Volquartsen brags a little about their manufacturing and states there are no cast or stamped parts and everything is either machined from bar stock or cut with a wire EDM (electrode discharge machining). The receiver is machined from stainless bar stock with an integral Picatinny rail on top. There is a rather massive barrel nut giving the appearance of a barrel even bigger than it really is. The barrel is a Lothar Walter honed, button rifled 1:9"-twist stainless steel tube 20" long with an additional 1.5" compensator. The rifle we tested had a permanently affixed comp, but on production rifles it will be removable and a thread protector provided.

The standard stock is walnut, but a laminated wood or McMillan fiberglass stock will also be available. At first glance the cheekpiece seems to be very high, but it is necessary because the mounting rail places the scope higher above the bore than is common. This would only matter for someone doing ballistic calculations where the height of the scope above the centerline of the bore is required. Otherwise, it is just right for a good cheekweld. The whole package, minus scope and rings, tips the scale at 10 pounds.

The trigger group is also similar to those of their other rifles, but also includes the magazine well and catch. The trigger pull measured 21⁄2 pounds and broke cleanly after a barely perceptible bit of roll. I wouldn’t call it creep because it was so smooth, but there was just a little movement of the sear before it broke.

Perhaps the single most important part of any semiautomatic firearm is the magazine. No matter how well it is designed or made, if something doesn’t put a fresh cartridge up there in time for the bolt to strip it and shove it into the chamber, the wheels are simply going to fall off. Volquartsen has wisely — again — chosen to let somebody else make the magazine.

This time it is from the AR-15 for which there are untold millions of magazines of various manufacture. Now this is a good thing, but not all those magazines are created equal. The variation seems to be in the location of the magazine catch cut in the body of the magazine and a couple of aftermarket examples from my supply didn’t want to feed the last round. The 10-round magazine with the rifle functioned perfectly as did the majority of others I tried, but before one jumps to any conclusions about the rifle’s reliability, it would pay to try different magazines.

Shooting the Evolution is one of those fun — and different — shooting experiences. For one who is accustomed to the AR-15 it is almost a shock to not hear the rattley-clank of the spring and buffer moving inside the stock. In fact, you really don’t notice anything about the operating cycle and, as you would expect, recoil is virtually negligible.

The rifle was function tested with a wide variety of ammunition and performed perfectly except for the 40-grain varmint loads from every manufacturer. These simply refused to cycle the action. This was reported to Volquartsen and, keeping in mind we were dealing with a pre-production rifle, those loads were excluded from further testing. Volquartsen reports they will investigate this and a small change in the size of the gas port should eliminate the concern.

One of the blessing/curse things about .223/5.56 rifles is the vast assortment of ammo available. Where once you had a choice of 50- or 55- grain bullets now you can go from 30- up to 80-grain weights. Initially the rifling twist rate was set at 1:12" which worked just fine for the 55s but as bullet weights went up, a faster-twist barrel was needed. This becomes one of those tough choices because a gain at one end of the bullet spectrum can often result in a loss at the other. On the recommendation of the barrel maker, Volquartsen uses a 1:9" twist, which worked just fine with the 68-grain match ammo I used, but still did well with the lighter bullets. Even though the 40-grain loads did not get a complete test, accuracy when manually operated was still good.

For this test the Evolution was equipped with a Zeiss Conquest 6-20X scope that made it fun to shoot groups. It was too bad it was the wrong time of year for prairie dogs or other varmints. All in all this was one of those interesting rifles demanding a lot more time than I was able to give it since this very rifle had to be displayed at the SHOT Show in a matter of days after my test was finished.