CANCON Hear It to Believe It: Integral Guns by Wren Metal Works Dave Merrill November 3, 2026 Join the Conversation At RECOIL, we review every product fairly and without bias. Making a purchase through one of our links may earn us a small commission, and helps support independent gun reviews. Read our affiliate policy. Find out more about how we test products. Story by Dave Merrill, Photos by Dave Merrill and Patrick McCarthy “What the hell is that?” The exclamation first caught my attention, but it was clear the gun was causing all the fuss. It was a black-and-FDE lever-action, but wasn’t a normal lever-action. It had a skeletonized buttstock, gold trigger and accents, but the fat barrel making it resemble a blunderbuss was the real draw. “Oh this? It’s a .45-70.” There are some things in life that you have to experience to fully understand, that you have to feel to comprehend. It could be as simple as the taste of a perfectly ripe strawberry, or as deep as witnessing the birth of your child. I’m not going to say that shooting a Wren Metal Works custom rifle is going to change your life or inspire you to write poetry, but it’s not something you’ll soon forget. The action is smooth and buttery, even after a day of shooting. When you let loose a 550-grain projectile at 1,000 fps, sending more than an ounce of metal flying downrange adding up to 1,200 foot-pounds of energy, you know you’ve shot something very powerful — and then comes the realization that it was also extremely quiet. So quiet, in fact, you’ll realize you forgot your hearing protection and didn’t even notice. It’s genuinely shocking, and you can’t wipe the stupid smile off your face. Their .44 Magnum spitting out 400 grains like a handclap is more of the same. The mag-fed .300BLK we outfitted for this piece? Even better. Watching other people’s reactions to shooting Wren Metal Works rifles is almost as much fun as shooting it yourself. Almost. LEVER-ACTIONS Lever-actions were invented in the mid-19th century, with the first real successful design being the Henry 1860. Chambered in .44 rimfire, the magazine in the Henry 1860 held 16 shots of 200-grain flat-nosed rounds. Though it fired a less powerful load and has a shorter effective range than a rifled musket, the ability to rapidly send successive shots gave it great advantage over muzzle-loading designs — at least for those with the discipline to aim. The Henry 1860 only saw limited use by the American military against the Confederacy during the Civil War (the Spencer Repeaters saw a bit more), because they were expensive and more complex. But it laid the foundation for the rifles that would soon dominate the Western states. Though they were out for military use when high-pressure ammunition became standardized circa World War I, and completely outmoded with the advent of the mag-fed semiautomatic rifle, lever-actions were essentially the assault rifles of their day. While levers never totally went away, it wasn’t until recently here in the 21st century that we began to see a resurgence in popularity. Treat the AR mags in the Henry like you’re shooting a Mini-14 and you’ll have an easier time of it Wren Metal Works was founded a decade ago, not because lever-guns were uniquely popular at the time (cottage-core frontier fashion wouldn’t come about until after COVID) but because they wanted to make high-performance, handcrafted, quiet rifles. And when it comes to running silent, levers make for superior hosts; semiautomatics will invariably have some gas moving back through the gun, blowing out of the ejection port (and maybe into your face). The best modern designs do pretty well at mitigating this, but when it comes to a lever gun it’s never been a problem at all — because the breech stays locked tight during the firing sequence. And these guns aren’t just hosts; the silencers are integral to the design. If you want one for yourself, you can’t get one off the shelf, because Wren Metal Works is in the business of bespoke and custom. WREN METAL WORKS HENRY 300 SUPREME Caliber: .300BLK Capacity: 10, 30 MSRP: $7,200 URL: wrenmetalworks.com Accessories: Lead & Steel Promethean LP-1 – $450 Infitac FML19 – $1,199 SureFire M340DFT-PRO Turbo Mini Scout – $419 TAILORED TO YOU Wren Metal Works does conversions on Henry, Marlin, and Smith & Wesson rifles. They can convert a rifle you already have, or they can obtain one for you. Since this is a custom shop, if you have your heart set on something, they probably can do that too. With their integral guns, the barrel is shortened and the baffle stack permanently attached so there’s only one tax stamp to simplify interstate transport. The outer sleeve is removable, so the system is serviceable (though you probably won’t ever have to service it). Watching others shoot a Wren is almost as much fun as doing it yourself. Almost. Then, the experts at Wren Metal Works smooth the action, upgrade the screws to Torx, tune the carrier arms, lap the bolt face, add a Picatinny rail, attach the stock of your choice, Cerakote, and more things than I can list because I’m not a gunsmith — different guns need different things. What I can say is that they shoot very smoothly. One of Wren’s bestsellers isn’t an integral at all, but a purpose-built Smith & Wesson .357 Short-Barreled Rifle. This one is meant to be integrated with the SilencerCo Osprey. It has a very unique look, but it doesn’t have our heart like the actual integral guns. They have some really cool custom 8.6 options as well. HENRY LASR The base of what you see on this page, the blue-camo gun, is Henry’s AR-magazine-fed Lever Action Supreme Rifle (LASR), which they launched in January 2025. We especially enjoy the irony of giving a lever-gun equipped with a walnut stock and open sights the retro-futuristic name of “LASR”, double-so one that has the rainbow-like ballistics of .300BLK. Henry had to do a ton of engineering to successfully pull this off. They used a standard AR bolt (minus gas rings), an AR barrel extension, and a linkage and slider-crank mechanism to feed rounds from the box magazine. This successfully mitigates the downsides of the tube magazine, while opening up a lot of caliber options in the future. Movie props? Nay–these are the real deal When it comes time to dress out a rifle, the sighting system should be your first consideration. The Wren Metal Works conversion eliminated the factory iron sights and replaced them with a Picatinny rail, which is A-OK because we wouldn’t have used them anyway. Since this is a .300BLK rifle, a dot sight is right on the money. Here we went with a Lead & Steel Promethean optic. It has a huge window, selectable reticles, great runtime, and is double armored-up. There’s some space to pop a flip-side magnifier behind to stretch the legs out in the future. But because we didn’t feel done with just one, we also mounted a thermal optic for additional capability. The Infitac FML19 is only about the size of an Aimpoint ACRO or Steiner MPS, but it’s stuffed with a 19mm objective lens, 384×288 at12μm thermal sensor, 1.4-inch touchscreen display, and rechargeable CR2 battery to run it all. Modern technology is grand. It has intuitive controls (we jumped in without even reading the instruction manual first) and easily figured out how to change color profiles, swap reticles, and even configure the shake-awake just using the rear screen. The combination of old and new paired with high performance hits us just right An RMR footprint is standard, but other adapters are available; here, we mounted in an offset to put it front of the Promethean. (And if we held it just right, we could co-align the sights, one in each eye, like stereovision optics. Pencil this under the weird and unnecessary category, but something you should try on the range if you ever get the opportunity.) Of course, you must have a light. The SureFire Mini Scout Light Pro has remarkable output for its size, pushing 500 lumens out the front from a single CR123 battery. There’s just the right amount of rail-estate to use the clicky tailcap from the support hand; a soft push for momentary activation, a hard for constant. One of the original appeals of .300BLK is that you could use the same magazines as a standard AR-15 (which ended up being a downside — you definitely don’t want to accidentally chamber a .300BLK in a 5.56mm!). And while the idea is nice, the reality doesn’t always line up, especially when it comes to polymer magazines. And so it goes with the Henry LASR, which runs best when feeding from a magazine dedicated to the caliber. The Lancer L5AWM 300 magazines were specifically designed for feeding heavier subsonic ammunition, and they updated the internal geometry to ensure they would stack properly. The Infitac FML-19 thermal offset in front of the dot is really excellent in this format, and the range is good enough that we can shoot what we can see While the 30-rounder fits an apocalyptic Firefly/Fallout aesthetic, you do you know that you’ve been running a lever-action by the time you’ve bottomed out the magazine. A lever-action is sort of like using a manual film camera, and a semiautomatic like a digital — one is much easier to shoot quickly. But if you pick your shots, you’ll be doing alright (and not everything is meant for war anyway). LOOSE ROUNDS Wren Metal Works doesn’t make regular guns for normal people; this is more akin to a muscle car than a Camry. The fact that they’re durable and supremely functional is part of the appeal, but they’re also intentionally well-crafted and beautiful, too. These guns are meant to be shot, and they’re meant to be seen — the only wrong thing to do is let them sit in the safe and collect dust. This was one of our alternate cover shots Why you can trust RECOIL Since our founding in 2012, RECOIL remains the premier firearms lifestyle publication for the modern shooting enthusiast. We deliver cutting-edge coverage of guns, gear, accessories and technology. We go beyond basic reviews, providing no B.S. buyer’s guides, hands-on testing and expert analysis on everything from firearms and survival equipment to watches and vehicles. Our reviewers are the backbone of our operation and come from diverse shooting backgrounds: Former law enforcement, military veterans, competitive shooters, seasoned hunters and plain old firearms enthusiasts. Furthermore, we’re not just gun experts, but dedicated journalists who adhere to the strictest standards of our profession. At RECOIL, editorial independence is the foundation of everything we publish and the cornerstone of reader trust. Our editors, writers and content creators make all editorial decisions independently, free from outside influence. That boils down to: advertisers don’t dictate our coverage, the outcomes of our reviews or what we recommend in our buyer’s guides. 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