The barreled action has a Timney Triggers Calvin Elite trigger and sits in a bedded Grayboe Renegade stock. It was more of a magazine geometry issue than anything to do with the action. I found that I had to be careful loading 10-round mags for reliable feeding but the 5-round mags did great. One thing I worried about was reliable feeding of the odd-shaped cartridge, but this action had no problems. This is my first rifle built on a Defiance action and I couldn’t be happier. The rifle was built by Alamo Precision Rifles down around Hurst, Texas and it’s powered by the Defiance Machine Ruckus action. With the barrel ordered, I was fully committed to the project and I ordered reloading dies from CH4D, had a custom chamber reamer made by Pacific Tool & Gauge, and picked up a good supply of 7mm BR brass from Peterson Cartridge. I went with 1:6.5 and consulted a few friends in the industry before finally ordering from K&P Barrels. That gives you a pretty good idea of where you want to be. This tool lets you enter the bullet parameters, velocity, and twist rate to come up with a range of stability. To determine a suitable twist rate I used the stability calculator on the Berger Bullets website. With the cartridge selection complete, the next action item was barrel selection and twist rate. 308 bolt face, small case capacity, and brass can be easily formed from available 7mm BR brass. I considered a whole bunch of wildcat options, but finally settled on the 338BR which is also known as 338 Whisper. I thought about 338 Spectre, but didn’t like the non standard bolt face. 338 Federal, but didn’t like the large case capacity. 338 didn’t exist or at least from any sort of mainstream source. 338 rounds through my Thunderbeast 338BA suppressor.Īt the time, commercially available subsonic. That is, until I went down the rabbit hole of shooting subsonic. With so many great high performance cartridges on the market, why would anyone want to deal with the inconveniences of fully custom rounds? The increase in performance is hardly worth the hassle of limited commercially available ammo and having to create custom reamers and dies. For years I was of the belief that working with non-standard or wildcat cartridges was a waste of time.

338 spectre