Thread: Modifing the Howa Mini plastic stock on my 6.5G

Originally Posted by Flyblown

Don’t do it.

Some might want to bash me over the head with a skillet but I think you would be making a big mistake with a big-money build mate. My reasoning is that the 6.5 Grendel is a neat little cartridge that has some good bullets available to it from the bonded through to the soft match type. But you cannot get away from the fact that it lacks ooommppfff.

These short Grendel barrels generate about the same muzzle velocity as what a 6mm Creedmoor generates as an impact velocity at 300m. You should run the numbers and have a really close look at the comparison with several different cartridge options before you commit to spending the big bucks on a rifle for which you would never, ever see a resale value close to what you spend on it.

My view is that the Grendel is a useful cartridge in cheap rifles for shortish range goats and small deer, but for a close range bush rifle where big animals are skittish and you may well have scrub etc in the way, then I would want something a lot more grunty. Likewise for the longer shots in the 300 meter range, you only need to be a couple of inches off with a slow cartridge like the Grendel and you are going to lose animals, and that is going to risk you falling out of love with it real quick.

At the end of the day the Grendel is just a modern cartridge with similar power to a 30-30 shooting a 150gr. Perfectly adequate close up in good conditions but not really a great all-rounder especially when the longer shots are tempting you to stretch it out a bit.

Yep I fully agree with all of that. The 6.5G is fine for what it is, but there's no way I would go the whole hog and spend good money building a custom rifle chambered for 6.5G. It works fine and all, but it's marginal really, it really only has a bit more grunt than heavy bullets in a 223.

If you are starting from scratch I wouldn't limit myself by going with the 6.5G. It was designed to fit in AR's after all and give them more power than a 223 but in the same platform and ammo length.