Reply With QuoteWhere did you find the barrel?
358 Gremlin/Grendel. Straight neck up to 358.
They are getting around 2300-2350 with a 180 gr bullet over lilgun with a 17" barrel.
I am having a 20" barrel made. I think this is going to be my night hunting upper to use in combination with a N750 Pulsar NV scope.
AR15 though and now the 3 month wait for a barrel.
Where did you find the barrel?
Have thought about this very thing in passing sometime ago.
That should be a sweet round out of the AR for hogs.....once you get it tested on them...post up some results. I could see this one could get a 2 fer without much trouble. Specially with Barnes bullets.
Barrel is being made by Mcgowen.
A 17" bbl is $220. 20" $240. Talk to Dan.
I am having mine headspaced on a std 7.62x39 bolt (IE not a grendel bolt). Also sent that to Dan.
BFG Cartridge owns the reamer and McGowen has it in storage. You buy the dies from BFG for $150 (ouch) and he will rent you the reamer for $45. Its a no turn neck chamber, supposedly.
So far I form the cases in 3 steps. K+M Expandiron 308 then 338 then run it into the 358 Gremlin die.
Not sure what percentage will need to be fire formed.
To shoot a 180 gr TTSX barnes bullet successfully you will need to pull the tip or turn it down.
Its a really long bullet compared to the Speer but I think the freebore is long enough to load it at the first chanellure.
I dont think you could get 2300 out of it but probably 2150 or 2200. It need 1800 fps to open so you would be limited to about 125 yards or so.
Better would be to fire up the lathe and cut the ass end of the 180 gr TTSX down to create a 160 gr ttsx.
Then you could get about 2400+ out of it and good to about 225 yards. At 225 yards you would have 1050-1100 FPE.
They also make a 358 MPG which is based on a 6.8 SPC shell.
There is always more than one way to skin a cat.While a single pass with 1 reamer would be best, it's also possible to build any Grendel wildcat using a standard Grendel (when going to a larger caliber) reamer with the appropriate bushing along with a neck then throat reamer. The chamberings are limitless then.
I don't like using the AA bolts either......I think it was just a marketing ploy in order to try to corner the market.........which I don't blame him for trying to do.......just didn't like all the BS about how his bolts were the only real way to build a Grendel.
If you have your own lathe and mill there are MANY possible ways to make things work.
The limits on this round will be the AR platform itself. This same round would perform even better from a Striker I would guess. Pressures could be driven higher with a corresponding increase in performance........and a big plus is the recoil wouldn't be too severe for this size of a caliber.
Be sure to report on this one once you get it running....this round has my interest for some reason.
Yeah that was Bill A with his .01" bolt difference making $. He had everything trademarked to death and I dont blame him either
but in all honesty it had been done before. I would prefer a 338-something to shoot the 160 gr barnes, but a guy over at Arfcom that made every wildcat possible based off that shell said this one gave better performance than the 338. Really if you have a reamer and a shell a wildcat 338 is no problem but everything was set up for this.
This is really an Indiana legal deer cartridge as I am sure you are aware.
I have had a lot of different AR Variant uppers, 458 socom, 50 beo, 6.5g,6.8 spc and I had a 25-223 for a while.
25-223 was pretty easy too and that guy has barrels on hand and dies are easy to hack together from redding S.
I kept following the 25/223 thread for quite a while, I finally went the direction of the 6.8 and never looked back. It was real convenient when Bison Arms moved within a few miles from my house. After working up loads for it, I decided it did too much damage on pelts and went back to bolt rifles. Anything larger than a coyote gets the 350 Mag medicine though. I've always been fascinated with the .35's, and can remember at 12 years old drooling over that Model 600 in 350 Mag. Now I'm looking at building a .35 something on a Savage action. The 358 Gremlin might just be the one.
The 35 BFG (WSSM) looks even better but thats going to get expensive.
I am more into the 338 and 375 calibers for some reason.
I have a Model 600 in 338/08, and it's a great chambering too, but I'd rather build something in the .35. Around here, bigger is better. I haven't researched the 35bfg yet, sounds like I need to.
The issue with a WSSM anything (the BFG) is you have to start with a Oly Arms non standard upper that can handle the pressure.
Dtech builds custom WSSM uppers and he is on the web. They run about 1k.
I had an oly 25 wssm upper and it was heavy and way out of balance for an AR15 but it was a 24" bbl.
Last edited by tammons; 12-17-2013 at 11:57 AM.
Have you thought of reloading it using some 160 -180 + gr pistol bullets, at close range they would probably knock a Hog on it's ear for sure !Originally Posted by tammons
wll
Yes I have thought about pistol bullets, like a 180-200 gr LFNGC etc but I have a few fields I hunt in that are 175-200 yards.
Everybody is out of the 180 gr Speer FN bullets, and it looks like the 180 gr spire point pistol bullets are vaporware. The 180 gr TTSX is available and I have 50 but a really long bullet.
I finally found some here in classifieds so I now have 300 180gr Speer FN rifle bullets just for this round.
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