A while back, world-renowned ballistician and shooter Bryan Litz of Applied Ballistics contacted Derek Peterson of Peterson Cartridge and explained his idea for two new calibers that he believes will be high performers in the ELR (Extreme Long Range) shooting community … the .338 EnABELR and the .375 EnABELR.

The name “EnABELR derives from the combination of three concepts:

• 1^st En – representing “Engineered”
• 2^nd AB – representing Applied Ballistics
• 3^rd ELR – for Extreme Long Range

Litz’s premise was to create a caliber that is shorter and wider than the CheyTac calibers, but that holds almost as much powder. The theory is that the wider case will allow the powder to burn more efficiently, resulting in less, to no, unburnt powder build-up in the rifle barrel.

Peterson believed in Litz’s idea and agreed to take on the work to create the tooling for the commercial production of the EnABELRs. According to Peterson, “Designing a tool pack to manufacture casings that are simply a neck-down or neck-up of an existing “parent” case is pretty easy duty, and quite common. What is far less common is to make a whole new caliber that has no parent case. These EnABELRs have no parent case. They are an original design.”

Litz stated that he was very pleased with how quickly Peterson developed the tool pack to produce the casings and also with the efficacy of Peterson’s tooling designs. Litz reported that initial results with the EnABELRs are very promising. “The design seems to have achieved all the outcomes we set out to accomplish.”

For more information on guns chambered in the EnABELR calibers or ammo or chamber reamers, contact Applied Ballistics.

Featuring a 40-degree Ackley-type shoulder and 10 percent more case capacity over the parent 6mm BR case, the 6mm Dasher has been used to set records in the 600 and 1,000-yard benchrest community, and has become a favorite among competitors in the Precision Rifle Series as well.

“The PRS community and the long-range benchrest guys are groups that are important to us” stated Peterson Cartridge president Derek Peterson. “We already make most of the common PRS cartridges, so the 6mm Dasher was naturally next in line for those guys looking to compete with a long-range 6mm, with minimal recoil. The 6 Dasher is one of those cartridges that packs a ton of power and performance in a tiny package, and we decided to make them based on requests from our friends in these disciplines” Peterson said.

The 6 Dasher made by Peterson are offered in Small Rifle Primer (SRP) pocket size only. They have a .060” flash hole diameter, same as Lapua’s small rifle primer pockets. They will require a small de-capping pin, just like Peterson’s 6 BR casings. There is no SAAMI or CIP spec for 6mm Dasher. So, the caliber development guys at Peterson had to decide which dimensions they were going to make their casings to. Regarding Length-To-Shoulder (LTS), Peterson consulted the Sierra, Berger and Lyman reloading manuals and designed the Peterson 6 Dasher casings to comply with the guidance from all three manuals.

Regarding Overall Length (OAL), Peterson researched all the popular chamber reamer sizes, and decided to make its casings with an OAL of 1.53” + or – .0005, so they’ll fit in the common 6 Dasher chambers. The base diameter of Peterson 6 Dasher is the same as the base diameter of its 6 BR casings. Plus, these Dashers have the correct neck wall thickness of .0013”.

Peterson concluded, “No more need to fireform or hydroform 6BRs. Now you can get properly headstamped 6mm Dasher, with the ideal neck wall thickness and harder heads than the other competitors.”