Re: K. P.'s 338 Lapua Magnum Build
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: SingleShot85</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Chad
Your posts and pics really bring the customer in and create inquisitive reading. A quick question about the stock work you perform.
Do you prefer a complete virgin stock or one that have been pre-cut so you can fill it with you magical concoction just to re-cut it?
Seem a little bit of extra time that may not be necessary. Just curious.
KT </div></div>
Here's the deal and allow me to preface it with this:
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-style: italic">
I'm not attacking or poking at you. I get asked this question often. I'm using this as an opportunity to address it publicly.</span></span>
We like to start with virgin stocks. One free of any inletting.
The reason for this is I surface model every barreled action in the computer prior to inletting/bedding. I do this for a few reasons.
1. I like to have a uniform, consistent film layer of bedding compound at every contact point with the stock/metalwork. Resin shrinks a bit as it cures. It's not very much, and probably not even enough to get worked up over, however it does happen.
2. A piss thin layer of resin just doesn't (in my mind) make a great deal of sense. Paint a thin layer of your favorite stuff onto a sheet of wax paper. Allow it to cure. Peel the paper off and play with it. You'll soon discover it doesn't take much to crack it, break it, etc. We set our stuff up so that there's a .05" thick layer at every point. the inlet is concentric to the receiver. It's not fat on the bottom and razor thin on top.
The other reason for this is presentation. When we do the finish work on the stock the inlets are clean and crisp. You see a uniform film thickness. The machine work makes for a nice visual. Few things irritate me more than seeing bedding jobs with gobs of crap stuck in corners or dremel tools that have reenacted a Texas Chainsaw Massacre scene inside the magwell/trigger well.
Often a customer has already bought a stock, picked one up somewhere for cheap, or had the rifle built by someone else. In these cases we use the "divine intervention" that expoy gives us and we start over. Fill the sucker back up with "house blend" filler and its like it never happened.
From a performance perspective I'll concede that it is probably not required. However I don't just care about performance. Someone spending the thousands of dollars that it takes to build these things right deserves the best effort. We try to deliver that.
Some only care if the rifle shoots. Ultimately that is what matters I guess as its really what your paying for. If that were the only case though, folks wouldn't spend the crazy money to have rifles built exotic wood stocks, engraving, etc.
To many, the visual appeal means as much as the performance. Garrett and I identify with that and we try hard to deliver on that notion.
In closing: I've always thought the whole point of a "custom" rifle (I loath that word btw) was to deliver something unique, built to suite the clients needs/wants, and still maintain exceptional performance.
Taking the extra effort to deliver something that can be immediately identified is part of our whole scheme to take your money from you.
I, and many other smiths, can spin a song on the phone to make it sound like Thor himself has touched our shoulders and blessed our shops with special powers. It's part of good salesmanship. Any gunmaker worth his salt will/can/does the same thing.
Talk is cheap. All we are trying to do here is make good on it.
I run this shop with a level of transparency few are willing to duplicate. To my knowledge we are the first. Believe me, it'd be far, far simpler on our lives if I didn't have a camera around my neck and a laptop in tow all day.
These threads are a customer service effort and a marketing tool.
Great question!
C.
Ours:
Someone else:
C.
