The neck down from 6mm to .224 is pretty straight forward. Josh anneals the brass then does a 3 step process on his hydraulic press. Its quick and efficient, also puts less strain on the brass.
Brass from Hornady is easy to get, just a quick phone call and you have about as much as you want. Being that it also feeds another caliber of mine, I really like that. I can order 4k pieces and split between the two calibers.
I have not had one hang up or misfeed with this cailber. It runs just as smooth and quick as anything else.
As I said, I run it on the mild side. I was hitting 3540 (with a little deviation) with the 75gr AMAX. But we did not want to go much beyond that because we were not sure how it would hold together at higher speeds. Probably would go to a different bullet at that point. We will be testing other bullet combos and Im sure a 62gr will do over 3600 fps with great performance.
I see where you are coming from because I initially wanted a 22-243. Under the advice of George and Josh we wanted to try something different and see how it panned out. Well, it worked to all our satisfaction and I enjoy the rifle/caliber a lot!
I was shooting it this past weekend and its just fun to shoot. Having that much speed and low recoil is very handy.
As far as barrel life, we will see where it ends up. As of yesterday I am just under 1300. I did a mild cleaning and everything looks to be still really healthy. Groups are still really tight @ 100 and 200 yards.