State of the Art
Gunwerks builds rifles that reach beyond far—just where shooters are now setting their sights.
By Wayne van Zwoll
An engineer and automobile enthusiast, Aaron Davidson began applying his talents to firearms 20 years ago. After earning a patent for a ballistic turret in 2006, he built a rifle. Then he founded a company.
“Gunwerks emerged to help shooters hit at very long range,” he told me during a recent visit to the Cody, Wyoming, factory. “A narrow focus works for us. The industry is crowded with companies bent on filling every niche. We wanted to excel in one.”
In 2010, Gunwerks introduced the G7 ballistics program, a year later its BR2 rangefinder. “They led to the BR4 and our Revic optics line,” says Davidson. “The rangefinders have a very narrow beam for utmost precision. Adjustments on Revic riflescopes are intuitive, positive, and easy to make. The optical quality of those and our spotting scopes equals that of much more costly glass.” To promote Gunwerks products, he developed the Long Range Pursuit television show.
The factory is still new. Construction started in 2018. Davidson and his crew moved in two years later. “Some tooling has yet to arrive, but all cells are operating now. We started making suppressors right away. Our design protects the threads from blowback, so they don’t seize up. Suppressors make sense on powerful long-range rifles, reducing not only noise, but recoil and muzzle jump. Along with the travel time of bullets to distant targets, a suppressor helps the shooter see strikes.”
The first Gunwerks rifles had Nesika actions, Lilja barrels, Banser stocks, and Leupold scopes. Now the company builds rifles on its own GLR action, in stainless steel or titanium. The Climbr, Magnus, and Verdict have an NP3-coated, two-lug bolt with twin cocking cams and an extractor that sends empties at a low angle to clear blocky scope turrets. A flush floorplate and an internal magazine make for a clean profile and easy top-loading from low positions. Davidson minds such details, his focus ever on what makes the rifles easier to use and more effective. Vertical integration—by producing all major parts in-house—frees him of many supply-chain delays. “And because those components are of our design, we needn’t compromise the function of one component to pair it with another,” he says.
Stock Design
Custom stockmaker Steve Billeb helped develop the first Gunwerks stock. “We’ve always paid homage to classic design,” says Davidson. “We’ve built on that with what we call modern geometry. Our rifles are most often fired prone over a bipod, the support hand or a bag under the stock’s toe. The toe-line angle of current stocks is shallow, so you can tweak elevation by moving hand or bag slightly. The comb has a downward slant forward so recoil moves it away from your face. The grip is steep, full, and rounded, with generous fluting, for control with a relaxed palm. The forend is of reasonable width, with a flat belly but radiused edges for comfort when hand-held. It has an Arca rail (to fit the Swiss-designed QD camera mount) for use on our heavy-duty tripod. Hardware to add sling and bipod is recessed, for a trim profile.”
Gunwerks stocks are manufactured on site, of reinforced carbon fiber. All have an alloy bedding block with a wedge that snugs the rifle’s recoil lug to its bearing surface as you tighten the guard screws.
Creating Accuracy
Gunwerks GLR actions are fitted with carbon-fiber-wrapped barrels, 18 or 22 inches long on the Climbr, 22 or 24 inches on the Magnus (26 on a Magnus muzzleloader, with excellent, adjustable sights). Five barrel lengths are offered on the Verdict, plus a steel-barrel option. Barrel contours and brakes are model-specific. The new Skuhl in .375 Ruger is essentially a big-bore Climbr. Flax fiber in its stock looks and wears like wood. The receiver’s “worn tungsten” finish and the stock’s hybrid cosmetics produce a most appealing, if not traditional, result. Despite its modest weight, the Skuhl treats me civilly in recoil. From a sit, it kept my first five shots close at 200 yards.
Accuracy depends a great deal on tolerances and finish. “We drill, ream, and hone our barrels to a finished bore tolerance of .0002,” Davidson told me. “They’re 416R stainless, cut-rifled and hand-lapped. We’ve found four- and six-groove rifling superior to 5R. Chambers are cut with two reamers: one for the chamber body, one for the throat. We think that practice best controls throat length and finish.”
Besides chambering for popular long-range cartridges, Gunwerks offers its own. It developed the 7mm LRM as a step up from the 7mm Remington Magnum and 6.5/284. Both sold well early on. “Now we get most orders for the 6.5 PRC and 28 Nosler,” he says. “Also, the .300 PRC and 30 Nosler. Customers can buy our hand-assembled loads in limited quantities.”
I watched loading-room employees funnel temperature-stable powder into fresh, slightly belled cases, then close the mouths over long-nosed Bergers without crimping. “One employee can turn out 2,300 rounds a day,” Davidson says.
It’s Not Just About Hardware.
A new rifle does not a marksman make. Firing a top-shelf rifle and load from a bench, you should be able to suck groups into knots; but cinching those knots tight demands much of you. Without bench or bipod, trying to put one hole near another can color your vocabulary. Shooting schools offer help.
Gunwerks conducts two- and three-day schools near Cody, also at suitable venues in other states. “We teach all the elements of long-range precision, from rifles, scopes, and ammo to techniques that tap their potential,” Aaron Davidson says. “The shooters learn to use our ranging systems and pair up with instructors to battle wind at distance. Pounding steel far away is great fun, even if you ordinarily kill game up close. We’re confident the skills our hundreds of students have learned make them more successful hunters at any range.”
Building a Shooting System
Efficient bullets, uniform loads, and cases shaped by decades of accuracy trials are useful only if rifles put them on target. Gunmakers have tried all manner of actions, bedding ploys, and rifling types to this end.
“Some long-range enthusiasts still do that,” Davidson says with a smile. “They buy actions, barrels, stocks, and scopes, then spend more to test handloads in the resulting rifles. They switch out parts to print tighter groups. It’s a costly, time-consuming journey. At Gunwerks, we build and market shooting systems. Our rifles have top-shelf components. Our range-compensating Revic scopes make the most of them. We’ve done the hard work, even load development. Our systems are ready for a hunt or a long-range match right out of the hard cases we supply with them.”
The company inventories about 70 finished rifles. “Almost 30 percent of our rifles ship from that stock,” Davidson says. Therein lies some of the mojo at Gunwerks. “While weekend hunters can find a plethora of ‘package guns,’ shooters who want a sporting-weight set-up with the legs to pound steel a mile away have had to choose between waiting months for a custom build or committing days and dollars to assemble parts that in concert may or may not deliver competitive accuracy.”
Gunwerks’ newest rifle, the Nexus, is of switch-barrel design, with a receiver of 7075 aluminum machined precisely on a nine-axis mill. An integral rail has 20 minutes of gain. The three-shot, staggered-stack detachable magazine (with shoulder support to protect bullet tips) feeds a six-lug bolt that engages a barrel extension. Bolt lift is just 65 degrees. Barrels and bolt heads are easily switched out. A shoe on the TriggerTech trigger can be moved half an inch, to fit your reach. The stock has leather inserts at grip and comb. This 7½-pound rifle appeared in May 2022, in 6.5 PRC and .300 PRC. On heights above Buffalo Bill Reservoir, I saw it bang steel at 800 yards between gusts of swift, squirrely wind that nudged bullets from my .300 off plates big as Volkswagen bonnets.
“Quite a blow out there,” I said.
Davidson was unsympathetic. “Gunwerks shooting systems will help you reach farther than most hunters will ever aim. Where you point the barrel in a Wyoming gale is beyond our control.” (gunwerks.com)
“Send It.”
Once upon a time, long-range shooters poured lots of powder in big cases to start bullets fast and thus flatten their arcs. Paul Wright of Silver City, New Mexico, used a .300 Weatherby Magnum necked to .264 in 1,000-yard matches, its 139-grain bullets clocking 3,400 fps. When Pennsylvania riflemaker Alex Hoyer began chambering it, this fire-breather became the 6.5/.300 Wright-Hoyer. Weatherby has revived it as the 6.5-300 Weatherby, with 127-grain Barnes LRX bullets at 3,537 fps.
But hiking speed to reach far is pointless if you ignore drag. At exit, a bullet meets an implacable wall of air. Its pressure on a bullet moving 3,000 fps equals the force you’d endure standing in a 2,000-mph gale. A fast bullet sets up greater drag than a slow bullet, just as you feel more wind resistance when you accelerate on a bicycle. Bullet weight and shape also affect drag. The spherical face of a cannon ball tends to push air instead of piercing it, as would a spear. Another brake on the ball: low sectional density (SD), the ratio of its weight in pounds to the square of its diameter in inches.
Aaron Davidson and his colleagues at Gunwerks insist on long, pointed bullets with tapered heels for long shooting. Their high SD and sleek form yield a high ballistic coefficient (BC), the measure of a bullet’s ability to overcome drag. “G1” BCs were derived a century ago, using a “standard bullet” shaped like those of that day. “G7” figures reflect more streamlined profiles popular now. Any bullet’s G7 BC is lower than its G1 BC. The numbers are equally valid. Think of measures in miles and kilometers.