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I had a hankering for a micro action chambered for something that would be a little more than the usual suspects and had been increasingly interested in the 6.5 Grendel but thought that there was still a little left on the table as far as capabilities went with the Grendel cartridge. I bought a packet of Grendel ammo and had a couple of 7.62x39 cartridges and wondered what whould happen if the shoulder was pushed forward and it was loaded longer than the Grendel which is hald to its factory COAL because it was designed primarily for the A R platform and consequently loaded to a presure limit that would not be required with a bolt rifle. I had a set of Forster Grendel FLS dies sent over and by putting a .05 spacer die on the shell holder was able to hydroform a case to what I found would give considerable more capacity especially if the 123gn A Max was seated out to a 2.405 OAL rather than the 2.250 of the Hornady round.

Hornady Grendel on left and my Grendel Max on the right

In looking for an action I came across an Interarms mini mauser action bare for about NZ$80 (US$65) and because of my reduced circumstances intended for this to be a minimal cost project. I Cut the back of the magazine and ground out the rear of the mag recess abutment and made a temporu rear mag extension to see if it would all work and instead of running the rear wall of the magazine up past the abutment I ground a housing in the bottom so it would form a continuous face up the back wall and up the face of the abutment and was able to get 2.475 internal length so my projected COAL looked to be a workable length. This length was arrived at with the A Max which would be the primary bullet was loaded with the start of the boat tail at the base of the neck so the next thing was to draw up a reamer print (that would give me a 25 thou jump at my desired OAL) and get it away to Mansons. A light Sako profile 6.5 x 8 twist barrel was ordered from TSE in Australia, and at chambering was cut to 21 inches.
The bolt handle was a typical Mark X handle that is really too short with a knob that is too small for easy manipulation so I cut it off and used a piece of 7/8 bolt that I D&T to take a 1/4 in thread, which I then put in an battery drill and held against a belt linisher to bring it to a suitable shape.

Action as received

Bolt handle

From this I expected everything would work as planned.

eeping in mind that this was to be a low cost rifle I decided to make my own laminate stock rather than using w walnut blank as I had for previous rifles so I started with a 16mm central core and planedit down from the action forward to the forend tip and from the actiondown through the pistol grip because I wanted tha main shaping done on the core piece so that the outer thinner laminates would be full length and therefore stronger than the usual way where they are cut through as the shaping is done from the outside toward the centre. The added bonus is that the pattern is cut on the central core and the action can be layed on and the exact outline of the inletting can be marked and cut out with just a sliver left at top and bottom to hole the forend to the wrist and butstock while the remaining laminates are glued on. I used Beech for this as it is very light and very tough, at least the NZ beech is.

I made a smoker for the inletting as I had always used inletting black before but a little used lantern offered a handly wick assembly and after pop riviting a cvouple of tabs on a suitable old tobacco tin had a smoker that could still do service in the lantern housing if and when needed.

After a bit more work I had a lovley light little rifle that even with the Warne steel bases and rings with the Nikon 4.5-14 scope still weighed in at 6 lb 12oz and with the mini supressor stopped the scales at 7 lb 6oz

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Von Gruff.

Exodus 20:1-17

Acts 4:10-12