Thread: Kiwi made Howa mini ultralight chassis a reality?

Hey mate, you miss understand what I said.. I'm comparing 6mm offerings (6mm ARC 6ppc 6x45 etc) in the limited mag length howa mini rifle that these chassis are designed for... apple's and oranges comparing a 6mm Creedmore to a 12.5" 6.5 Grandel.
The 12.5 grendel gets just under 2300fps with BM8208.
To state the obvious at this point, a 12.5" 6mm ARC shooting 108s doesnt come close to a 6.5 Grendel shooting 123gr.
There is a cross over point where most of the howa mini chamberings alighn, some flatter shooting and some harder hitting but I am a speaking from a longer range carried energy point of view. Maybe I should have made that more transparent. I have also had better luck with the 6.5 match bullets over the 6mm match bullets when it comes to 100% energy dump on animals with no pass through. So although the custom loaded 12.5" 6mm a has a little more muzzle velocity (2360fps) than the 6.5mm (2290fps) it doesn't kill as well as the grendel in my experience.
As you well know I do enjoy a longer shot so this is how I tend to trade these things off against each other but either cartridge is as good as a full length .223rem at more moderate hunting ranges.

Originally Posted by Wingman

Hey mate, you miss understand what I said.. I'm comparing 6mm offerings (6mm ARC 6ppc 6x45 etc) in the limited mag length howa mini rifle that these chassis are designed for... apple's and oranges comparing a 6mm Creedmore to a 12.5" 6.5 Grandel.
The 12.5 grendel gets just under 2300fps with BM8208.
To state the obvious at this point, a 12.5" 6mm ARC shooting 108s doesnt come close to a 6.5 Grendel shooting 123gr.
There is a cross over point where most of the howa mini chamberings alighn, some flatter shooting and some harder hitting but I am a speaking from a longer range carried energy point of view. Maybe I should have made that more transparent. I have also had better luck with the 6.5 match bullets over the 6mm match bullets when it comes to 100% energy dump on animals with no pass through. So although the custom loaded 12.5" 6mm a has a little more muzzle velocity (2360fps) than the 6.5mm (2290fps) it doesn't kill as well as the grendel in my experience.
As you well know I do enjoy a longer shot so this is how I tend to trade these things off against each other but either cartridge is as good as a full length .223rem at more moderate hunting ranges.

Just to expand on this comment, a question to those of you that are running these short barreled minis. Projectile/powder choices that you have found effective??
I’m a fair while away before I start reloading for mine but will quietly stock up on components over this year. Picked up a bag of Starline brass today at DeltaMikes and they have a good stock of 123gn ELD-M’s as well as a few boxes of 123gn SST’s if they are good choices to run in the 12.5” barrel?

Cheers, Sidetrack

I run the 300blk in the night ops deer pic. Not a 6.5 but as a data point, 10.5" barrel (longer butt tube to keep total length all good), 110vmax with 20.5gn W296 in ADI case with CCI400 primer. avg velocity about 2250fps. They were loaded for the 16" barrel and were doing 2400fps. Surprisingly not very noisy, quiet enough that I don't think I will continue to load subs for it. I haven't done any load development with the short barrel yet as the rounds I had kicking about were reasonably accurate. Head shot on that deer was effective. Not sure how great it would be with the traditional rush rush rush shoot it somewhere around the front leg shot. Probably not very.