thought it would be up there.  Oh well, I'd rather buy another upper or lower with that money!

Having somebody DuraCoat them for you isn't none too cheap either as it is time consuming and the paint is expensive.  If a person wants an exact duplicate of a pattern though the film dipping is the way to go.