It has now been over three years since Bill
Alexander first began his slow torture upon me by pulling
from his pocket a cartridge that was to become the 6.5mm
Grendel, the image of which would haunt me for nearly two years
before I could obtain one of my own. For a little over a year
now, I have owned that Grendel
Entry rifle. In order to not re-plow the same ground
here, I instead refer the reader to that earlier article for
details about that weapon. Suffice it to say that I
purchased that test gun, and am even more attached to it now
than I was then.
We get email here at Gunblast, and get a lot of
it. Most are questions of the technical type, or someone either
agreeing or disagreeing with something that I have written.
However, about two days ago, I received a question from a reader
wanting to know: "Jeff, if you could have but one center
fire rifle, what would it be?" I hate that type of
question. I like rifles. I like just about all rifles. Choosing
one would be extremely difficult. I pondered the question for
awhile. A good levergun is awfully handy, and would serve for
ninety percent of my hunting needs. A good long-range
bolt-action varmint rifle is needed from time to time. An AR-15
is handy for predator hunting and is good to keep around for a
home defense weapon. I also love old single shot Winchesters
and the newer Ruger Number 1 rifles. After a good bit of
study, I answered the reader: "I would choose my 6.5mm
Grendel AR". The answer somewhat surprised me too. It
occurred to me that the Grendel will handle just about all of
the big game hunting that I am likely to do. It has more than
enough accuracy for long-range predator and varmint hunting.
Being built on an AR-15, it could serve very well for home
defense. It is fully capable of engaging targets out to 800
yards and beyond. It has a wonderful trigger, is portable, and
is a delight to shoot. It is not as cheap to plink away at
targets as is the 7.62x39 or the .5.56mm, but I am not a
plinker. I am a rifleman. That is not to imply that I am an
expert marksman, for I am not. That is only to indicate that
philosophically, I prefer to place one aimed shot on target,
instead of blasting away with several. The 6.5mm Grendel is a
wonderfully efficient cartridge. It is relatively quiet, very
flat shooting, extremely accurate, has light recoil, and is a
delight to shoot.
Alexander Arms offers a few different
configurations of the Grendel, all built with match-grade heavy
barrels. They also offer a few options such as railed hand
guards and their wonderful Tactical trigger. However, especially
with the interest shown in the 6.5mm Grendel by the US military,
shooters have been asking for a shorter, lighter, military-style
AR chambered for the Grendel. I have just recently received two
such rifles for review; one from Alexander Arms, and another
from Sabre Defence Industries. Both wear fourteen
and one-half inch barrels with permanently attached muzzle
devices to keep them legal for US citizens to purchase without
an undue amount of government paperwork. Both are the latest M-4
style of rifle, with chrome-lined bores and M-4 profile
exteriors, bayonet lugs, and adjustable buttstocks.
Sabre Defence is new to the 6.5mm Grendel, but
they have been licensed to produce them by Alexander Arms. You
can trust that Bill Alexander would not have licensed Sabre to
build the Grendel if he did not have confidence in their ability
to do so correctly. I have also, through experience, come to
expect a high degree of quality and accuracy from Sabre Defence
products.
While both the Alexander Arms and the Sabre
Defence rifles are built to fill the need for a lighter,
handier, more combat-ready Grendel rifle, they differ in the
components used. This is not intended to be a comparison
of the two in order to determine which rifle is better. Which is
better will vary depending upon the desires and needs of a
particular shooter, and upon how much money he wishes to spend.
The Alexander Arms sample rifle is basically a 6.5 Grendel
chambered semi-auto M-4. The Sabre rifle has pretty much all the
tricked out parts that anyone could want, at a somewhat higher
price than the Alexander rifle. Alexander does offer railed hand
guards and their Tactical trigger as an option, if one so
desires.
Both rifles have adjustable buttstocks. The
Alexander rifle has a six-position CAR-style buttstock, and the
Sabre uses the adjustable SOCOM stock. On the test guns, the
Alexander rifle wore a flash suppressor with a closed bottom,
and the Sabre wore their proprietary "Gill-Brake". The
Alexander rifle has the standard A-2 style front sight, while
the Sabre comes with flip up front and rear sights.
Realizing that most everyone who purchases a
Grendel will want some type of optical sight on the weapon, I
tested them using military type optical sights. The Sabre rifle
was fired using an EOTech lighted reticle holosight, and
I fitted the Alexander gun with a Trijicon
ACOG tritium scope. Both sights performed very well on
the two rifles, and fit very well with the compact dimensions of
the weapons. For accuracy testing, I fitted each rifle
with a Leupold Mark 4 PR 4.5 to 14 power scope. This
scope has excellent optics, side focus, target adjustment knobs,
a Mil-dot reticle, and a 30mm tube. It has proven itself in the
past, so I thought it to be a good way to test the accuracy of
the two rifles.
Since both the Alexander and the Sabre rifles
have M-4 contoured barrels that are chrome lined, I did not
expect phenomenal accuracy from either of them. I expected the
tradeoff for the light weight and handy carrying to be good, but
not excellent accuracy. I was wrong. I was very pleasantly
surprised to find that both rifles exhibited match grade
accuracy. I firmly believe that if I could hold them better,
they both would shoot into one ragged hole at 100 yards.
Both of these carbines shot into less than one-half of an inch
at 100 yards. This is superb accuracy, and that is one of the
traits that endears the 6.5mm Grendel to me. It is all about the
accuracy. Show me a 6.8 Remington that will do that. I have yet
to see one. The Grendel is a magnificent little cartridge that
outperforms its competition easily. It really shines at long
range. Again, I refer the reader to my
article of last year for more details on the Grendel
ballistics. The shorter barrels of these two carbines lose a bit
of velocity compared to the nineteen inch barrel of my Alexander
Entry gun; about two hundred feet per second (fps), depending
upon the load. My favorite handload clocks 2780 fps from
my Entry rifle, and 2587 from the Tactical carbine.
I am very glad to see the 6.5mm Grendel
availability expanding. These short carbines, I predict, will be
very good sellers. Magazines are available that hold ten,
seventeen, or twenty-six rounds. Every option that anyone
could want on an AR is available for the Grendel. A shooter can
buy a basic rifle or a full-blown weapon with all the bells and
whistles. At this writing, the basic 14.5 inch Alexander Arms
Tactical carbine sells for $1015 retail, with a complete upper
selling for only $595. Adding a railed hand guard and the
Tactical trigger will add about 330 bucks to the price. I highly
recommend the Tactical trigger. The sixteen inch barreled
version is about eighteen bucks less. The Sabre Defence Tactical
carbine retails for $2279.99, equipped as shown here. It already
has an excellent trigger, and comes with a Samson railed
hand guard. Either will serve very well for hunting, target
shooting, or homeland security. The AR-15 platform continues to
be refined, and has evolved over the past fifty years into a
superb weapon. The 6.5mm Grendel gives the AR a whole new
personality, and adds greatly to its usefulness. I am very
pleased with my Grendel, and would be delighted to own either of
these fine carbines.
Check them out online at: www.alexanderarms.com
and www.sabredefence.com.
For a better look at the optical sights shown
here, go to: www.leupold.com,
www.trijicon.com,
and www.eotech-inc.com.
For Grendel magazines, ammunition, brass, and
loading dies, again go to: www.alexanderarms.com.
Jeff Quinn
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