Welp looked around the gun room and in the parts bucket a while back and saw I had enough parts to toss together a new upper without buying much new .


And decided to see what all the fuss was about when it came to the " new " .22 ARC....

And No the concept isn't new ..... Yes ,its roughly just a Sammi spec'ed .22 ppc/.22 coyote/.22 Grendel....y'all get the picture. Yeah you can make some arguments about shoulder angles and what not Hornady goes into a lot of details on there podcast.....but eghhhh.... Basically 6.5 grendel necked down to shoot heavy weight ..22 cal bullet out of a short action or mainly now an AR15.... I've built and played with the 6.5 Grendel , the 6mm Arc , so why not this lil dude ..... Alot of people also keep saying it's the closest thing you'll get to a 22-250 out of a SMALL FRAME so thought it would be neat to have both to compare.

Anyhow it's 3a.m I can't sleep and not trying to wake the wife up so, just another one of my rambling lil posts for y'all who enjoy them .

So the core of this lil build is gonna be this 20" barrel from BCA ... They had a free shipping deal on all barrels so almost had too lol


Funny enough this is about the same barrel as my .22-250... Well except for the twist rate and chambering of course . But out the box it's .... Well it's a $100 barrel threads where a little out and it don't seem to have all the oil and grease the last few I got had but hay









And a few shots of inside the barrel out the box







And cleaning . The rows left to right are wet patches of hoppes ,dry patches , patches with JB bore paste, short stroked all the way though the barrel , dry patches , hoppes wet patches ,dry patches , then two alcohol patchesand imo cleaned up pretty good , still a few little spots but most of the barrel is mirror shiny now

Now that that's don can start with assembly with the help of my real avid kit

So doing something a little different... Usually I'll grease the barrel extension to help it from locking up and becoming a pain to remove....buuut been reading and chatting with more and more " precision" AR builders and a lot of them will "bed " the barrels to the receiver in some way. I've seen thermo fitting withwrw the upper is hated the barrel is cooled so thh have a rock solid fit when they come to temp after assembling. I've seen one guy use a thin layer of JB weld on the extension and a crap load of release agent in the upper , kind alike how you do with a bedding job on a bolt gun. Some guys even just use nail polish..... Well apparently 620 green loctite is across the board agreed to be a pretty decent deal to use ..so


This upper is pretty tight so pretty sure I don't need this stuff but hay ... experiments ! And no one really say how much to use but you need to use a torch to get it off regardless so I just send a bush to give it a thin layer and spun the barrel as I put it int he upper to spread it out .. hopefully evenly.

The the usual AERO shell grease on the threads for the barrel nut



Then torque down the nut.... These thing can have torque rating from 30-80lbs across the board if theres no manufacturer specs...and I don't even know who made this one so just gonna go to 40-50lbs



Now that's on just gotta slap on the gas system, which I had to assemble. Actually bought this adjustable one from gendel Hunter.com.for my .22-250 but since it works it's just been on the shelf... End up it for. Come with the roll pin I need so had to steal it off another old gas block


Slapped that on and stole the BCG out my 6.5.grendal since .22 arc uses the same bolt face and yeah gonna run it in my all purpose lower


And gotta give it a function test before a paint job but other then the scope new upper is done .

6.5mm is 0.255. 6mm is .236. Both are within a credit card thickness of .22 already.

Be cheaper to wake her up...

But this one is faster-er

I wanted one but realized I really didn’t “need” one. I went with a bolt action .243 instead as a primary coyote rifle. Maybe if I lived or hunted a different part of the country I’d go to “needing” one.

Shoot I don't need 90% if my collection

I have to “justify” it to myself before I start dropping money on things. I have a LOT of wants, lol, but very few needs.

Looking forward to the report on this one

Man, that gas port would drive my ocd off the rails.

Would have posted more but been at a fair with the wife and in-laws all day....but stuck at the house with no ride tomorrow so I'll have time to play with it , and that .22-250 again . But got bras prep all done played with forming some brass from 6.5 grendel and 7.62x 39

Think that one's bad look at the knee in the 22-250 from a moth ago

So brass ... Was thinking of buying 6.5 grendel and forming it but .22 arc wasn't much more so


And I don't have any factory ammo this time so gotta try and figure some stuff out... Mainly just need to see how much I need to resize the brass...but after doing a lil fit test with a life out the box.... If chambers with 0 resistance
.. I just fit a piece in the bolt and slide it in. Press the BCG in with my thumb till it clicks in place. Shouldn't take any real effort. If it does it's too big and these are good out the bag





Still went and full length refused just to be safe though. I'll do more when I actually get some fire formed cases



And un sized vs sized


Anyway size then all wert tumbled and tossed them in the oven before trimming and all that ...pretty cut and dry but .... Saw I had some old Grendel brass on the bench so.....


And everything I've seen is ya just use a good lube and run it in the ARC die



So lil imperial



Little bump in



All the way


And got a bit of a roll at the bottom on the neck ..realized I'd have to get the die down a little.more



Alrighty


Aannnndd fits perfectly



So went and made up 10 of them just because


Also had some 7.62x39 on the bench , and since folks used to use that to make Grendel .....


Yeaaahhh but too big of step down , had to go 7.62x39-6.5 grendel -.22ARC
[img]https://trapperman.com/forum/attach...-34110-273668-img_20251101_215754532.jpg[/img]
[img]https://trapperman.com/forum/attach...-34110-273669-img_20251101_215939276.jpg[/img]

Worked but the shoulder would need to be fire formed and blown out ... I guess
[img]https://trapperman.com/forum/attach...-34110-273670-img_20251101_220051928.jpg[/img]

Alrighty work with me here been running around like a chicken with my head cut off dealing with the house last two days so trying to play catch-up

So primed them up with some.mag tech 7 1/2's



So as far as powder and load data gonna be running out of the Hornady 11th ( I got the phone app) as. Going to be using some Leverevolution. One this is a Grendel based case and this stuff is supposed to be some of the best powder out there for Grendel and two , is has some of the most range for .22 ARC then about any other power . Both with bullet weights and velocity range per weight. O and I'm running gas gun data for a 68 hr bullet ... I'm using a 69 gr RMR but it should get me in the ball park



And it's a ball powder which ..I don't like but hay ...it's supposed to be great stuff so I'll give it a good try before I complain

And I'm using the next load from the start ..just because I don't think I've ever had a starting load shoot well and usually I'll need more gas it seems. Dosen't fill up a ton below the shoulder a bit


Now for some reason....unlike usually I didnt make a split case to find my jam.. usually I'll take a pice of brass cut the neck so I can slip a bullet in with a lil tension.. put that in the bolt chamber it and when the bullet hits the lands it will slide back in the case and volume you know where you hit the rifling....well here I just kept adjusting the die till my round chambered without any real force. And our first five rounds

And a 5.56 load I make with the same bullet as a comparison


Also decided to give them all a crimp ..was trying to just give the a hair of a crimp but....yeahhh, but much and was tweaking them..but these are sighters so no biggie

And the mag... So I couldn't find my Grendel may any where but I found this 7.62x39 mag ad since there about the same case I figured it would work...

Ok the set up


And some some goofy stuff to bore sight at 50yd




So first few two rounds actually works just fine....at least from where I was sitting . Shot the first, boom slung the case about 4 O clock

Picked up the second shot it ,but..it felt off... Now what I count see at the time was we started short stroking. BCG isn't coming back all the way to get the next round . Just enough I eject but not cycle


And this keep up and honestly I thought it was just the mag till


Yeah super dooper fun time


Anyhow bore sight target and velocity for .. whatever it's worth

Keep up the good work, I enjoy checking out what you're working on.

On a side note, why do you say you're not a fan of ball powder?

WD91, the target you are showing, is that 50 or 100 yard groups?

Ok so I'm gonna keep it a buck with y'all...I'm kinda an idiot because for the next 15-20 Rd I just keep thinking it was the mag and then it was because wasn't giving it enough gas . Shee this is the first build that I purposely put an adjustable gas block in so I was just chocking it up to not knowing how to set it right so I kept adjusting



.... Till watched three videos on how to use the thing , got it all the way open and I got this


And before that found out my seating depth was a lil too far out because ....yeahhh


.... Fun fun fun
Anyhow those groups from that first cluster

Went in cleaned her out readjusted and at this point I'm kinda sick of this fancy adjustable block so stripped one the mil spec one off my Grendel and put it on . Made sure to use my bore scope to make sure it was aligned


But something don't look quite right when I got it all aligned...... This things gas port is drill off center !


Well this is the stuff you get when you buy dirt cheap parts so egh...
Anyhow went out with the up dated rounds and ( also stopped crimping along with seating bullets deeper )
and boom no more short stroking !


And proceeded to single feed the rest by plopping one in and pushing it into the chamber with my pinky before sending it home. And that gave us


Well was running out of light but ran 15rd all with prefer last round lock backs so I wondered to my self if the problem was simply the gas block wasn't aligned.....if I had any good sense I would have checked that before I took it off but ...yeah never said I was the brighter light in the chandelier ... As a friend says lol... So I popped it back on and made sure it was aligned with the bore scope


And since it was getting dark and didn't have a target up I loaded up some of those converted cases just to test



And just because it's such a pain to move and Im just blasting into the berm I just took the handguard off


And opened it up a lil and after like two shots I got a last round hold open so YAY !


And got here tuned up so it gave me a nice lil 3'Oclock ejection

O and the brass left is a unfired .22 ARC middle is a fit formed ARC and the end is a fire formed converted Grendel

Just 50 YD sight in. I bore sight At 50yd the run a few rounds on it to try and get centered up before I go to 100yd .