Making a Bergara Barrel: A Closer Look at the Obsession Made with Spanish Steel

Across the sea, 4,713 miles away in the Basque region of the North of Spain and under the eye of a faded church tower, Spanish steel is being crafted into something it’s grown accustomed to being: one of the world’s finest weapons. In this picturesque and ancient setting, instead of a glowing bar of metal being beaten into a fine Spanish sword over a hot furnace, the most modern tools, robotics and revolutionary techniques are being implemented to create barrels that will be used by Navy SEALs, Precision Rifle Series (PRS) Competitors and SWAT Team Snipers. A Bergara Barrel is being made; come look inside.

Material

The first step in creating a precision Bergara Barrel is to start with the right material. Bergara uses only the finest Spanish steel, which is sourced from the Olarra Manufacturing Plant in Loiu, Spain. Its quality control standards are so high that all of its steel is tested in a laboratory to ensure it has the proper characteristics before it is ever allowed to leave the plant’s doors.

Straightening

Bergara begins with a straight bar of Olarra steel and inspects it to ensure it meets a deviation of less than 4/1,000 (or .004) of an inch. If there’s a deviation, it’s straightened to ensure its accuracy. This is a step that has been traditionally skipped over by many other barrel manufacturers, but not Bergara. Bergara believes every one of its barrels should be accurate, with no exceptions, ever.

Deep Hole Drilling

Once the steel bar is straightened, it moves on to a four spindle deep hole drilling machine where a specialized bit drills a precise hole through the entire length of the bar.

Barrel Honing

Most barrel manufacturers move from deep hole drilling to reaming, a process that leaves tool marks in the bore. Instead of reaming, Bergara uses three separate honing spindles that utilize diamond tipped bits. These bits polish the interior surface of the barrel to a mirror-like finish that is almost flawless.

Button Rifling

The next step to producing a precision Bergara Barrel is the button rifling process. A carbide rifling button is drawn through the barrel to produce the rifling grooves at the appropriate twist rate for each caliber. This produces a groove diameter deviation of less than 2/10,000 (or .0002) of an inch. It’s the same result that many gunsmiths accomplish by hand lapping a barrel.

Stress Relieving

The final step to producing a precision Bergara Barrel is the stress relieving process. This high temperature heating process realigns the steel molecules ensuring that the barrel is free from any stress after the button rifling process.

Quality Control

For Bergara, quality control practices that every other barrel maker in the world would consider compulsive, obsessive, redundant, nitpicking or even crazed, are routine, expected and mandatory. The barrels are constantly checked throughout the manufacturing process and tolerances are kept extremely tight by checking them with computerized equipment.

The Finished Product

These techniques create a barrel with the quality you’d expect from a one-off custom barrel maker, except with an unexpected twist: the price you’d expect from a mass produced production barrel. When Bergara set out to revolutionize the barrel making industry it teamed up with legendary barrel maker Ed Shilen. Shilen’s barrels have won 13 world records and he was inducted into the bench rest hall of fame. Most traditional custom barrel making methods are very slow and require a lot of manual labor, resulting in sticker prices so high, you may have to take out a second mortgage to afford one. Many other barrel makers were closed minded and thought the old way of making quality barrels was the only way, but not Ed Shilen. He was open minded and helped Bergara develop manufacturing techniques that would prove all the nay-sayers wrong. However, let’s not be too hard on the doubters. Most production barrel manufacturers were simply unable to do what Bergara and Shilen did, because they were using World War II era machinery. You see, when the Bergara factory was built it purchased state-of-the-art, computerized machinery and robotics that were light years ahead of the competition. Shilen’s techniques allowed Bergara, through its advanced, next-gen machinery and robotics, to replicate the custom quality that Shilen and other custom barrel makers had been achieving with older and much more traditional methods, except at a production barrel price.

Spanish steel was known throughout history for being the best in the world, ahead of its time, even revolutionary. Bergara is carrying on that same tradition and producing Spanish steel barrels that are turning the barrel and rifle making business on its head. Rifles with guaranteed accuracy that won’t break the bank. Revolutionary indeed.