Sounds like some great contenders to choose from. 6x45 has peeked my interest to be sure. Though once I did the 6mm ARC the 6x45 went way on the back burner for me.
Can't help but throw out there that while you have some great choices to work from there. If you were to give one of the all copper Hammer offerings a try I expect you would be pleasntly surprised. I was in the 6mm ARC any way. So far the 87 grain Absolute Hammer & the 55 grain hammer hunter is all I have tried. both bullets have been easy to achieve velocity & accuracy with. So far the 87 grain offering is the only one I have used on game.
Look forward to hearing back on fall reports from you & others.
I was thinking seriously about a 6 ARC, as I also use a 6.5 Grendel...
But when I looked a little closer, I found the 6 x 45 does give up some velocity to the 6ARC, but the deal breaker was brass availability. Its not so much I was concerned about finding brass for the ARC, but what can't escape anyone's attention, is that brass for the 6 x 45 is essentially free, if you don't worry about it being once fired, and needs to be tumbled.
In the last 30 days I think I've picked up about 600 rounds of 223 brass at my local range, just laying around waiting for someone to " police up their brass", which I'll gladly substitute for them. I did buy a 6 x 45 small base die set from RCBS, for 30 bucks, and then picked up a Hornady neck sizer die for $20 or so... and I already had a Redding 223 body die.
So the cost to get into it also was readily fairly cheap. There is a lot of appeal in the economy of the entire thing..
plus I'm sitting on a very large selection and amount of 6 mm bullets from the lightest to the heaviest.
The biggest expense was on the barrel, which I got in 3 weeks from Douglas for a Savage Action., and then recently I just received another barrel in 6 x 45 from Douglas, 24 inches, 1 in 7 twist, Predator Contour size.
Sorry I didn't figure this out 30 years ago...
