Christensen Arms MCR: Modern Carbon Rifle Review

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While the basic function of centerfire hunting rifles hasn’t changed much over many decades, the materials and styling of today’s sporting rifles are certainly different than firearms produced 50 years ago. Walnut stocks with white spacers and oak leaf checkering have given way to strong, lightweight polymer stocks. Blued and matte stainless were once the only color options for barreled actions, but with the advent of Cerakote finishes you can have your firearm in sand, magenta, salmon or tangerine if you’d like. But perhaps the most pervasive trend in modern sporting rifles is carbon fiber. Hunters and shooters can’t get enough of the stuff.

If you’re a big fan of carbon fiber, you’ll simply love the new Christensen Arms Modern Carbon Rifle. Virtually every component on this turnbolt rifle is either made of or wrapped in carbon fiber. Christensen didn’t simply dress up its MCR with a few carbon-fiber elements; it went whole hog.

Before I dive too deeply into all the components, let’s take a minute to review the benefits and drawbacks of carbon fiber. Carbon-fiber construction dates back to the late 1800s when Thomas Edison began baking cotton and bamboo fibers, leaving behind large quantities of carbon in the new material that made it substantially stronger than the parent material.

The process of carbon-fiber construction has advanced, but the basic concept has not. By introducing heat, fibrous materials and non-carbon elements are removed, leaving the remaining carbon materials with extraordinarily strong crystalline bonds.

Strength of Carbon

Those crystalline bonds make carbon fiber five times stronger than steel and twice as stiff. It is also considerably lighter than steel, and when coated in resin it can be molded to shape. It’s little wonder the aerospace and automotive racing industries have used carbon fiber for years.

Like so many other components of the Christensen Arms MCR, the barrel is a steel insert that is wrapped with carbon fiber—the standard method for such barrels. This steel/carbon fiber construction cuts weight and has low thermal expansion and is tolerant of high temperatures, but it’s important for the steel barrel lining to be well built.

The MCR features Christensen’s 416R stainless button-rifled barrel core that is hand lapped and features a match chamber. Twist rate is 1:8 on the 6.5 Creedmoor I tested as well as for the 6.5 PRC, 7mm PRC and .300 PRC chamberings. Twist on the .308 and .300 Win. Mag. guns is 1:10.

Barrels are 22 inches for the 6.5 Creedmoor, 6.5 PRC and .308, while the 7mm PRC, .300 Win. and .300 PRC versions get 24-inch pipes. All MCR rifles feature RFR stainless steel muzzle brakes, and all are threaded 5/8x24.

The Action

The barrel is mated to a precision-machined Christensen Arms Model 23 push-feed action. The action—the same one used on the company’s similar Modern hunting rifle—is made of 416R stainless and receives a black Cerakote finish on the MCR.

Consider the Model 23 a Remington 700 for the modern age because it shares a similar bolt design, with a recessed bolt face with plunger ejector and dual locking lugs. But it also has improvements like an M16-style extractor that is stronger than the traditional Model 700 extractor. The MCR uses Model 700 scope bases, and the Christensen comes with a 20 m.o.a. rail.

The ejection port has been opened to ease single loading and ensure reliable cycling. The MCR incorporates a TriggerTech trigger that adjusts from 2.5 to five pounds. The bolt handle is made from skeletonized metal, and the bolt knob is made from Flash Forged Technology (FFT) carbon fiber.

The stock is also made from FFT carbon fiber. In this process, the carbon fiber is forged into shape by a machine that presses down on the material, and the technique helps reduce the weight of the stock by up to a pound because it produces a monocoque design.

Monocoque

The term “monocoque” simply means that the exterior portion of the stock is crucial to its strength and structure. Think of it like a chicken’s egg, in that the exterior shell adds strength, and this structural skin allows the interior of the item to be lighter without sacrificing durability. MCR rifles have a starting weight of 6.7 pounds, and the 6.5 Creedmoor I tested weighed in at six pounds, 16 ounces with the rail and an empty magazine.

There’s a single stock color option for now, and that’s graphite gray. Criss-crossing carbon fibers break up the plain gray outline of the stock, and this unique pattern of carbon fiber is like a fingerprint, in that each stock is unique. From some angles you’d swear the stock has a camo finish, but that’s just the various fibers creating an uneven look that, in my opinion, makes the stock look modern.

The MCR’s comb is adjustable without tools. Pressing the button on the side of the buttstock allows the comb to be raised or lowered to adjust for proper height, and the hardware is light enough that this feature doesn’t add a lot of weight to the rifle. The recoil pad can be removed and spacers added or subtracted to adjust the fit.

Modern hunters and shooters like to add sling studs and bipods of their choice in any configuration they like, and the MCR makes customizing easy. There are four M-Lok slots and a three-slot Picatinny rail section on the underside of the firearm as well as QD cups fore and aft for mounting a sling.

Gripping, Feeding, and Accuracy

The fore-end contour is interesting, too. The base is flat, and the sides are angled. The fore-end is slightly wider than those on most modern rifles—call it a semi-beavertail for the 21st century—but fits comfortably in the hand and secures naturally in a shooting bag. The pistol grip is fatter than a traditional sporter rifle grip and nearly vertical. These design elements were popularized on target rifles and have now become commonplace on hunting rifles as well.

The rifle feeds from a carbon-fiber, flush-fit detachable box magazine. In standard chamberings it holds four rounds, but in magnums the magazine holds only three. The magazine release is located inside the oversize trigger guard. There’s a rocker-type safety on the right rear of the receiver and a bolt stop on the left rear.

For testing I topped the MCR with a Leupold VX-5HD 3-15x44mm scope and added a Warne Skyline bipod. Accuracy was superb. For example, Hornady’s 143-grain ELD-X Precision Hunter load turned in 100-yard groups of 0.44, 0.45 and 0.65 inch. Rifles that will shoot an inch at 100 yards aren’t hard to find, but I have seen very few factory rifles that would average a half-inch. The Christensen Arms MCR will do it—although not with everything, as you can see in the accompanying chart—but overall performance was very good.

Part of the recipe that allows this rifle to shoot so well is the good trigger. The TriggerTech trigger broke cleanly at four pounds out of the box, and while that’s a bit heavy for some hunters, you can easily adjust the break weight down to 2.5 pounds.

Pros and Cons

The two-position safety is easy to access, and the safety does not lock the action. That’s nice because you can cycle the action with the safety engaged, but there’s a remote possibility that the action will flop open when you’re traversing heavy brush. However, that’s a problem that tends to plague rifles with loose actions, not those with tighter tolerances like the MCR.

The barrel length is about right, but as someone who runs a suppressor on almost all my rifles I would prefer the barrels to be slightly shorter. I am willing to sacrifice bit of velocity—usually less than 100 fps—for a barrel that is a couple inches shorter to accommodate my can. I know some shooters who wouldn’t give up a tick of muzzle velocity even it meant carrying a telephone pole through the woods. But the velocity figures were close to factory figures with the 22-inch barrel, and you can certainly run a suppressor on the rifle without making it ungainly.

Now to the bad part: I don’t like the magazine. When the mag was seated in the rifle it worked fine, but removing it became a problem because it was so tight and with no base to grab hold of there was no place to gain purchase and rip the magazine free. I resorted to opening the action, operating the magazine release and pushing down with my fingers to try to pop the mag free.

As much as I detest a loose, wobbly magazine, having one that fits so tightly it can’t easily be removed is equally irritating. Adding a base plate to the mag or offering a longer mag would solve the problem. The only other issue I had was a bit of resin flaking from under the comb riser.

The Brass Tax

The MCR’s suggested retail price is $2,400, which is less than carbon-fiber models from Seekins, Springfield and Browning. You could argue that there are sub m.o.a. rifles available for less than half the cost of the MCR, but the MCR is durable, light, well-built and comprised of so much carbon fiber one wonders if you buried this gun that it might not turn into a diamond in a few million years.

The MCR is a modern rifle that’s accurate enough for long-range shooting and light enough it could be packed around all day. It’s a premium gun that performs as such and is priced slightly less than its peers, and that makes the Christensen Arms a real winner.

Christensen Arms MCR Specs

• Type: bolt-action centerfire
• Caliber: 6.5 Creedmoor (tested), 6.5 PRC, 7mm PRC, .308 Win., .300 Win. Mag., .300 PRC
• Capacity: 4-round detachable box
• Barrel: 22 in. stainless steel core w/carbon-fiber wrap; 1:8 twist; threaded 5/8x24
• Overall Length: 43 in.
• Weight: 7 lb.
• Stock: FFT carbon fiber; adjustable comb and length of pull
• Finish: black Cerakote
• Trigger: 4.0 lb. pull (measured)
• Sights: none; 20 m.o.a. rail; drilled and tapped for Remington 700 bases
• MSRP: $2,400
• Manufacturer: Christensen Arms, ChristensenArms.com

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