Please tell me you're moving to the Rockwall or McKinney area when you graduate- we really need a good smith!

Dude...you rock! Keep up the good work!

Longview actually...

Good deal! will be glad to have a good smith close to home

And two weeks later here it sits. Still a lot of wood to remove. No duplicated stock here...:

That stock is beautiful wood, man you are doing a great job. Glad to hear you will be in the East Texas Area

Great work!

Todays progress. I went ahead and wet down the wood before taking the pics. Cant wait to sand it and get some finish on. I still need to glass bed, cut the shadow line in the cheekpiece, install crossbolts, weld on a straight bolt handle, inlet the rear sling stud base, mill scope bases, install banded front sight and banded sling swivel, plus install an express style rear sight...before August 11th.

It never ceases to amaze me how many different talents a good gunsmith must have- machinist, welder, carpenter, painter, and artist. I hate guys like you

We recently had Jerry Fisher up at the school working with students and showing off his work. The master says that there is no art involved in stock making, its a 100% mechanical process...this 21yr old snot nosed kid wasnt going to argue.

He also talked to me for a good hour about the metal work I had been doing on this Enfield. he was fairly impressed and told me if he was 15yrs younger he would have hired me on as an apprentice; said I had a lot of possibility.

Wow what a compliment.

That is quite the compliment...looking good!

I like to do a little multitasking of projects; I may do one project that involves stock work, then at the same time do one that involves machining. So here is my machining project...

This Savage belongs to Judd. After thinking long and hard he decided to rebarrel it to the newish 6.5 Creedmore round. Barrel is a McGowen #7 contour that is crowned at 26".

Here is the action sitting in a mandrel between centers. All I am doing is trueing the action face. This one I had to remove .008" to true it!


Threaded. You notice anything different here?


This will make it a little more obvious. Here it is after chambering with the bolt just closing on a GO-Gauge.


As it sits now. I will be doing the finishing work on it tomorrow.

nice!

That things is gonna be schweet! I can't wait to shoot it, I'm sure you can't either.

Now that I am out of school and working here is where the adventure begins:


Here are my first attempts at checkering on stocks. My boss looked at some of my sample pieces and decided I was much better at it than he, and frankly checkering drives him crazy. You would think a skilled engraver would have no problem checkering...

At the time of doing this first gun I wasnt truly confident in my checkering to be scratching up a gun worth over $7,000...and my boss had to constantly remind me of its value.:z So here is my first "thrown under the bus" checkering job.

Here is gun #2 for me; a vast improvement:

Been a few years, had to bump up one of the greatest threads ever! Any new projects to share?

Wish the pictures in this thread were embedded in the posts and not pointed to Photo****it.

Very much a bummer, a lot of time went into this thread. All wasted.

Wish I could see your photos. Don't have photobucshit.