I know just enough about AR's to be dangerous to myself so please bear with my ignorance. I have an itch to put together a 6.5 Grendel but I don't know how it should be best set up. I'm looking to build it without a heavy investment in case I find that the cartridge is just not for me. This being said I am looking to purchase a 16"barrel from Bear Creek Arsenal but all of the ones I'm looking at are set up for a carbine length gas system. Will the Grendel function correctly with carbine length gas? I don't want to have to play with the buffer weight or other tweaks and tricks to try to make it run. I doubt I'll ever do more than shoot out to 300 or 400yds max and that to only punch holes in paper or inanimate targets (water filled milk jugs and such.) And if it strikes my fancy to do so I might hunt whitetails with it if I can develop a load with an appropriate bullet. (And I'll keep it to 200yds or less. By the way it will be a lighter weight carbine so the heavier barrels they have are out of the running for me.

All that just to ask will a carbine length gas system work well with the 6.5Grendel? Thanks for any insight you may have!

Bear Creek should be at the top of your DO NOT BUY list.

Their barrels are junk.

Carbine gas on a Grendel, again, just say no unless you are going with a short, pistol build.

Grendel's tend to shine at the longer barrel lengths, so the tendency of most builders is to go with an 18 or 20 inch barrel in rifle gas.


To me, budget, light weight, first carbine screams something in 5.56. You have a lot more options, and plenty of decent 16" barrels with mid length gas in your price range.

Bear Creek is mostly junk and they are probably going to have delivery problems - they just lost a pretty large percentage of their workforce in an INS raid!

Check out 65Grendel forums if you really want to read about Grendels.

Thanks guys. I remember reading about the raid on the place now that you mention it. Another "if it seems too good to be true..." And so my search continues.

I picked up a BCA barrel for a project I'm doing, but it's not a standard AR. If you google "300 solo blaster" i'm pretty much doing that.

I had some criteria that were a lot tougher to meet than I realized (grin)

7 twist, carbine gas (so the barrel could be cut back without having to plug a gas port), and under $100. The BCA fit the bill. Haven't finished the build yet as I got sent to TX for a month (yay sheppard is so much fun) but should be pretty close to finishing it next month.

Just gotta figure out how to drill through a bolt carrier.....that [bleep]'s hard (grin)

"Just gotta figure out how to drill through a bolt carrier.....that [bleep]'s hard (grin)"

Cobalt bit, turned as slow as your drill press will go.

There are a couple good entry level barrels in the classifieds now.

The one I have works fine. It's the stuff you're looking at. It's just a truck gun, though. Low cost was a primary goal on that build. I've only ever shot steel case out of that one.

If you're going to shoot deer, I suggest a 20" barrel and rifle length instead. Pick up a barrel and bolt from 65grendel.com group buys. Or a Ballistic Advantage and Toolcraft bcg. Those are your reasonable quality vs cost options.

What are you trying to do to the bolt carrier? I may be able to help.
Most carriers are case hardened - they can be machined and drilled easily enough with carbide tooling but are hard on HSS tools. If you're trying to thread it for a side charge handle, there are some special precautions you need to take to avoid breaking a tap in the hole.

To the OP - carbine gas for the 6.5 Grendel works great on a 12.5" barrel. It can work fine on a 16" as well if the gas port is sized correctly, but I'd much prefer a midlength gas system.

And just say no to Bear Creek, as you've already learned.

Yep, that's what I'm doin. have carbide end mill and cobalt drills at home, i'm just not there till next month.

Drilling is the easy part in that case. If you attempt to just tap the drilled hole, you will break the tap; the case hardened surface is too hard. You have to remove that hard layer on both sides of the hole before tapping. That's best done with a mill, not a drill press.
I use straight flute carbide drills for the initial drilling, but that's in a mill. It's really easy to break those in a drill press, they can't handle much deflection like a normal drill bit can.

I happen to have one of those entry-level 6.5 Grendel barrels in the classifieds right this minute, a 16-inch Anderson Mfg which has the carbine length gas system. I never had any functional issues with it...in fact, it's not a bad barrel at all IMO. The Faxon barrel that replaced it was also a 16-inch but it had a mid-length gas system. I could tell no difference in gas system function between the two.

Goat,

Go to the 65 Grendel forum and jump in on one of the group buy barrels. Decent barrels without breaking the bank. They are manufactured by Green Mountain.

I won't be drilling/tapping all the way through. I just need enough to get a good amount of purchase for threads to loctite a small bolt in which will be sleeved for a charging handle.

If you're familiar with the 300 solo blaster, that's essentially what i'm building. super lightweight, straight pull bolt action pistol. No buffer tube, using the spike's 22lr end plug. carrier will be cut off just behind the firing pin shroud (keeping enough material to keep it shrouded for safety of course) to allow hand-cycling.

You have achieved Loony Nirvana! LOL!

hell i'm just bored. (grin)

You could build a machine rest and then *give* it to me instead.

drilling the BCG is more or less the worst part....if you can do that, you're gtg, build your own

Depending where you put the hole (I put it forward of the bolt rings) you may need to drill all the way through, there's not a lot of wall thickness to work with once you remove the hardened surfaces. (FYI the hard layers on these carriers, in my experience machining them, is not just a few thousandths like some case hardenings, it's more like about .030"-.050" or deeper.)

You're correct to go with a sleeved bolt or shoulder bolt; that's stronger than making the complete handle from one piece of bar stock. I did that with my first few, making them from O1 tool steel and threading the ends, but just using a bolt through the middle is easier and stronger.

Also one suggestion unrelated to the bolt work, if I may - for actually shooting it, I'd want that red dot at the front end of the receiver instead of the back. Mounting it farther forward makes it point easier, especially with the large offset of the optic above the grip.

+1