Thread: 6.5 Grendel Bolt action

A bit of an update on the Grendel scene. I have been mucking around over winter with this project when time allowed.
The whole thing started life as a spare Sako A1 bolt I bought off a forum member, thought it might come in handy one day. Well that one day came when I spied on Tardme a Sako Vixen less a bolt, which I secured for a stupidly small figure of money. Barrel was rooted by rust but the rest was retrievable to make something. I'd also obtained from another forum member a used Stug CF stock, so I had some good ingredients.
The 6.5 Grendel thing popped into my head one day and after a few enquiries I worked out it was capable of being adapted to the Vixen action with an enlargement of the bolt face and a few other mods with the mag to make it feed ok (Sako actually made these in PPC, which is essentially the parent case of the Grendel). I bought a new later model mag box out of the States for the factory PPC Sako made, so at least I had the correct parts to work with. A local friend who's a bit of a genius with the CNC gear milled the action to suit the wider box. Next bit was the barrel, another TM buy and then off to the smith.

This is the assortment before going to the smith.


Action after milling


And the bits assembled in the modified stock ready to go for a test fire


Barrel is an MAB 1:8 cut to 17" and threaded. My chambering is actually known as a .264 LBC, which is really a Grendel with a 0.295 neck and parallel throat, not stepped throat as per later Grendel. I bought the reamer out of the states when I got the mag box, along with dies.
Test rounds proved to shoot ok with CFE223 & 123gr Amax, though I didn't get too tech on it as I just wanted to make sure it worked before sending it out to get Ceracoted, where it is now. So hopefully I'll have it back in a couple of weeks for final assembly and load development.