Late Adopter

Welcome!

Be careful, the 6.8 bug may hit you hard like it has me. So many really great options out there in both rifle setups and parts (when you search) as well as bullet offerings for reloaders. Not so much in the way of plentiful and good ammo sources right now, but I'm hoping that changes as time passes. I believe it very well may become "the" alternative caliber for hunters and recreational shooters if we can keep it alive long enough and generate enough demand for components.

I poke my buddies pretty hard with their Grendels sporting 20-24" barrels and I'm running 12.5-16 inch guns and still kill anything I decide to shoot at.

I have personally decided to move from the 5.56 to one of my 6.8's as my truck gun with the thought that if 100+ rounds of good 6.8 doesn't get me out of a situation, I shouldn't have been there in the first place, PLUS I can hunt anything here in central and western NC with it should the opportunity arise.

I actually have an upper with the 16" DD S2W barrel, 1:11, it's 5R and SPC II chamber. It's just as accurate as my ARP 16" Scout, but yes, it's a little too heavy for what I want to do with the gun (movement). I also use their 16" LW barrel in 5.56, mid-length in my 5.56 upper.

I've contemplated having the S2W barrel machined down but was worried it might induce some additional stresses and ruin the accuracy, so I ended up switching over to the ARP Scout and am just keeping it as a backup / for a dedicated project upper (maybe as mid-weight 6.8 option with just a high mount red dot only intended for CQC / NODS use).

While the weight wasn't bad at all with the lightweight handguard paired with it, it also wasn't making any difference in accuracy either as the lighter scout barrel was just as accurate. And at 9oz lighter, I could throw a bipod on the end of the Scout upper and be within a 1/4 lb of the DD with no bipod, so in my mind as a Recce type configuration, that was more desirable than having a "machine gun" profile barrel that was over built for the application.

But DD's barrels are extremely tough; they are some of the most durable on the market. NWSC Crane tested the Geissele URGI's that originally had Daniels Defense barrels in them and found that they were already at double the service life over the Colt SOCOM barrels in the M4A1's that served as a baseline, and they were still holding accuracy even shooting the rather hot M855A1 that's a barrel burner under their testing requirements (and it's apples to apples, shooting the same lot of ammo under the same conditions for both).

While the SOCOM barrel had a carbine length gas port and the URG-I / DD uppers had mid-length, the gas port is not going to affect throat erosion, both barrels are chrome lined as well and the SOCOM is a heavier profile yet didn't last half as long.

That's why I believe DD employ's something similar Boeings chrome lining processes, which doubled to tripled the service life of large caliber gatling guns in aircraft (20mm), the 25mm Bushmaster cannon on the Bradley and other 20-30mm type vehicle weapons over mil-spec chrome and nitride.

Hammer forging isn't going to change wear of the chrome lining, it only maintains rigidity under heat better, while cold hammer forged lands last about 2x longer than non-hammer forged lands on un-lined barrels, it's the lining that needs to last as once the limning fails, you're going to run into accuracy issues regardless. I posted one of Boeing's papers on it somewhere on this forum (I think it was my post about ARP barrel manufacturing and stress relieving).