Tuesday, October 4, 2011

You can't handle the truth!

The battle rages on about what in the hell is going on at Alexander Arms, and why the strangeness surrounding the 6.5 Grendel cartridge continues to go on with no questions answered. The non responses are coming straight from the top, so I don't understand why the clouding of the issue. Just answer the questions.

It's well known that there are licensing issues surrounding the Grendel name; barrel makers and tooling shops that make reamers have dropped, discontinued, and refused to chamber products in that cartridge, and only a handful of people seem to know why. Absent any real facts -- and not because the questions haven't been asked -- folks have muddied the water even further by speculation.

When I was shopping for a barrel for the MK12 Mod 0, I intended to chamber it in 6.5 Grendel, but couldn't get anyone to do it. I talked to Shilen, who won't chamber in that round; and from my research there aren't many gunsmiths who will touch it either. The only cut rifling barrel maker that held a license to make a barrel in that caliber ceased communications with me suddenly, and then announced days later that they were dropping their Grendel barrel lineup. There wasn't a concise answer as to why, and I wasn't happy to have wasted over a month for nothing. In the end, I picked a very similar cartridge that is made by Les Baer, and it took one phone call.

So what happened? Why is there such negativity from the firearms making community over a cartridge as special as the 6.5 Grendel? Why are there so many clones of the Grendel round that differ by only a fraction, or just enough to avoid a lawsuit? Why are there barrel makers who refuse to chamber in that round? It can't be coincidence, and dodging the questions folks have been sincerely asking or calling them "trolls" or deflecting to "ooooh, lookee, we're going to announce something special" adds up to a whole bunch of nothing. I mean, if my wife walked in the door and said "Honey, did you hit something with the car last night?" the answer that she would be expecting to get would certainly not be "Uuuuuhh, I've got something awesome to show you next week! It's going to be SUPER!!"

3 comments:

nguyenhm16 said...

Probably because Bill Alexander is hard/unpleasant to deal with, and/or was asking too much money. Of course this just drives everyone who wants a Grendel to the 264 LBC-AR, which is freely available.

Broken Andy said...

I don't know the answer, but I'm gonna guess there is at least one lawyer involved in the story, if not a whole gaggle of 'em.

Unknown said...

At the genesis of every problem in America is a brigade of bloodsucking attorneys.

nguyenhm16 -- that is exactly why I didn't hesitate to go .264 LBC-AR; no hassle for it and there's even factory ammo available for it.