After a couple years and countless hours of work I am very excited to release the new Phantom action from Diablo Custom Rifles. This action is the best of both world, technology advanced head over heels of any other action on the market.
The Phantom has the stiffness of a solid steel action yet weighs less then a titanium action. How do we do this??? well, I use the combination of stainless steel and the worlds strongest most advanced lightweight materials. yes we will have a titanium model that will be even lighter. but for now I am liking the stainless. Stianless has a few quailities that you cant get with titanium. The main complaint of titanium is how it tends to fill " gritty" when you work the bolt. stainless will not do this, giving you a silky smooth bolt.
I have designed these actions to be a drop in fit to any Rem 700 stock and accept Rem 700 triggers and bottom metal. so no custom parts that are hard to find.
the very first prototype action was used for pressure testing, ill say this, it will handle over 3 times a standard load. I put 2 rounds of 160k psi with out a problem. obvisully it locked the action up and had to be torn apart to get it freed up. the last load I put through it was 210k psi, it didn't like that one much. 160k psi is more then enough. the 2nd proto was used for accuracy testing. I installed one of our diablo custom barrels(more on this later) in 7/08 rem. with shooting it almost on a daily baisis I am proud to say that it will hold sub half moa all day long, which is not easy to do a 4LB rifle.
Some other tests I did on the rifle is stiffness. the actions used in all testing is a rem 700 with no mods, a pierce titanium with all the lightweight upgrades and the Diablo Phantom.
basically on the stiffness test I clamped the front of the receiver in my barrel vise put a dial caliper on the rear bridge and hung 60lbs just behind the indicator
the rem 700 flexed .003 of in inch
the diablo phantom flexed .004 of an inch
and the pierce titanium flexed .008 of an inch
Pretty impressive for an ultra light.
now for the nitty gritty, the weight comparesions
for this I put everything need to make a complete ready to fire action. from the trigger to the mag box.
as you can see the rem 700 came in at 2lbs 1 oz
the pierce titanium with lightweight upgrade came in at 1lbs 10oz
and the diablo phantom came in the lightest by almost 4oz at 1lbs 6oz and that's with a steel recoil lug