Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles New DTech 22DTi

Got my hands on a 22inch Shilen 1/10 twist barreled 22DTi last week but due to all the wind and rain just got to the range yesterday to give it a whirl.
I prepped 25 pieces of brass and loaded 5 sets of 5 rounds with various loads just to get started and see what she would do while fire-forming brass.If you are not familiar with the DTi's they are 6.8SPC necked down or up then fire-formed to a 30 degree improved shoulder. I have been using a 6mm DTi since last September and have had excellent results from Bobcats to large Whitetails.

I wanted to go early while the wind was down but there was so much fog and mist in the air I knew I may have issues with the chronograph. I waited until after lunch and by then the wind was blowing and I could see storms building off to the West BUT I was determined. Glad I did and just beat the rain as I got wet while locking the gate leaving the range.

I used my usual Break-In procedure... shoot 5 spaced shots, walk around look at other folks guns chit-chat ,then shoot 5 more, make a few notes, chit-chat with folks until I get finished shooting all I want to. Then clean at home in the air-conditioner. Barrel clean-up was about twelve patches... no copper nothing to it.The 53gr VMax loads with XBR8208 are well under max as I had no data when I loaded them so needless to say I was conservative. I am kinda excited about the 60gr Berger traveling over 3300 fps with room for more speed if needed.
Here are the groups. There is one group with only 4 shots due to just installing scope it took ONE shot to get sighted in.

I like my 6.8 necked to 6. Always wondered about going down to 22... and had heard that Mike did a bit of a better thing than simply necking down the 6.8.


Looks like yours is a winner. And evidently you didn't get a bad Shilen either.

Mike makes good stuff. I owned a 7-08 AR-10 that he made the upper on, a few years back.

His .25 DTI has had me intrigued for the past few months. I think it would be a great coyote and mid range target round.

BTW, you do realize that when swapping powders, though it may not change things, its always smarter to load up about 10 of the lowest test load with the new powder and shoot them through before starting a new test with different powder...

Same could be said for a bullet swap too, but as long as the jacket material is the same you are ok, its when you change jacket materials that the jacket fouling can mess things up for a couple of shots.

I am not sure how many Shilen barreled guns I have shot but so far I have not been unlucky enough to get one a bad one. Of course most of them came from Mike at Dtech so that could be a factor.

I think Mike first tried a straight neck-down but then decided to use the increase in shoulder to get a little more case volume. Here is a work-up load from a while back.

Mike will make a great upper, the barrel is up to Shilen. I've never shot a bad one either, but they've been out there at times. Long as they back it up, no biggie.

But they have never quite been top of my list accuracy wise, but they ain't bad. Yours seems to just want to shoot.

Looks like you have a keeper.

I talked to Mike about one of these several months ago. If I get another AR it's going to be a 22 or 6DTI.

Nice shooter! Dtech has a solid reputation going for nicely built AR's. I'm not at all surprised by your results.