Very excited about this (and I'm a bit jaded when it comes to AR builds
) as most of the parts and components have come in, though the barrel and bolt still haven't arrived. Not sweating that since if this ARP barrel is anywhere near as good as the 6.8 I bought recently--this should be a stellar build and well worth the wait.
The only slight drawback is that there is no factory ammo or reloading dies available for the 6mm predator (yet--hornady should have dies out in the fall), but the ARP website suggests using a grendel bushing die with a .268 bushing and replacement 6mm expander. My first go with a bushing die--and I'm happy to report that it worked perfectly--resizing looks as good as a custom die and neck tension on the bullets was perfect and consistent through every cartridge.
Coming up with theoretically appropriate loads seems easy enough, I just took the grendel data in quickload and used it as a starting point and adjusted everything down for the 6mm bullets and saved as a new entry for 6mm predator. Since these are my "first break-in" cartridges, I didn't even push the loads to the "wild side" but QL projects I should be getting in range of 2800 fps and 1700 ftlbs of energy at the muzzle. That is very respectable for a charge of under 30 grs. in an AR 15 platform.
These are 95 gr ballistic silvertips driven by 8208 XBR.
