A legitimate question here. Trying to future-proof my magazine purchase. My current action will do fine with magazines without binder plates in them and cartridges out to whatever the length can be. 2.97" or something. Will the Nucleus be able to do the same or should I get magazines with binder plates to keep things from catching up under the feed ramp?
The ARC mag has an internal length of 2.96-ish as I recall.
The Nucleus prototype that's in my hands, currently built into a production-intent JHR, it feeds 2.95" COAL 308's without a problem.
Before there is a flurry of speculation here is what "production intent" means
Production Intent is a prototype that is made on
Production Tooling/Workholding/Machinery
Production raw materials (barrel blanks, triggers, stocks, etc)
Production Artwork
Production Packaging
etc
It is, for all intents, a production component but it isn't being sold. It's a T&E for internal review.
We have a Production Intent JHR.
Production barrel blank - check
Production barrel cutting process - check
Production Contour/Chambering/Threading/etc - check
Production stock - check
Production trigger - check
Production Brake - check
Production engraving - check
Production Action - No, we have a pre-production prototype.
We have exactly 1 prototype.
There are exactly 3 prototypes in existence
We have 1
SAC has 1
ARC has 1
That's it.
People have seen them, handled them at SHOT, and some folks have gotten to shoot them when they happen to bump into myself, Ted, or Mark Gordon when one of us happened to be doing test work.
The JHR that I'm taking to the ELR match in 10 days is the production intent gun.
It's a production barrel, trigger, stock, scope, rings, brake, etc. EVERYTHING except the action is a production part and if someone needed it I could take it all apart and hand them everything except the action. It would screw together into a JHR.
But... because of the Marking Variance not being approved yet we do not have clearance by the ATF to allow ARC to laser the JHR logos and markings on the receiver bodies. They're done, sitting at ARC's shop awaiting laser, then nitride, then they come to PVA. Until we get through the milestone of the the marking variance being approved then the PVA work route is to keep knocking out barrels and writing the details with a sharpie.
Once we have a production action in place we will do final fit for clocking and start burning the laser work on the barrels.
The entire world will know when the marking variance comes through, trust me, it will be in the news. Until then, there's no such thing as an estimated date on when the paperwork will come back.
