#HammerForged

In order to find out which method of rifle barrel manufacturing was best, I interviewed Jochen Anschutz (president of Anschutz) and Woody Woodall (president of Lothar-Walther). I found it interesting that although Mr. Woodall stated that all three of the major methods – cut rifling, button rifling, and hammer forging – can produce equally accurate barrels, and although Mr. Anschutz is surrounded (in Europe) by manufacturers that produce hammer forged barrels, both companies choose button rifling for their precision rifle barrels.

Steyr-Mannlicher, which is located, naturally, in Steyr, Austria, has been hammer forging barrels longer than any other firearm manufacturer. They’re located in the same town as GFM, the company that manufactures the massive, complex, and very expensive hammer forging machines used by nearly every large arms maker in the world. We visited their ultra-modern facility, constructed in 2004, to compare their manufacturing processes to the other companies that we’d visited on our whirlwind tour of Europe.