My first Ar15 was an RRA NM lower upon which I built a Blackthorne, yes the lowly Blackthorne 24" stainless steel bull 5.56 upper. It shot 1-2 MOA with Lake City XM193, but much better with 55gr Hornady Vmax reloads. I'm not into the 5.56 like a lot of folks are and it sat in my safe most of the time. When I got interested in the Grendel, I bought an AR Stoner (E.R. Shaw) 24" Stainless Steel Bull barrel and AA bolt on sale for $339.00 plus used a free shipping coupon from Midway. It took maybe an hour start to finish to change the Blackthorne over. The bore finish was the best I've ever gotten in an AT15 barrel. I don't know if Shaw hand laps tham or what, but a dry patch went through like a knife through cold butter. A wet patch produced no residue. I also bought a Ross brake for it. Not for taming it as it's quite tame already, but to allow me to stay on target with oone of my 6-24 scopes. Anyway, having done my homework, I loaded up some Hornady brass with both Amax 123gr bullets and 140gr bullets and proceeded to the range. After sighting in the 123s, I got consistent groups like this at 2600 fps:
I then sighted in the 140s and got these groups with the best being at 2200 fps:
Those are dime sized bullseyes at 100 yards and essentially right out of the box. Folks who had dropped some serious money on big name Grendels do about as well.
If you're used to throwing around specifications of larger, magnum class calibers like the 450b, those velocities and bullet weights sound wimpy. But folks have taken some large game with this caliber, some at outrageous ranges. With the high BCs inherent in the .264 bullet family, it just doesn't shed velocity very fast and it bucks the wind with equal effectiveness. As I said before, it can make anyone feel like Vassili Zaitsev.
If you need to shoot a
flying ashtray, by all means get one of those also, but the 6.5 Grendel fills a good niche in one's AR15 collection. The 5.56 bull barrel sits on a shelf now.
You can purchase manufactured ammunition anywhere from $12.50 to $17.00 a box, with the latter being the high priced spread. For a caliber that has taken Elk and Dall Sheep, that's quite reasonable.
Hoot