Between its carbon-fiber barrels and stocks, Christensen Arms makes some of the most high-tech bolt-actions in the world. Our author recently had a chance to assemble one with his own two hands—and, boy, is it a shooter.
I’d been aware of Christensen Arms for years and even handled its semi-custom rifles at various trade shows, but frankly, I was ignorant in terms of actual field testing. Eventually, I became embarrassed by friends and acquaintances asking me about Christensen’s guns and having to admit my deficiencies, so one day in 2024, I called the company. I asked if I could receive one of its newer carbon-fiber-barreled models—the Ridgeline FFT—for testing. But knowing that ultralight rifles can be finicky and that Christensen, while employing around 100 workers, is still considered fairly small and therefore nimble, I asked them to refrain from cherry-picking one.
You see, in testing rifles for outdoor publications and especially the few with giant readerships such as American Rifleman, there’s a chance that keen gun-company PR people will ship us a particularly good-shooting rifle that they hand-picked from the lot rather than choosing one at random off the production line. While I don’t think this happens nearly as much as one might think—because they get hundreds of such requests each year, and most companies don’t have the time to mount scopes and fully test every rifle they send out—it is theoretically possible. If they did cherry-pick a rifle to send me, I think they’d be doing readers of this magazine a disservice.
But the company did me one better. One of its former PR guys, Josh Ward, asked if I’d like to tour Christensen’s Utah factory where I could build one myself using parts taken directly off the line. That was a first for me and something I would have been foolish to refuse. After all, relatively few people have gleaned a firsthand peek behind the proverbial curtain to see exactly how carbon-fiber-wrapped barrels are actually made. For years, the few companies that specialize in carbon-fiber manufacturing for the firearm industry have kept their processes very secretive, because unlike metallurgy that’s been around for centuries, carbon-fiber tech is largely proprietary, highly specialized for specific applications and evolving all the time. While the general processes of wrapping barrels are no longer a huge secret, exact recipes for the actual material and other variables largely still are.
But before I report what I learned about Christensen Arms’ operations and how the resulting rifle performed, please allow me to offer a little background on this wholly American firearm firm that was conceived to push the envelope in terms of rifle technology.
A Gun Company Is Launched
After a career as an engineer in the aerospace and prosthetics industries, Dr. Roland Christensen founded Christensen Arms in 1995 in Gunnison, Utah, two years after he had applied what he knew about low-flex, high-heat-tolerance carbon-fiber material to rifle barrels. The concept, of course, was to build a barrel fortified with a carbon-fiber exoskeleton to achieve a steel-and-carbon-fiber barrel stiffer than a steel-only barrel. Christensen figured that if he could reduce the diameter of the steel barrel then wrap it using unidirectional plies of carbon fiber, the resulting barrel could be made as stiff or stiffer than an all-steel one of the same diameter. Not only would the barrel be lighter, it would dissipate heat more efficiently, or in other words, it would cool down more quickly, a trait that should increase the rifle’s shot-to-shot consistency.
Now a fairly common feature on high-end rifles, Christensen was the first company to wrap its barrels in layers of carbon fiber (top) and one of the few to produce its barrels (below, l.) and proprietary actions (below, r.) in-house.
Trial, error, successes, restarts and much tweaking ensued as the company gained data and learned more about the material’s harmonic and thermodynamic properties, dual-surface high-heat adhesives and myriad other surprises that are to be expected when innovation is pursued. In his firm’s first year of business, Roland began producing carbon-fiber-wrapped barrels, installing them on .22 rimfire rifles and offering them for sale. American riflemen seemed to understand and generally like the high-tech concept, and no doubt it only encouraged him to keep pushing. While there are multiple gun companies that offer similar products today, it was Christensen that did it first.
But Christensen wanted his company to be more than a high-tech, lightweight barrel maker. He wanted it to offer complete, state-of-the-art centerfire rifles, and he realized that to build them at prices that weren’t totally outlandish, he’d be best served by controlling the entire process. So, in 2002, the company began making carbon-fiber stocks.
Proprietary actions took a little longer because of the huge investment in tooling and floor space required, but it got done in 2010. Now armed with all the major components, Christensen began offering complete centerfire rifles made almost entirely of its own parts. Geared toward hunters, Christensen rifles soon garnered a reputation for being lightweight and accurate among the smaller pool of sportsmen who don’t mind paying a premium for specialized equipment. In 2017, it released its chassis-stocked Modern Precision Rifle. Currently, the company offers approximately 20 different rifle models, most of which are customizable, in three categories including bolt-actions, modern sporting rifles and rimfires; it even produced M1911-style handguns at one point. Recently, it has worked very hard to produce the Evoke model, a rifle that looks and feels like a custom rifle, but one that is mass-manufactured to lower its cost enough to compete at a price point ($899) that’s much more popular on the American market. Not many shops can do that.
A big reason that Christensen can is that it’s one of the few smaller-shop rifle companies that actually makes its own barrels in-house before wrapping them in carbon fiber. Barrel-making is extremely tough to do well; so difficult, in fact, that for many companies, it makes more financial sense to buy barrels—or at least blanks—from third-party vendors. Indeed, Christensen uses a combination of robotics, CNC machining and human hand labor to give its guns the best of both worlds in terms of efficient, cost-effective production and attention to detail down to the individual gun level. It seems to me that a modern gun company is likely best served to be big enough to afford state-of-the-art machinery and bulk material discounts, but also small enough to get quality-controlling human eyes on every product before it leaves the factory in order to best make supremely accurate rifles that are also affordable. If a company begins growing faster than its human resources can handle, quality control can slip; if it can’t mass-produce fast enough to keep up with demand, sales can stagnate. It’s a tricky business, and one that Christensen is navigating.
Writers Tour & Rifle Assembly
When I say Christensen let me build a rifle, I mean it. Of course, making the parts to a level of precision so that they can be fit together by untrained hands such as mine is the key, but I appreciated the company’s confidence, because I am no Melvin Forbes. Pretty soon I, along with a group of writers, was met by the buzzing and humming of a clean factory floor, where we were asked to choose a chambering before being marched to a CNC station where we saw its proprietary precision-machined receivers, including the Model 14 that I chose, being cut from billets of 416R stainless steel. Those fresh from the machines were placed in a cart, ready to be wheeled to the next station. These actions are blueprinted, meaning their critical surfaces are precision-machined to ensure perfect bore and bolt alignment and tight tolerances; this includes lapping the lugs to ensure even contact between the bolt lugs and the receiver raceways for consistent lock-up. The receiver face is trued to ensure it is perfectly square to the bore axis.
Despite having the option of choosing any number of new and exciting chamberings, like 7 mm PRC or 6.8 mm Western, I chose the tried-and-true .300 Winchester Magnum because I feel like a lightweight rifle that could (hopefully) shoot sub-m.o.a. groups in this venerable cartridge could be used for just about any game on Earth, barring a precious few. Soon, I was watching the barrel being made, starting from a steel billet that was machined into a uniform blank, then the reaming of the bore, the button-rifling process, honing and then the turning down of the outside until the exact contour was achieved. Robotics and CNC machines were used heavily during this stage of the rifle’s production.
A few stations later, I witnessed two smiling, nimble-handed female employees expertly wrapping each production barrel with a specific number of thin carbon-fiber panels, each applied in a certain order. They started each one to make sure it was perfectly straight, then used a lathe to spin the barrels until each ply was wrapped tightly. The fibers are laid in a specific orientation so they move heat away from the barrel. The two workers would alternate positions as ply after ply was added in alternating directions to give the carbon-fiber wrap multidirectional strength—a radial wrap to control expansion, longitudinal or unidirectional layers for rigidity. It was fascinating. Finally, they’d mic and inspect each newly wrapped barrel before signing off and sending the lot to the next phase of production, which was mating them to their actions.
I chose Christensen’s 416R stainless-steel Aerograde Carbon Fiber Wrap barrel. Hidden underneath its carbon-fiber skin is a steel barrel that’s 0.565″ in outside diameter at its thinnest. Finished and fully wrapped, the barrel is 1.20″ in diameter at the chamber, tapering subtly to 0.920″ just ahead at the muzzle. This 22″, 2-lb., 4-oz., barrel features button rifling and is hand-lapped to reduce the need for a break-in period. Its muzzle features 5/8×24 TPI threading to accept the included muzzle brake, a thread protector or a suppressor. I then screwed it onto the action and tightened it to the perfect, pre-established headspacing that required nothing more than a torque wrench, 60 ft.-lbs. of muscle power and about 15 seconds.
Barreled action in hand, I carried it over to a work bench where I was instructed on how to assemble the rest of the rifle, including installing the firing pin and firing-pin spring into the bolt, assembling the spring and detent that make up the bolt-release button, and installing the M16-style extractor assembly into the bolt head. The spiral-fluted, two-lug bolt itself is unique in that it features dual plunger-style ejectors to guard against the possibility of one failing. The magnum-length bolt itself is 7 3⁄8″ long and 3/4″ in diameter and features a skeletonized handle and fluted knob. Finally, it is treated with a black-nitride finish to increase its durability and smoothness. Once the bolt was assembled, I clicked it into the receiver along its raceways and pushed it home to ensure it locked up perfectly. Next, I bolted on the supplied TriggerTech trigger (the only major component Christensen doesn’t make itself) and tuned it to 3 lbs.
At this point, I was instructed to walk the barreled action to a nearby closet containing a bullet trap where it was fired via a string remote and proofed to make sure it could withstand a 130-percent-power load without catastrophic failure. It passed and earned its proof stamps. Next, the barrel was laser-engraved with the cartridge designation and my name (a very savvy PR move by Ward) before I returned it to the work station to mix up epoxy and begin hand-bedding the action into the stock.
The Ridgeline’s FFT (Flashed Forged Technology) stock is worthy of a separate article, but for the sake of saving ink, I’ll describe it as succinctly as I can. Basically, the FFT utilizes an aerospace-derived “monocoque” (single-shell) construction. The design eliminates unnecessary internal weight by creating a strong, hollow structure similar to the fuselage of an aircraft; it does away with the crossmembers that are typically seen in other composite stocks. Christensen’s engineers believe they’ve built the lightest possible structure while still exceeding crucial strength and safety margins. The resulting FFT stock is touted to weigh a pound less than most other carbon-fiber stocks. One thing I noticed right away is that the rounded fore-end is contoured for hunters rather than target shooters; it is thin, trim and designed for quick handling in the field. The stock is capped with a super cushy recoil pad and painted in several colors and camouflage patterns of the customer’s choosing.
After the epoxy was mixed, I applied a dab of it to the recoil lug and the corresponding slot on the stock before pressing the bronze-colored action into it and turning the rifle upside down to install the magazine well, magazine spring and follower, capped off by the hinged floorplate. I then installed the two action screws and tightened them to an exact torque value. Next, I ran several dummy rounds through the three-round magazine to test functioning; all was good. Finally, I installed a Picatinny rail atop the action, upon which I mounted a Leupold VX-5HD 3-15X 44 mm scope. Thinking the now-completed rifle was unbelievably light—especially considering the fact that the scope and mounts alone weigh 1 lb., 8 ozs.—I ran it over to the factory’s mailing area where I found a scale. The whole rig weighed less than 6 lbs., 8 ozs.! But, as you can imagine, I still had no idea how it would shoot.
Christensen’s semi-custom rifles, like the Ridgeline FFT (above) built by the author during a recent writers event, are hand-bedded and have their camouflage patterns hand-applied by skilled company staffers.
Testing
From there, I was guided to Christensen’s underground shooting tunnel where my 100-yard groups would be measured and recorded electronically so there could be no fudging. With three human souls and the computer umpire as my witness, the rifle’s first three-shot group after zeroing the scope measured 0.54″! (For the record, I used Barnes VOR-TX 180-grain hunting ammunition.) Later on, at my outdoor range, the rifle averaged 0.75″ groups between three types of test ammo. The recoil was ridiculously mild compared to what I was expecting, thanks to the giant muzzle brake, but as you can imagine, the noise was thunderous. So I swapped the muzzle brake for a SilencerCo Scythe Ti suppressor, and some of my groups actually tightened slightly. We then shot targets from 25 to 1,200 yards through a nasty Utah wind. I did notice some vertical stringing after firing 10 or more successive shots quickly, but I’ve witnessed this with just about every ultra-lightweight rifle I’ve ever tested. The fact is, the Ridgeline FFT is a pure hunting rifle; for high-volume target shooting, there are better, heavier options.
Final Thoughts
To be completely honest with you, as is required of my job, I have heard some mixed opinions about Christensen in the last couple years as it has entered an expansion phase. Most grapevine chatter has been overwhelmingly positive, but I have overheard a few complaints about Christensen’s customer service and quality control. But after visiting its headquarters, here’s what I can report firsthand: I saw a humming factory full of smiling workers who had the time and pride to look up, explain what they do and shake my hand. More than a few told me quick hunting stories that involved their personal Christensen rifles. I don’t think a company can fake that. I learned about the rich history and the technology Christensen has invented. But, mainly, I was impressed with the rifle that I assembled using my untrained hands and parts off the production line. It shot better than any ultralight magnum rifle I’ve ever tested. The other writers’ rifles performed similarly. I just don’t know how even the savviest PR person could pull this off if they weren’t totally confident in their company’s parts and process.
A 6-lb., 8-oz., (scoped) rifle in .300 Win. Mag. that shoots 0.75″ groups? Are you kidding me? It’s certainly no budget rifle that I’ll see at Walmart in the near future, but for that kind of performance and versatility in any hunting scenario, I think a couple grand is worth it.
So am I a Christensen fan now? Yes, I am.
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