There’s a rifle maker named Q, Inc. This raises a question: What does the Q reference mean? Quality? Quirky rifles? Both? Quirky is defined (in part) as unorthodox, unusual, unconventional and out of the ordinary. Q’s Fix rifle is all that plus high-quality materials, construction and more.
One glance at this bullet launching tool brings to mind the ubiquitous AR-15 rifle. But the six-pound Fix is not only NOT an autoloader. It’s not engineered around a two-piece receiver. It has no buffer tube in the “butt stock,” no gas tube and no charging handle. It is a manually operated, 45-degree-lift, four-locking-lugs bolt action of unique mechanical and modular design. And it’s a switch hitter.
Despite its tactical look, the Q Fix is just a bolt-action rifle in drag. Mechanically it is truly a unique system using four locking lugs on a push-feed system. The butt stock is hinged to fold around the action and bolt, reducing the rifle’s size for convenient packaging and travel. Folded half-open, the butt serves as a “kickstand” to hold the rifle erect. The Fix’s Picatinny rail ties the receiver to the handguard, which is further secured via a clamp at its bottom.
“Switch hitter” in this context means users can easily swap barrels from 6.5 Creedmoor to 308 Winchester to 8.6 Blackout and back again. They cannot switch the bolt operation from right side to left side, but the safety switch is on both sides and, as Q, Inc. head honcho Kevin Brittingham says, left-handed shooters can operate the right-side bolt with their right hand faster than most right-handed shooters can. (It’s a practiced operation, but he’s right.)
So, the Fix was not designed to be the ultimate ambidextrous rifle. Brittingham claims it was “optimized to be the lightest, most effective utility rifle ever.” He made no claims for esthetics. My wife did, saying (after I threaded a Q Trash Panda suppressor onto the Fix we are reviewing here) “That’s ugly on ugly. But I love it.”
Mrs. Spomer’s love for the homely Fix manifested while she carried one during a lengthy stalk, stalk and re-stalk of an impala herd while on safari on South Africa’s eastern cape. At sunset she finally dropped the herd buck with a neck shot taken through a small window in the brush. “This is the lightest, handiest, smoothest, steadiest rifle I’ve ever shot,” she announced. “I’m not kidding.”
We will take her word for it and press on with this review.
Q’s Trash Panda suppressor softened both muzzle blast and recoil on our 6.5 Creedmoor sample rifle.
Our Fix review rifle came with a 16-inch stainless steel barrel and a kickstand. (I warned you it was quirky.) The barrel is chambered for 6.5 Creedmoor and rifled 1:7 inches, more than steep enough to stabilize the longest, most wind defying bullets loaded in 6.5 Creedmoor ammunition. The 16-inch barrel is a compromise. It sacrifices muzzle velocity for better balance and a shorter overall rifle length with a silencer affixed. Q’s Trash Panda silencer brought “barrel” length to 22-inches. Maximum muzzle velocity used to be the holy grail of hunting rifle performance, but laser rangefinders, turret dialing scopes and ballistic calculators are changing that. One can easily compensate for bullet drop at range, so reducing rifle size while taking advantage of the sound and recoil reduction of suppressors is becoming an attractive option.
It took some searching before I found the cartridge chamber marking on the bottom of the barrel near the muzzle.
Overall rifle length of this Fix is another quirky thing. It’s either 42-inches or 26-inches or slight variations of those extremes because the Fix is modular and adjustable. You choose when to fold ’em, choose when to mold ’em, choose where to set the comb and adjust the length-of-pull. And this brings us back to that kickstand. The rifle’s entire butt stock swings to the right on a hinge. Thus folded, rifle length is reduced by some ten inches, making for convenient packing in a smaller case. Swung partially open, the butt supports the rifle like a kickstand supports a bicycle keeping the action out of dirt, mud and snow.
Seen from the front, the bolt seems to have five locking lugs, but there are really four, the bottom two split. Note the inset plunger ejector and large AR-10-style extractor.
There is not a sliver of walnut on a Fix. It is all aluminum and steel. This keeps weight down. Six pounds on my kitchen scale. The 30-caliber Trash Panda suppressor adds 12 ounces. Mount an 11-ounce, 2.5-8×36 Leupold VX 3 atop the integrated Picatinny rail and you have a suppressed, field-ready rifle at just a little less than 8 pounds. Trade the silencer for foam ear plugs, and you’re climbing the Rockies with a delightfully compact, weatherproof, 7-pound rifle.
The underside of the bolt shows how the unit rides on the extended shroud’s rail lips. The sear, which the trigger pushes upward, is the small, isolated black rectangle inside the bronze section.
The push-feed bolt in this rifle extends from a shroud that glides on receiver rails. The outer bolt body and internal locking head both rotate in combination, resulting in the extremely short, 45-degree lift. A large, AR-10-style extractor pulls cartridges from battery. A plunger ejector pushes them out of the ejection port.
The bolt handle directing all this action is unusually small and short. Operating it requires some readjusting for those of us familiar with larger, traditional bolts, but is quickly mastered. I found that a palm lift worked better than a finger-thumb pinch. The cocking force feels a bit heavy at first, but that is more a reflection of the limited leverage of the small handle. Q offers an oversized, replacement handle.
Forget clumsy M-locks. The Fix handguard features multiple Q-Sert threaded anchors for attaching bipods, lights, etc.
The Fix front receiver is split on the bottom so that each free-floating barrel can be aligned with an integral key, accurately headspaced with a locking ring, then clamped into place with a tension screw. The lightweight handguard (forend) similarly slides onto the receiver and fixes in place via easily accessible screws. The handguard, to no one’s surprise, is carved up with rectangular holes to reduce weight, then fitted with Q’s Q-sert threaded, steel mounting holes for affixing the usual array of accessories without which no modern rifle can function. Q says Q-serts can hold against 700-pounds of force and are stronger, lighter and faster than M-locks. From what I’ve seen, they are.
The Fix trigger is a two-stage and perfectly counterbalanced to virtually eliminate any chance of accidental discharge if the rifle is dropped.
Finally, there is the Fix’s 2-stage trigger. It is a simple, “floating” trigger that is balanced to always ride perfectly on its axis, virtually eliminating accidental discharge of a dropped or radically jarred rifle. Pressing this trigger pushes the sear straight up to release the striker tension via the internal firing pin coil spring. The trigger pull on this Fix measured a consistent, crisp 2.5 pounds with no creep and no after-travel.
A Garmin Xero C1 Pro chronograph measured velocities of the six different loads used. Three printed some sub-MOA groups.
Despite the Fix’s appearance and cold, industrial character, the sum of its parts results in beautiful accuracy and pleasant handling. I fitted a 2.5-8X36mm VX 3 Leupold to the Pic rails, zeroed with two shots, and began shooting 3-shot groups from the bench. Elizabeth sat in and triggered a few groups to offset any “shooter bias.” The 3-shot group results were as good as 0.39-inch and 0.45-inch at 100 yards with two different loads, and 0.68-inch with a third. On shooting her 0.45-inch group, Betsy immediately commandeered the rifle for her next deer hunt.
Skeletonized butts are becoming familiar on modern rifles. While anathema to traditional walnut-and-blued rifle lovers, they do reduce rifle weight and permit extensive custom fitting for length-of-pull and comb height.
The Fix’s skeletonized genre of rifle styling, I’ll confess, grates on this walnut-and-blued traditionalist. But the resulting performance suffers not in the least. Despite its clunky appearance, this little Fix carries comfortably in the hands, responds quickly, shoots smoothly and delivers projectiles where it is pointed—without ringing my ears. I have to respect the versatility of a rifle that is so easily adjusted to fit virtually any body size plus changed to fire significantly different cartridges/calibers.
So, esthetics versus convenience and versatility. Each of us gets to choose. I’ll continue still-hunting and stalking with my walnut-and-blued falling blocks, my controlled-feed bolt actions and 19th century lever-actions. But when I need a workhorse truck gun, a tool to ride amid the daily bumps and grinds and dust, a rifle to drag through the rain and mud and snow and thorns, this Q Fix just might be it.