Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles 6.8 SPC options

Like I said I'm not the one chasing you all over the internet. If you bring it up I will respond. I did everything I could to help you figure it out then decided it was easiest if I got the barrel away from you and let you continue your merry trip.

Constructor,

Not taking sides here, just observations.

You would have been way ahead to refund Yonderlings money when he sent you the barrel. The time you spent dealing with this has got to be worth more than the barrel and you'd have a happy customer.

Leaving Yonderling's name on the emails was not cool.

Yes, looking back I should have returned his money the very first thing.
I did refund his money the second time. There was nothing wrong with the barrel so I thought he might try a few things I suggested.
As long as my guys are running the CNCs we're making 720 an hr, so I'm ok there.
I think I removed all of his email addresses and last name. The thing that strikes me as funny is everyone seems to think it is ok to bash business but it isn't ok for business to explain or show how things really went down.
People that don't understand how barrels are made like to throw out terms like "I know how there can be a bad one".
The chamber can never be smaller than the reamer. Peak pressure occurs in the first 6-8" of a barrel. Anyone that has ever used pressure equipt should be able to confirm that. It isn't like the whole length of the barrel has 58,000psi in it. Peak pressure is what causes pressure signs at the brass even false pressure signs.
The chamber, throat(which is engraving force)and the load (all aspects of the cartrdige) is what causes the peak pressure and any signs visible on the case.
I have pressure tested these barrels with the exact loads I suggested. You don't try a max charge in a new case with a shoulder diameter of .398 when the chamber has a .410 shoulder diameter. Max charges should be used only after the shoulder has been blown out to the size of the wildcat chamber which increases the case capacity.
There were 105 barrels, I kept 4 for myself including the 2 used for the pressure tests. I have 2 left. That leaves 99. 98 people have had no issues at all with the loads I have posted on the website as a guide.
The fact that he said several times he uses a .008 crush fit tells me he is measuring something wrong and more than likely sizing the brass wrong. I tried several times if you go through the emails to help him figure it out. After I returned the barrel to him I don't think he shot it again. When I received the barrel back the second time there was still red dykem in the barrel where I stained the metal to run the air gauge check.
This would never have left my office if he wasn't running around posting things on forums.

You still have that barrel?

LOL Constructor, you're so full of it your eyes are brown. A few clarifications in bold:

BTW I've got a bunch of pictures of this stuff, if anyone wants to see them.

Why don't we put a shovel full on top of this turd.

I'm ok with just leaving this as saying I had a bad experience with ARP, which was my intention at the start of the thread.

If Constructor wants to continue making excuses for it, I'll continue to explain what really happened.

Wow, this is a revelation to me.

I just need to know what is a .008 crush fit? Where are you measuring from?

I load Ackley rounds in bolt guns and a crush fit to me is sizing just enough to make a hard to close bolt.

I size my AR brass by bumping the shoulder back .003 so it chambers in the auto.

Not picking at you but truly don't understand what you are describing.

And you're not the first to find BS BS claims of high velocity on 6.8 based Wildcats.

+.008" headspace measurement. The 30 Herret wildcats are made by pushing the shoulder back on 6.8 brass, so if you don't bump the shoulder back to .000" headspace when forming brass the first time, you get a crush fit. It's not totally necessary, but can help a little in the fireforming process. To reiterate, again, this was only for fireforming loads.

Of course, there is no way to get much of a "crush fit" once the brass has been formed the first time, because the brass comes out of the chamber at .000" headspace, give or take a little.

My only reason for mentioning the crush fit was to show Constructor in our email conversations that dropping the bolt on brass in this chamber would size down brass by at least that amount. Maybe it was doing that on correctly sized brass too, causing headspace issues? That's not something you'd encounter in a bolt gun of course.

Thats at least what I assumed you were saying. Bigger than chamber and slam bolt shut to form to chamber. Eliminates brass stretch on first forming firing.

I guess you mean the .30 Herrett AR, not the original rimmed version made from .30-30 cases

Well, yeah, given the discussion I figured that was understood. Same for the earlier 30 HRT and some other unnamed experiments that are all close variations of the same thing.

Yes, exactly. The bolt had to be slammed shut (or just normal cycling) in those fireforming loads of course; it won't close on a crush fit by hand following the bolt home.

And thats exactly the way to fireform if you can. Get a tight fit and let it blow out from there.

Assuming thats possible.

I have to admit, I was surprised the maker of that wildcat barrel had a hard time understanding that, and kept wanting to make an issue of it. It seems pretty straightforward to me, but maybe my wording was confusing somehow. Online & email communication is always more difficult.

face to face is the way to do things if at all possible.

And while your wording was not exactly correct IMHO, it was easy enough to understand for me at least.