Earlier this month, I got the chance to hunt with Federal’s new 6.5 Creedmoor Plus Peak ammo. And I’ll be honest, I was pretty blown away by the results.
We’ve covered this case technology in the past, but in case you missed it or need a refresher, here’s the deal: Federal has developed what it calls a Peak Alloy case material, which allows it to ramp up chamber pressure without putting undue stress on the rifle. More chamber pressure means more velocity. And when that’s paired with a modern cartridge like the 6.5 Creedmoor, you get some spectacular downrange results. Out of the 20-inch barrel I was shooting, I was able to drive a 155-grain Fusion Tipped bullet at more than 2,800 feet per second. That puts the Creed on par with classic big-game cartridges like the .30-06 and even the 7mm Rem. Mag. in terms of downrange velocity and energy.
I’m editor-in-chief Alex Robinson, and while I’m a huge fan of what Federal has done with its Plus Peak technology, it would be a mistake to skip over some of the challenges Federal has faced bringing it to the hunting and shooting world. So today on the podcast, I’m interviewing Brad Abramowski, the lead engineer behind Peak Alloy, and Josh Vickers, Federal’s rifle product line manager. They’ve been working on Peak Alloy for years, and they’ll talk about how it has improved since the introduction of the 7mm Backcountry and where it might go next.
Listen to this episode on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Full Episode Transcript
Alex Robinson: All right, Brad and Josh, thanks for joining the Outdoor Life Podcast. It’s good to have you guys. I just had the opportunity to hunt with some of the ammo you guys made, and I was really, really impressed. I got to shoot it and get some chronograph data, and I ended up shooting the biggest bull I’ve ever killed with it. And even putting that aside, the technology and how it’s delivered on its promise really has my head spinning a little bit about all the different possibilities and what this could mean. I think that hasn’t totally sunk in for the entire hunting and shooting community yet, but I know the Plus Peak ammo in 6.5 Creedmoor is hitting store shelves now, and I think it’s about to set in for folks. So that’s why I’m excited to have you guys on the podcast.
And just to get this started off, are you starting to see that realization within the hunting and shooting world, like, “Oh man, this is kind of game-changing”?
Brad Abramowski: I mean, we’ve been working with it for years. So we’ve been seeing it and playing with it and trying stuff with it for years. The really fun thing right now is it’s getting out into users’ hands, it’s getting out in the field. People who are skeptical of it are getting some trigger time with it, and their feedback is like what you said: “Oh man, I gotta think about this. This kinda changes what I thought this ammo could do.” And to be able to see other people get that same realization, that light-bulb moment, that’s probably been the most fun so far.
Josh Vickers: Yeah, and I concur. We’ve been able to do quite a few product demos and shoot with people for the first time, and the first time they pull the trigger, they can’t believe it’s not brass until they look at a chronograph sitting right next to their barrel and they go, “Wow.” So that’s been really fun. And just like Brad said, seeing that light bulb go off in a lot of people is very fun right now.
Alex: So to give folks some background on this case technology and these new cartridges, let’s start with your guys’ backgrounds. Josh, why don’t you start? Just talk about what your job is and how you got there.
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Josh: Yeah. So I’m the centerfire rifle ammunition product line manager. Really what that is, is I’m supposed to be the voice of the customer, right? So I’m listening to all the feedback online. Anytime we do a video with Peak, I’m looking at all the comments and seeing what people are saying, and really forecasting what we need to be working on and delivering to the consumers, which is awesome. I have a really, really cool job. It also allows me to work with all the functional groups within our company — the sales side, the marketing side, obviously the engineering team, where I work very closely with Brad, and the operations team. So it’s really multifaceted, and I like to be involved in a lot of those things. It’s pretty cool.
Alex: Well, I’m sure you’ve had plenty of comments to read. I know we’ve gotten a bunch of them, and we can talk about those in a second. But Brad, why don’t you explain your background and what you do?
Brad: Yeah. So I’m a product development engineering manager for our Peak Alloy rifle team here at Federal, but I was the lead engineer for the launch of the 7mm Backcountry and the 6.5 Creedmoor Plus Peak lines.
Alex: Gotcha. So you’re the math guy.
Brad: Yeah, I’m crunching the numbers.
Alex: Could you guys talk about where the idea for Peak Alloy came from? You said you’ve been working with it for years. Over that time, what were some of the big challenges you bumped into developing this case technology?
Brad: Yeah. So it actually started about eight years ago now. The Army came out with an open solicitation for kind of the next generation of ammo for the American warfighter. They didn’t specifically say, “We want a high-pressure steel case.” But what they said is, “We want a performance envelope that you really just can’t hit with a brass case in that size.” So they challenged the industry to step out and look at alternative options, thinking outside the box a little bit. And steel case is not new. I think this is where the bad rap comes from: We’ve been getting cheap steel-case imports for many, many years now, and when people hear steel case, that’s the first thing they think of. But the big thing to remember here is not all steel is created equal. The Peak Alloy case is not anything like the mild, cheap steel imports you’re used to seeing just laying on the range when you’re done shooting. So the development started eight years ago —
Alex: Can I ask you a quick question?
Brad: Yeah.
Alex: Because that’s a really important distinction. Without giving away trade secrets and all that stuff, and so a normal person like me can understand, how is the Peak Alloy case different from a traditional steel case? Because it is using steel material, right?
Brad: Yes. So there’s a lot of different steel out there, and you can add and subtract different elements to get very different results and properties in your steel. The secret sauce is that this is a hardened steel case. What you think of when you think of an import is a mild, soft steel. It is very cheap and very easy to manufacture — that’s the whole selling point. But that steel case isn’t providing any structural integrity to your system. It’s just doing the same thing brass is doing: It’s holding the powder and the bullet together in the cheapest way possible. What we have different here with our Peak Alloy case is the specific makeup of it. It allows us to still cold form it in a similar process to what we do on a brass case, but we’re able to heat treat it and make the case really, really hard, which is the complete opposite mindset of what you think of with brass.
If you were gonna reload precision brass, you were going to anneal that case mouth and neck and try to get it as soft as you can. This is the opposite with this steel case. The secret is really in getting that case hard, because that provides a ton of strength to the case, so it can handle this increased pressure and contain it inside the case so that the action of the firearm doesn’t see the difference. But it’s not so hard that when we shoot, the case doesn’t still obturate — it still expands and fills the chamber, or seals off the chamber, so that gas can push the bullet down the barrel — and then it’s still gonna retract and allow you to extract it. Putting all of those things together, that’s where the years of R&D and trial and error and testing came in, and we were able to down-select to what our Peak Alloy case is now.
Alex: So with that trial and error — I’m gonna simplify this — you’re basically adding and subtracting to get the right quality of case, where it expands enough, but not too much, and then also retracts and is able to be ejected out of the chamber?
Brad: Yes, more or less. We’re able to look up material properties and start to down-select to what will probably get us close. And then, yeah, you just start forming, finishing, loading, shooting, and iteratively moving down the process until you’ve got something you can repeatedly work with.
Alex: In that process, give us a little nugget. What’s something interesting that you found?
Brad: One of the more interesting things — not necessarily technically challenging, it just took way more time than I think we thought it would — is the plating and the corrosion protection. This is a steel case, and all steel is prone to rust and corrosion. That is going to weaken the case, and it’s gonna give you undesirable results. So corrosion is our biggest enemy when it comes to a steel case. We went through a lot of testing on different platings, down-selecting to the two platings we’re currently using for our premium lineup and for our Fusion Tipped lineup. And it was everything from saltwater baths and every single cleaner and case-prep material you could think of, down to buying pig’s blood and soaking the rounds in pig’s blood for a weekend, then wiping it off and checking for corrosion. We put together a list of every possible scenario these cases could reasonably see in a normal hunting and shooting environment.
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And at the end of the day, hopefully you’re successful. You’ve got maybe some blood on your hands, you’ve unloaded your rifle, there’s a little blood that stays on the rounds, maybe they sat in the pack. So coming up with those scenarios and testing all the different plating types was definitely one of the more interesting tests we had to put together for this development.
Alex: Gotcha. So that’s all going into this case technology that first comes to the public in the 7mm Backcountry.
And John Snow, our shooting editor, covered that, and we were all really excited about it. So was much of the shooting industry — it had a really massive reception. Josh, I’m sure you were a busy guy during that time. But there were some challenges too, right? One of the major things we saw and heard from other folks out there was that people were experiencing cycling issues with some rifles early on with 7mm Backcountry ammo — basically heavy bolt lift, where after they shot, lifting the bolt was kind of sticky, or heavier than it should have been. That seems to be solved now, but I would love to hear from you guys: Why did that happen? And what did you guys do — or was it rifle makers? How did it get fixed?
Josh: Yeah, I can touch on a little bit of that. Obviously, we’re not blind to the fact that some of our customers have seen some bolt-lift issues in the field. Without getting into too much detail on the things we’ve changed and are working very diligently on, ultimately, that’s just unacceptable for us, right? We expect our products to work in everybody’s gun as advertised, with what’s stamped on the barrel. So Brad and his team have been working very, very hard this last year on 7mm Backcountry and getting those corrective actions in place. As with any new technology, sometimes there are hurdles you’re just not aware of right out the gate. We did a pile of testing, and still some of these issues popped up. Now we’re in a place where we’ll be real close to having a broad solution, and that’s probably why some people have had a little bit of trouble finding inventory. Also, the demand is pretty high. But yeah, Brad’s team’s been working real hard on this over the last six or seven months, since we started hearing about it.
Alex: Gotcha. So without getting too technical here, is it just the cases not retracting enough after being fired? Is that kind of what was happening?
Brad: So extraction is a system property, to try to simplify it. It’s the case and the gun working together. One thing you could see is that a lot of ammo would work in one gun and not in another, or one gun would run one lot and not another. It ultimately does boil down to a system thing. We’ve had some absolutely fantastic firearm partners on this since launch. All the major manufacturers running Backcountry guns right now have been fantastic to work with. And between the gun company and ammo side, we’ve found a system fix that is running clean now, and it’s a much more robust solution today than, especially, those early development runs. So yeah, it’s a system property, and it should be running real clean now.
Alex: And is that kind of the key? Because this was the other criticism about the 7mm Backcountry — which for you guys is kind of a good problem to have, because people want the ammo — which is just general availability, right? It’s not easy to find all the different available SKUs for 7mm Backcountry right now. There is some of it available, but it’s still kind of tricky to find depending on what bullet or load you’re looking for. So is that the heart of the availability issue — you guys have this system-wide solution, and now it’s just producing the ammo and getting it out now that the solution has been found?
Brad: Yeah, I’d say it’s really two-pronged. Demand has been fantastic since launch. It was well received. Demand, I would say, even exceeded some of our lofty expectations. So that’s fed into it. And then, yes, we’re not just gonna pump out anything just to pump out anything. We want to make sure we have the best product out there we can, and that takes time to get really good at it like we’ve done now. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. As we ramp up, there’s just some learning curve to it, and now we’re there and running absolutely full steam ahead.
Alex: Is it fair to say that these cases are more challenging to manufacture than a traditional brass case?
Brad: They’re different. Not necessarily more challenging, but they’re different. We’ve been making brass-case ammo for 100 years, and as an industry, and Federal specifically, we’re pretty darn good at it now. We’ve kind of figured out all the tips and tricks, and it’s just getting that same level of tips and tricks going for the Peak Alloy case. We can’t necessarily apply 100 years of experience to it one-to-one. There is some nuance to a different material and a different process.
Alex: Yeah. So that brings us to the Plus Peak in 6.5 Creedmoor, which is what I got to shoot. I was shooting pre-production ammo, and I kind of intentionally chose an attainable-level rifle. I was shooting a Christensen Evoke, so it’s like a $1,000 gun. It’s not some super-fancy thing, just a standard all-around hunting rifle. I have about 125 Plus Peak rounds through that rifle, and I have not had any cycling issues, no heavy bolt lift. It just ran as if I was shooting the most reliable brass-case ammo I have ever shot. And I was specifically looking for this, right? I was like, “All right, let’s see if this is a problem here.” And it wasn’t.
So that gave me a lot of hope, and I assume with the solutions you guys found through 7mm Backcountry, you’re like, “All right, we’re also gonna implement that on the Plus Peak side.”
Brad: Yeah, that’s pretty much what it is. We took the lessons learned and were able to apply those across multiple channels, including 6.5 Plus Peak.
Alex: Josh, when the 7mm Backcountry came out, everyone was like, “Well, why didn’t you do that in a .308? Why does it have to be in a new cartridge? Why not do it in a .308 or 6.5 Creedmoor?” I assume at the time you guys knew you were going to do it in 6.5 Creed. Did you just have to bite your tongue so hard, knowing this was gonna come later, but not being able to make it public yet?
Josh: Yeah, there’s always a lot of that going around here. And even now, like I said, reading the comments, everybody’s still screaming for .308 and all the other standard cartridges out there. So yeah, it’s definitely tight. It’s hard to keep your mouth shut sometimes.
Alex: So one thing I wanted to get into a little bit more, because I find this interesting: You have this new case technology, and there’s higher chamber pressure. How did you go about testing it? Once you settled on the case material and you’re like, “All right, this is what our product is gonna be based on,” what was the testing process like to know it was gonna be able to run in a variety of typical bolt-action rifles?
Brad: Yeah. So again, it starts with that system level, the firearm and ammo combination. We really just start taking existing platforms and pumping them up and up and up, and you figure out what’s failing. What is my failure point? What’s the weak point in a current setup? And truthfully, it is that brass case. It’s just material properties. I don’t care whose headstamp is on it — brass is brass, and there’s a limit it can withstand. That’s why we have pressure limits on brass cases, because it’s very well established what a brass case can safely handle. The concern is if you go over those limits. If you were to take a brass case and load it to 80,000 psi, yeah, you’re gonna see some really cool velocities out of your gun, too. But the things you can’t see are the bolt thrust and the hoop strain — that radial expansion of strain into your action and into your bolt — which is gonna be spiking beyond what it was rated for on repeat firings.
And that’s not something a consumer is ever gonna be able to measure and understand at home, but that truly is the failure point. So in modern firearms, that brass case is the limitation to being able to push more performance, OK? So if brass obviously is not the answer, what’s the next answer? That’s where we started playing with alternate materials, figuring out how to make a steel case that’s hard enough to hold that extra pressure. And that’s where the secret sauce is. What we can uniquely say with our Peak Alloy case is that our case at 80,000 psi chamber pressure produces the same bolt thrust — that load back onto the bolt and the bolt lugs — that a brass case at standard brass pressure does.
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That’s going to be the failure point on the firearm. Most designs — not all, they’re all a little bit unique — but the majority of firearms, especially bolt actions, the bolt lugs are where that failure point occurs. So we’re able to take our case to a higher pressure and a higher performance limit, but the firearm is gonna see the same bolt thrust and not know the difference whether you’re shooting brass at standard pressure or Peak Alloy at our elevated pressure.
Alex: So how did you find that out? Is that just advanced math you’re using, based on the case and the formulas you guys have worked out? Or were you using sensors? How do you evaluate the amount of pressure back on the bolt in a very dynamic system like a rifle being fired?
Brad: Yeah, there’s a lot that happens in an absolute fraction of a second. A lot of it, again, is just great relationships with really great gun companies that were able to share their experiences with us: This is where our systems fail. And you start talking to enough very reputable gun companies and you start getting the same story. It’s like, OK, this is clearly a fairly universal story. And then, yeah, building test fixtures, building custom setups. So when I say we can prove that our case has that same bolt thrust, I have an absolute mountain of data to support it — something you would never have at home. There’d be no reason for you to have this at home. But yeah, we put a fixture together, we started collecting the data, and it’s like, man, the data lines up with these stories one for one. So we’re clearly onto something here.
Alex: Yeah. I think there are a lot of great reasons to go with the 6.5 Creedmoor for the Plus Peak. One of them obviously is just how popular the cartridge is. The other is that there were a good number of people out there who would like their 6.5 Creedmoor to have a little more velocity or to be able to handle a little bit heavier bullet. And you guys just delivered that on a silver platter. With the Fusion Tipped load I was shooting, that was a 155-grain bullet, and I was shooting a 20-inch barrel and getting just a little over 2,800 feet per second. So with a 24-inch barrel, I’m sure I would have been right on your guys’ spec of 2,900 feet per second.
That’s pretty amazing — the 6.5 Needmoor is now shooting a 155-grain bullet at 2,900 feet per second. Along with that obvious pick of the 6.5 Creed, was it also part of it that all 6.5 Creedmoor rifles are relatively modern designs? There’s not a 100-year-old 6.5 Creedmoor rifle kicking around out there. Is that kind of part of the selection process?
Josh: Yeah, certainly. That was certainly part of the selection process with that one.
Alex: Yeah. I’m not sure how much you’ll be able to say about this, but everyone’s asking, so I just have to ask too. There are gonna be more Plus Peak cartridges, right?
Josh: Yeah. Like I tell everybody, we see the Peak technology as the future, essentially. So we’re going full steam ahead with this technology, and you’ll be seeing more to come.
Alex: And is that in years? Now that you guys have this, it feels like you could probably roll it out fairly quickly, right? We’re not gonna have to wait another eight years of having Brad down there in the lab, are we?
Josh: No, you won’t have to wait eight years.
Alex: OK, great. And now I’m just reading between the lines here, but in terms of cartridge choices, it would have to be fairly modern rifles. I’m guessing we’re probably not gonna see this in .30-06.
Josh: Yeah, we can’t say a whole lot. There are lots of things that go into the evaluation process of what we’re gonna select for the next cartridges and what we’re working on. But yeah, we certainly weigh how old existing rifles in the field could be, and the designs of those versus new rifles out there right now. So, yeah, that’s certainly a part of it.
Alex: One thing that was surprising to me was that for the increase in velocity, it did not feel like there was an equal increase in recoil. Going from a standard 140-grain load to the Plus Peak, I felt like maybe there was slightly more recoil, but it was very hard to notice. How is that possible?
Brad: Yeah, so some of the repeat comments you see online a lot — and yes, Josh does, in fact, read every one of them —
Josh: A lot of them. Not all of them, but most of them.
Brad: You see people say, “Oh, 80,000 psi, that’s gonna kick like a mule. It’s gonna burn a barrel out every box of ammo. Goodbye, suppressors — you’re gonna blow those up.” One of the misconceptions people are applying — and it’s an easy mistake to make — is we take what we know about brass and just apply it to this Peak Alloy case. And it’s not one-to-one. They’re very similar. They work on the same concept, but they’re not the same thing. So when we’re running a 6.5 Creedmoor 100 feet per second faster than PRC, we’re able to do that by just making the system more efficient.
When you look at a brass case, if you want more velocity, really your only option is to up your case size and stick a bunch more powder behind it. The 6.5 Creedmoor got this bad rap. People were like, “Oh, man, it’s just not good enough. I want more.” And then all of a sudden, here comes 6.5 PRC, and everyone loves 6.5 PRC. Nobody’s questioning 6.5 PRC’s capability. Well, PRC is only a 200-foot-per-second jump over Creedmoor. It’s not like it’s this magical, different thing. It’s just Creedmoor-plus, is what it’s really doing. But how is it doing that? Well, you’re sticking 10 or 15 more grains of powder behind it. That extra powder is extra ejecta out the barrel, and that’s the equal and opposite. So you’re putting more equal and opposite back into your shoulder on recoil, and that’s more abrasive down the barrel on barrel life.
What we’re able to do is keep it at 6.5 Creedmoor charge weights for our powder, which is gonna put it in that same family as 6.5 Creedmoor as far as barrel life and recoil and everything else. And again, it’s just because we’re being more efficient with that powder burn and that system in general. Because pressure does not wear out a barrel. The barrel doesn’t care about 80,000 psi. It cares about how much powder is being burned off into the throat. That’s what’s doing it. The big analogy we used with Backcountry is you could take a .280 Ackley, a 7mm PRC, and a 28 Nosler with the same bullet, getting very different velocities, but you’re doing that with very different charge weights. The 28 Nosler, 90 grains of powder — you’re gonna burn that barrel out in a couple hundred rounds, 500 or 600 rounds.
The 7mm PRC, you’re at like 70 or 75 grains of powder, OK? You guys are taking that to 1,800, maybe 2,000 rounds. And then the .280 Ackley, maybe 60 grains of powder, and no one’s shooting out .280 Ackley barrels, right? You’re shooting the same bullet, but you’re doing it with very different levels of powder. Now, yeah, maybe there’s just a little more recoil. There is some physics there, right? You’re pushing that bullet faster. So you do get a little bit more. But the test we love to do, that you can do with a 6.5 Creedmoor right now, is load a brass round and a Plus Peak with the same bullet and shoot ’em out of the same gun at the same time. If you don’t have that chronograph on there, if you did that blind, it can be tough to tell the difference. And it’s because we have that same level of powder in there giving you similar recoil.
Alex: Yeah, that’s really interesting. I saw a lot of that commentary too, and John Snow, our shooting editor, dealt with it the best he could. But yeah, people see the velocities and they just equate that to barrel burner, right? Higher velocity, this is gonna burn out barrels. Do you have any data or numbers on how many rounds you expect, say, a 7mm Backcountry barrel to go before you start to see burnout?
Brad: Oh, yeah, we have tons. I can’t tell you how many tens of thousands of rounds we’ve shot just on accuracy barrels for Backcountry. But you can go look up independent testing. PROOF did some testing on their own where they took a standard off-the-shelf barrel and shot at a cadence that was aggressive, to say the least —
Alex: No human could sustain.
Brad: They were running a lot of rounds in a very short window without a lot of cooling in there. And they were still able to run that 7mm Backcountry barrel to 3,000 rounds before they had velocity and dispersion fall off in the barrel.
Alex: Yeah. So that’s kind of like typical hunting-cartridge barrel life, right?
Brad: I mean, it was right in line with some pretty big magnums. Yes.
Alex: And how about on the 6.5 Creed, with the Plus Peak side? Do you have any data on that? Because that’s an interesting one. I could see people being like, “Oh, but I like that the Creed is this mild, long-barrel-life, easier-shooting cartridge, and now if I’m loading it up with Plus Peak, is that gonna hurt that?”
Brad: Yeah, mostly what we’re seeing as far as recoil and barrel life and everything, you have 6.5 Creedmoor and 6.5 PRC as kind of the two bookends, and then 6.5 Creedmoor Plus Peak is kind of in the middle there, favoring the Creedmoor. You’re getting more performance than you do out of a brass case, so you should expect a little bit more barrel wear than you would with brass-case Creedmoor. But again, because we’re doing it with a more efficient system, you should still expect better barrel life than you’re seeing on your 6.5 PRC.
Alex: What I love about it in the 6.5 Creedmoor is that the 6.5 Creed was so versatile before, and now, to me, it just feels like the most versatile cartridge choice out there. You can shoot the milder stuff. There’s a whole universe of match ammo you can shoot for accuracy and competition. And now there is, like I said, a 155-grain bullet at 2,900 feet per second if you wanna use it to shoot moose, elk, grizzly bears, whatever you want. Any game animal in North America, the 6.5 in Plus Peak is right up there. The bull that I shot, it was a relatively close-range shot — 100 yards — and I made a good shot right behind the shoulder. But it was a huge bull, a massive bull. He took about 10 steps, went less than 10 yards, and just fell over. And that was that. That, combined with that Fusion bullet — I think it’s just an incredible big-game option.
Brad: Yeah. That’s a pretty mean combo for sure.
Alex: Yeah. I realize this is a sample size of one, but for me, this was very impactful. I was like, “Wow, it works. It works as advertised.”
Brad: Yeah. I think that’s one of the stories of what Plus Peak does for the Creedmoor. The 6.5 Creedmoor is already a pretty versatile cartridge. You’ve got 90-grain varmint bullets up to the 140 class, and a lot of guys are using it for whitetail and elk already. What this really does is give the Creedmoor a sixth gear. It just adds another gear on the top — that much more top-end performance. And as far as versatility, if you’re looking for one rifle, this is literally just a new box of ammo. You could do it with the gun you have right now in your gun safe. Or if you’re asking what caliber you should get for your next rifle, with the full range a 6.5 Creedmoor can now cover, it’s gotta be in that conversation for the one to do a little bit of everything.
Alex: Yeah, absolutely. In my story about this 155-grain Fusion Tipped bullet, I shot at 500 yards with the chronograph downrange. I had the chronograph at about 450 yards, and I shot the 155-grain Fusion Tipped 6.5 Creedmoor Plus Peak head-to-head against the .30-06 165-grain AccuBond. The 165-grain .30-06 AccuBond — no one would argue against that, right? That’s indisputable territory. And the Fusion Tipped bullet is going faster at 500 yards, and it’s bringing more kinetic energy, for people who care about kinetic energy. The 6.5 Creedmoor is topping the .30-06 when it’s loaded in this Plus Peak.
Brad: Yeah. And the .30-06, that’s America’s cartridge, right? That is the cartridge. And when you go to something like a 6.5 Creedmoor with these modern, really heavy-for-caliber, high-BC, really efficient bullets, and now what is a really efficient cartridge, you’re truly punching well above the Creedmoor’s weight class.
Alex: So I think my final question here is, what can we expect in terms of availability? I know it’s hitting shelves now. When do you think hunters and shooters are gonna be like, “Oh, nice. There are a ton of bullet offerings now, and I can pick and choose what I wanna shoot”?
Josh: Yeah. I would say give it a little bit of time, just because the demand is so high right now. As soon as it hits the shelves over the next few months, it’s not gonna last very long.
Alex: It’s not gonna last long?
Josh: No, I don’t think so, just based on the insights we get. So I would give it a few months for things to settle down once people start getting it and shooting it, before it’s widely available and you can just walk in and grab it. And I only say that because the demand is so high.
Alex: Yeah. It’s that initial … I mean, it’s like a new cartridge, but it’s a new cartridge in a rifle that everyone already has. So I can’t imagine someone who has a 6.5 Creed not being interested in at least trying it.
Josh: Yeah, and we encourage everybody to. At the same time, if you’ve got your sweet load that has always worked, keep shooting that. But obviously we encourage everybody to go and try this Peak Alloy technology.
Alex: Yeah, it is cool to just see on the chronograph that, wow, it really works. With this Peak Alloy, what’s the final thing you hope listeners and hunters and shooters understand? Is there a misconception or idea out there where you’re like, “Man, I think people would understand the product better if they knew this one thing”?
Josh: That’s a tough one. We try to publish as much information out there as we can to get the messages out. One of the things we see very often is, is it reloadable? That always comes up. We’ve been working through the 7mm Backcountry, and people are still questioning if that’s reloadable. And yes, they’re both reloadable. There are die manufacturers out there right now supplying dies into the market space. And for 6.5 Creedmoor Plus Peak, there’ll be load data available very shortly. So yes, it is truly reloadable, but it’s slightly different. I can let Brad elaborate on that a bit, but that’s one of the questions we get asked a lot.
Brad: Yeah. Again, just like the concepts of how the case works are similar to brass but a little different, reloading’s the same. It’s the same concept, just a little bit different. You’re still gonna run that full-length sizing die like normal. Because the case is so strong, you just don’t see as much case-length growth. You don’t see primer pockets swelling or heads opening up like you would with really hot brass loads especially. So trimming it and chamfering it just generally aren’t as necessary. And they’re also things we wouldn’t recommend, because again, with a steel case, corrosion is our biggest enemy. That plating we spent all that time selecting is what keeps that case free and clear. So if you were to trim it or chamfer it and remove that plating, you’re just exposing that steel.
We have a full set of instructions on our website with reloading data and step-by-steps, so follow that. But basically: Size it, give it a little flare just to get the bearing surface seated into the neck, seat it, crimp just enough to get profile, and you’re off and running. To the first question of what’s the one thing — I think we covered a lot of them. There are a lot of misconceptions out there. And the number of people we take to the range who shoot it for the first time — you can see the look on their face. They’re like, “OK, sure. I’ve heard it all. Let’s see.” And then they shoot it and you just see that light-bulb moment: “Oh, this is real.” If you don’t believe it, go shoot it. Like you said, you’ve probably got a gun in the gun safe already. You can just go pick up a box, shoot it yourself, and see the results in real time right in front of you.
Alex: Yeah. I, for one, am excited to shoot it more. I’ll definitely be hunting with it more this fall. So yeah, congratulations, guys. I can’t wait to see what comes next. It’s exciting.
Josh: Yeah, exciting times. And maybe I’ll add one more thing to your original question about misconceptions: We do see people treat all this as a fad, a flash-in-the-pan type of thing, right? And like I talked about a little bit earlier in this podcast, it is something we feel very, very strongly about here, and we’re only going to continue to support it.
Alex: Yeah. We’ve seen, for example, the Winchester Short Magnum trend, right? If you’re not paying close attention, it could kind of feel like, “Oh yeah, it’s high velocity on cartridges that already exist or bullets that already exist.” But this is so different than that. To your point, Brad, the short mag trend was just maximizing powder. And this is a new, more efficient way of firing the bullet. And for folks who just don’t wanna dig into the math, just know that, to the point earlier, the military was the one driving this and asking for these requirements. If you know a little about ballistic history, usually when the military is making large-scale demands for a type of technology, it follows very closely in the hunting and sporting world.
So yeah, I also think some of it is just our day and age of internet commentary, where people like to be critical of new things even when those new things are great. So, to your guys’ point, when the ammo is more available, especially the Plus Peak in 6.5 Creed, I think once people start shooting it, they’re gonna believe. I got it right away. As soon as I shot it and had the Garmin chronograph out, I saw the velocities and the SDs and noticed the recoil being pretty minimal, and I was like, “Man, it works. It is what was promised.”
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Brad: And that’s the thing. If you doubt it, go pick up a box, try it yourself, and you’ll see. And like Josh said, we’re not the only ones who believe there’s a lot of potential in this as the way of the future. Do a little digging around other very reputable industry folks and see what they’re doing. This is here to stay.
Alex: All right. Well, thank you for the time, guys.
Brad: Thanks for having us on.
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