ALBERTA TACTICAL RIFLE SUPPLY: INFIDEL RIFLE

Building a bolt-action rifle, if we're honest, is not difficult. Hundreds of manufacturers have managed to do so with varying degrees of success for well over a hundred years. At a time when steam power was still cutting-edge, bolt-action rifles were already tried and tested, so how is that we're still fascinated by them long after the advent of everything from commercial space flight to the internet? Well, because while making a bolt-action rifle may be easy, making a good one is hard. Damned hard.

That's because while simply making an action that can reliably feed, chamber, and fire rounds can be quite easily accomplished, making one that does so with a high degree of accuracy basically defines the law of diminishing returns. For each eighth of an inch one wants to shrink their groups, the effort required goes up tenfold. Bolt faces, receivers and barrels must all be trued, the action itself must be made more rigid, to say nothing of the cutting of the bore and chamber. A reliable optic mounting system must be employed, the action firmly seated in a solid stock, and the trigger tuned for a clean, crisp and light break. Oh, and the shooter has a little something to do with it, too.

Which brings us to the Alberta Tactical Rifle Supply Infidel rifle you see adorning these pages. Having cut their teeth tuning long range precision guns, ATRS knows a little something about the difference between a run-of-the-mill bolt gun and something capable of putting rounds on target from a kilometre away, so when they set about producing their own custom action they did so with some knowledge of how much work it would take. And it took work. A hell of a lot of it; years in fact.

The end product is known as the Infidel and Maverick actions; with the Infidel being the short version and the Maverick being the long-action version. Infidel rifles such as the one pictured here will work with all short action cartridges with a .473" bolt face (also known as .308 Winchester-sized) while the larger Maverick action will work with everything from .30-06 right up to .338 Lapua Magnum. Each action is machined from 416 stainless steel in ATRS' shop, while the single piece bolts are made from 4340 steel. These are then treated with a salt-bath nitride coating, a process most will recognize under the trademarked name Melonite, which ensures the same surface hardness and extreme wear resistance Glock's made famous with their Melonited slide assemblies. Furthermore, since the bolt is one piece throughout, it's as strong as possible and there's absolutely no chance of breaking one in any way. Even the bolt handle is integral.

At the heart of these actions is the receiver. In order to ensure the highest degree of strength and rigidity possible, they are tubular in design and feature an ejection port rather than an open top. That extra metal across the top of the action also allows for the inclusion of either a 25 or 30 MOA integral rail to serve as an optic mount, with the smaller Infidel action getting the 25 MOA rail and the long-action Maverick getting the 30 MOA. For those unfamiliar, the 25 and 30 MOA rails atop these actions allow optics to be installed with a slight downward cant to them so that a 100 or 200 metre zero will be close to the limit of the scope's field of adjustment. This in turn allows for more elevation adjustment upward. For example, if your optic has 65 MOA total elevation adjustment (32.5 MOA up, 32.5 MOA down if installed parallel to the bore), installing that scope atop a 25 MOA rail will bring your zero 25 MOA down, giving you 57.5 MOA adjustment up, and 7.5 MOA down. Since long range shooting rarely requires dialling your elevation down, this essentially allows one to make better use of their optic's realm of adjustment.

Below the rail, Alberta Tactical Rifle has mills out a generous ejection port on either the left- or right-hand side of the action. The bolt hand and its associated channel are likewise the customer's choice. At the rear of the receiver sits the bolt release, which sits on the side of the receiver sort of like you'd find on a Browning albeit quite a bit smaller. And at the absolute tail end of the receiver is the tang; squared off to provide a bit more contact with the stock during the bedding process. The bottom of the action can be configured at the customer's request to accept either single rounds fed in through the ejection port, or any Remington 700 compatible bottom metal, should you want more than a single round at a time. Similarly, the trigger mechanism is configured in such a way that it too can accept all manner of Remington 700 triggers.

But don't think for a minute that this is a warmed over Remington 700 action. The bolt is an entirely different design and features an AR-15 style extractor, and the overall action, although occupying a Remington 700 footprint, is slightly longer than any Remington 700 action. The cross-compatibility of Infidel and Maverick actions with Remington 700 bottom metal components and triggers was done to ensure the maximum amount of aftermarket support. Furthermore, both these actions can be fitted to most Remington 700 stock systems with some modification; usually the relieving of material from the rear of the action inletting. However, since these actions are only available as complete custom guns from ATRS, it's not really something the end user needs to worry about.

The gun loaned to us for testing was, as you can see, an Infidel chambered in .308 and fitted with what we'd lovingly call the mother and father of all barrels. Manufactured by Jury Custom Barrels out of Red Deer, Alberta, the barrel is worthy of plenty attention of its own, as it was a work of art equal to that of the excellent ATRS action. All Jury barrels are manufactured via the single point cut rifling technique (which is also used by premium barrel maker Krieger) that involves cutting each rifle groove independently. This method is quite labour intensive and requires that the cutting head be pushed through the barrel, incising each groove one pass at a time. Like planing wood, it is crucially important that the tool be sharp and properly cared for, as anything else can result in less than smooth cuts. Needless to say, this barrel was smooth as glass inside, and even after testing exhibit almost no fouling. There was literally nothing for the carbon to cling to! Also, the barrel was fitted with one of ATRS' excellent muzzle brakes, which are essentially integral to the bore. Roughed out and then threaded onto the muzzle, the brake is then finish-machined to ensure the ports are perfectly perpendicular to the bore and completely centred, which in turn ensures the bullet passes through undisturbed while also doing the best job of mitigating recoil.

However, anyone that actually feels recoil from behind this gun is doing something very wrong, because if you feel anything other than elation after seeing four of your five shots go through the same hole at 100 yards, you're just weird. Fitted with an ultralight Jewell trigger (seriously, think sub-pound) and a Schmidt and Bender scope that we'd frankly like to avoid talking about for fear of accidentally-on-purpose finding an excuse to buy one for ourselves, the Infidel was nothing short of incredible. We'd call it a tack driver, but that term is thrown around so frequently these days that we think it'd be downright degrading to use such a popular term on such an uncommonly accurate rifle as this. Perhaps calling it a mosquito-puncher would be more apropos. Tested on everything from 100 to 400 yards, the rifle just couldn't miss, and groupings were near-as-makes-no-difference to one hole at 100 yards... at least, our four-shot groupings were. Try as we might, we couldn't help but inevitably, accursedly pulling the fifth shot out. Such is life with a bloody accurate rifle. And this performance, by the way, was put up with factory Federal Gold Medal match ammunition. We'd say reloads would probably improve upon the performance we saw even more, but really, we struggle to comprehend how. Once you're punching one hole, what do you do? Because short of making the hole smaller than the bullet passing through it, we're at a loss.

And of course, with that sort of accuracy, it goes without saying that the thing was utterly reliable. The only trouble we had was removing the bolt; the bolt release tension spring is relatively stout, and the button needs to be pushed completely in to remove the bolt. Or perhaps we just have weak thumbs. Otherwise the thing was great. Granted with this barrel, optics, and stock the whole gun was bloody heavy but that's more a matter of this particular rifle's configuration.

So now to address the million dollar question: how expensive are these actions? Answer: $1,800. However, the actions are not available as discrete components and require the addition of numerous parts like stocks and barrels, so there's no definitive answer as to what a particular rifle would cost. To use the popular colloquialism, however, "if you have to ask..." probably applies. Savage Model 10s these aren't.

But regardless of whether or not one of these particular rifles is within your fiscal grasp, one thing we would hope all our readers would take away from this article is an appreciate for the vitality of the Canadian gunmaking industry. Here we have a completely unique, custom-made action being built right in the middle of our country (almost), fitted with a barrel made just a few kilometres away (almost), coming together to create a product that's equal to that of its numerous American-made counterparts. These companies Canadians, service their customers' products right here in Canada with Canadian parts, and are a crucial part of keeping this industry not only alive, but thriving. So next time you're thinking about buying something for your gun, think Canadian first. What you find just might surprise you.