Necro bump time. Kind of fun to look back at what I thought I wanted this gun to do and be and where it is now.
When I first built this gun I thought I would do run and gun stuff with it. Turns out I like 5.56 just fine for run and gun stuff.
I still liked the concept of a 12" ish 6.5 Grendel as the "one gun" that you could do it all with....hunt, self defense, recreational shooting, etc.
But I built it wrong for that. A "do it all" gun needs to be able to run nv/thermal accessories. So I had to swap the ALG rail out for a Noveske NSR with a full length top pic rail.
I went lightweight before I had much experience shooting suppressors. I've discovered I much, much prefer a full weight BCG for shooting suppressed. The lightweight stuff is just fine in a specifically tuned gun for it, and I still have a pencil barrel 14.5" AR with a lightweight buffer/bcg combo, but its much easier to tune a full weight bcg for suppressed/unsuppressed shooting.
I picked the NX8 because it was extremely light, but I really dont enjoy the huge reticle they used to make the gun have a "daylight bright" illumination at 1x, it makes precision shooting at 8x much harder than it should be when the reticle takes up half the scope view with big fat lines. I had also added a top mounted RMR to make it easier to shoot under night vision with.
I've also ditched the MFT Minimalist stock in favor of the Sopmod, which is still my favorite AR stock.
So before this week, the gun that was initially set up as a "lightweight" build that was already a 7 lbs, 3 oz gun. Still not a heavy gun by any means, but far from the lightweight build I had first envisioned.
This week I made a couple more changes. The 12" odinwerks barrel I've had in the gun does okay with some factory ammo, but it absolutely hates ELD-Ms. We are talking 5"+ groups at 100y levels of hate. It's never been a submoa tack driver for me with any ammo, but it was 2-3moa with a couple different loads at least. Even so, there were multiple loads I've tried with that barrel that did not group worth a dang.
So this week the Artist Formerly Known as Lightweight got a new barrel: 12.5" Ranier Ultramatch.
Midlength gas instead of carbine, and adds another 5oz to the build.
I also decided to swap over to an optic with a good Christmas Tree mildot reticle instead of the huge MOA circle on the NX8, so its now got a 2-12x Athlon on top.
Haven't tested the ELD-Ms yet but getting initial groups/zeroing done with 123gr Hornady bulk stuff and its already a noticeably better performer than the old odinwerks barrel.
It's also a much smoother shooter with midlength gas and a full weight bcg than the old build was.
I'm now barely under 8lbs empty....7 lbs 14 oz. Its no longer a light weight build, but I'm much happier with its current configuration than I was with the old set up. I think its still a great contender for the "if you could only have one gun" argument, and it is a fun trip down memory lane to read this thread and what I first tried versus what I ended up with.
