doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Stock replacement

I am a craftsman that knows that I do not know what I do not know; however, I have encountered others who do not know that they do not know what they do not know.

If you have the original stock with the bad repair, could someone use it with a tracer to come close to it and then you could do the fine work?

I was told when I came here a few days ago I had better have a thick skin and now I know why. Bottom line is this If I were a millionaire I wouldn't bat an eye at 3000.00 but I am not. As bad as I want this done I simply can't afford it. I simply refuse to pay someone that kind of money to inlet a stock if the gun were made of gold. What people charge is what they charge. I came up the hard way so I have a different view on monetary value of things. If I have presented the wrong impression I apologize. I will find a compromise somewhere. This could be my last post. I haven't decided yet.Seems I have stirred the pot a mite. I do thank everyone who gave me names to contact and have helped me in any way.


JHolland

Mr Holland, I appreciate where your coming from i truly do ,when I started this racket 30 years ago ,i realized I could do decent work and did so for local gunshops and others who got my name ...as a hobby it was great ,but I was the one being gouged by the people I was doing work for ...they paid me pennies on the dollar,when I realized what it took to do a real decent job on a fine gun ,the hours upon hours to get it right im making minimum wage , if im lucky ...I have to take deposits on big jobs and take in as much shit work as I can handle to keep the lights on ...this may seem like a romantic job to some but it can turn into drudgery in a blink .
The guys here are being honest and specific, I believe you have an lc smith (oops! Apologies. A daly...so finding a n old pre inlet unlikely)
I bet if you keep your eyes open you'll find an old stock fajen pre inlet or something similar ,ive seen a few over the years and while not perfect it'll get your gun up and running

Yes, accusing people of gouging others does certainly put off the wrong impression. You came here to looking for help and instead you diminish.

Btw, it’s not hard to rack up close to around 100hrs stocking a basic sidelock with forend, traditional oil finishing, and checkering. And that’s fast. Also doesn’t include the stock blank which could be $400-$600 for something decent…heck I’ve used blanks around $3k alone! Not something you want to mess up and have to replace.

So let’s assume $25/hr, minus expenses. Really taking advantage of people there.

An aerospace shop would bill around $15,000-$20,000 easily in my neck of the woods for that time.

Well, like today, when you get in a car accident, most times the insurance company will tell you that it will cost more to fix the car than what the car is worth.
Same is true for most guns.

There is a great satisfaction to restoring an old gun, car, plane whatever. I hope that you will decide to do work yourself and derive that satisfaction.
I found this nice link on how to build a duplicating attachment for a milling machine. Using a milling machine on wood is like heaven, it goes so quickly
when you are making cuts 0.05 inches deep as opposed to 0.01.

duplicating attachment for milling machine

I would think one route already mentioned to a degree is to send the gun to a talented gunsmith who can duplicate the original gunstock with a blank either he or you provide. A top flight duplication done on the best duplicators out there run by someone who knows what they are doing might be well worth it. Some who have commented on this post have excellent duplicators.

Hard to believe how all these vintage guns were turned out when someone says it takes almost 100 hours to stock a gun. Good grief. I doubt it ever took Malcolm Cruxton, Mickey Rainback, Ebenezer Hands, etc 100 hours to stock a gun. Most of these guys could turn out a finished stock and forend in around 16 to 20 hours or 2 to 3 days at the bench.
I think part of the problem is the gun community here in the states has put the capable craftsman here on a pedestal. Calling them “artisans”etc. Of course they’re gonna charge the prices they do. Overseas, stockers in the trade don’t buy into the whole artisan thing, it’s simply their job. They basically get paid by piece work. The faster they turn out high quality work, the more they get paid.
My mentor here in the states who trained and worked in England has told me on many occasions how much time the factory allotted for stockers to finish a job on a new H&H Royal shotgun or double rifle…..and it was no where near 100 hrs. Bolt rifles built in the factory were allotted even less time, and if a boxlock came in to be stocked, it could be fitted with new wood in about a day, checkered the next and ready for finish by day 3. I can only imagine in Birmingham, the trade stockers were even faster.
Italians, Spaniards, Belgians, French and Austrian-German gun stock makers are even more efficient.

My conversations with Tony Treadwell years ago, he said the same thing. He couldn’t believe the prices we paid here in the states for gunwork. He had a Stephen Grant SLE stocked in Birmingham, it was finished in less than a week (no rush), and it didn’t cost him much more than what a good condition Fox Sterlingworth would have cost an American back then.



Ted Schefelbein has a story about his Darne getting stocked at the Darne factory while he watched and it being finished by lunch time. A Darne isn’t exactly the easiest gun to put a stock on either.


One of the more “reasonable” guys I know here in the states is a graduate of the Ferlach school, highly trained, has worked for now defunct gun company here in the states, his restocking prices are high, but nowhere near some of the other “well known” stockers often mentioned here. He considers his prices charged for stocking ”fair”. I concur with him.



I certainly appreciate the work the craftsmen do here in the states, I’m a very satisfied customer with many of them, some I even call friends. With that said, I do think that the prices charged for stocking have gotten pretty high here in the states. I can’t afford it any longer.

Do you own/operate a US small business in 2025? I own two that are unrelated, I’m constantly amazed at how little eventually ends up in my pocket. The insurance company makes more than I some months!

Funny H&H is brought up, their marketing department and managers need to get together apparently. In your case you say they don’t even allot 100hrs to completely stock a royal, yet their marketing department claims months to do a best oil finish. I’ve done it, that finish done traditionally takes 16-20hrs spread out over a long period. Their marketing department claims around 1000hrs to build a Royal. Make it make sense. Are they liars or does it take such time?

I’ve heard of these mythical people you bring up, yet to meet one. And it’s easy to contact many well known trade workers on the other side. I discussed this exact thing years ago with the best and most regarded freelance stocker in the UK, that wishes to keep his name out of such discussions. Stocking, checkering, and finishing a round action gun takes him 90hrs.

Let’s further extrapolate the claims of an H&H stocker, or stocker of yesteryear working in the trade doing solely that. First, they served apprenticeship doing such, and theres a good chance stocking is the ONLY thing they did in their entire tenure. Of course they are going to be quicker than someone in the US who has to delve into more broad work to stay afloat, even if they claim to be a stocker alone which is extremely rare, especially regarding SxS’s. Let’s assume a stocker at H&H does 10-15 Royals a year. I’d be shocked if a top stock guy in the US does 15 in his lifetime! Apples and oranges, but I think one can take my example and see where I’m going with it.

Cost of living and business operations are high in the US, with UK being the closest. Business cost in France and Italy is an outlier there, but cost of living is lower. It all matters.

Ironically I had a modern production H&H double rifle in last week, the stock finish wasn’t best quality, nor was the inletting, nor the washed out area of the stock just in front of the recoil pad…yet he paid six figures for the gun. I do better work…Maybe it was an apprentice project.

Points well made and well taken, LeFusil. There's a lot of "that was then, this is now" involved with what you say. We have to deal with the guys who do the work on this side of the pond. This isn't England, Italy, Germany, or Spain. And the finished product I've seen from some of the stockers here is pure art to my eye, but maybe not to yours. Regardless, it is what it is. If JHolland or anyone else can't or won't step up and pay the rate, they should quit bitching and figure out something else. There are those waiting in line who will, much to the chagrin of the complainers. I'm just thankful I don't have the want or need for any of this kind of work being done because I'm not willing to pay for it, nor justify doing it in the first place.
JR