At SHOT Show 2022 Industry Day at the Range, Faxon Firearms and Q introduced a joint project – Q Fix bolt action rifles and AR-10 style gas guns chambered in 8.6 Blackout. The cartridge is developed by Q and the contribution of Faxon Firearms to the project is the barrels. Let’s take a closer look.

The 8.6 Blackout is a .338 caliber cartridge created with the same general concept as the .300 Blackout except for the bigger AR-10 pattern guns. It has case head dimensions and overall length identical to .308 Winchester which in conjunction with the overall shape of the cartridge allows loading unmodified AR-10 magazines to their full capacity.

Like the .300 Blackout, the 8.6 Blackout was designed with the suppressed shooting in mind (although supersonic loads will be available as well). The company showed several 8.6 Blackout loads with a couple of 300-grain bullets and a 210 grain Barnes TTSX. These loads are still in development but they should become commercially available in the foreseeable future.

As mentioned above, Faxon Firearms made the barrels for these 8.6 Blackout firearms. Now, these are not regular barrels and making them is probably quite challenging because in order to properly stabilize long and heavy 300-grain subsonic .338 caliber projectiles, the barrels have a 1:3″ twist rate! Yes, that’s one full rotation of the rifling in every three inches. The bores of these barrels look more like being internally threaded than rifled. The picture below is taken through the receiver of a Q Fix rifle.

Faxon Firearms will be offering 1:3″ rifled barrels chambered in 8.6 Blackout for Remington 700 and AR-10 pattern rifles. The barrels for both platforms will be available in 8″, 12″ and 16″ length options. For more information on this joint project and to be notified about the availability of Faxon barrels, click HERE to proceed to the Faxon Firearms page dedicated to this collaboration with Q and their 8.6 Blackout products.