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

Well, after all of the 4 pages, I have not seen any decent pictures of Mr. Holland’s Daly and its present/broken stock. Without that, good repair advise is not possible.

A stock in two pieces is often easier to repair than one with a bad crack, and the repair will be stronger in the end as well.

The OP would do well to consult with the above poster, Mark Larson, before he throws in the towel.

France, circa 1997, when I was there, is a universe from where we are today.

I did watch Herve’ Bruchet stock my R10 Darne in about 4 hours. Hell, I’ve got film pictures of it, somewhere around here. We dropped the stock, just the butt stock, at the checkering studio and went to lunch. We picked it up about 4:00 in the afternoon. I finished it, in oil, when I got home from France.

The wood monger showed up in the morning, at the shop in St. Etienne, on Mondays. A beat up old Toyota pickup would show up, honking his horn. He was only there to sell very high grade wood, the Bruchets bought regular, dry and pre turned blanks in 250-500 quantities every 5-6 years. The regular wood was pretty decent French walnut procured locally. The wood monger would show them 5-20 pieces that were unturned, ranging from extra nice to spectacular, and the cost was no more than $250 for any given piece. I figured I could make as much importing blanks from the wood monger as I did on guns, but, never pursued that notion.

A guy here, doing one offs for US customers, is worth every penny of what he gets. Yes, the guy who stocks the same type of gun every day in a gun makers shop will be faster, and cheaper, and probably makes less than a custom gunsmith putting old guns and wood right, but, that is his choice. We have English trained gunsmiths right here in the states who threw that yolk off and never looked back to England or Europe.

They didn’t come here to make less money. Nobody does.

We are well past the time when you hire an actual craftsman to put a mid tier double gun back into working condition. I’ve made my living for 47 years as a Journeyman in a trade, and for about 43 of those years, have listened to people piss and moan about how expensive labor is. None of those people ever wanted to share with me how much money they made, or, what they produce and how that impacts the bottom line, and I’ve had many of them beg myself or others to stay, when we finally had enough and moved on. It is economically unfeasible to pay someone to do much work ( and a restock is much work, no matter what anyone thinks) to a mid level gun, and, rather than piss and moan about the money someone makes doing what they do, your time would be better spent finding a better example of a gun to use.

Sorry to be so blunt, but, nobody can tell me I’m wrong.

Best,
Ted

Give this man a cigar!

The Charles Daly in question may or may not be repairable, but most everyone is arguing about the high cost of a top quality replacement.

I did roll my eyes recently when someone posted about the six week/1000 coat process of applying stain and an oil finish to a Westley Richards gun, I believe. A couple guys did some math to calculate finish time between coats, and it didn't add up. There would have been scarcely enough time for the coats of finish to even begin to get tacky before any excess was rubbed off, so the claim on their website appeared to be pure advertising hype.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that most modern day stockers aren't spending time roughing out a stock from a blank with a hatchet, an adze, and a drawknife. I was a bit surprised to learn some years ago that most factory stocks of mass produced vintage American doubles were roughed out on multi-station duplicators. And we all know the final inletting, checkering, and finish wasn't done to ACGG exhibition quality standards, even on many of their higher grades. I'd bet most one-off stock replacement jobs done today have a large percentage of the work done on a Hoenig or other high precision duplicator. I do understand that good wood is costly, and precision stock duplicating isn't cheap either.

The guys who get several thousand dollars to restock a gun often have multi-year waiting lists, so Capitalism and laws of supply and demand are going to continue to dictate prices. With thirty million illegal aliens here, you'd think we could find a few who can stock guns at cheap prices. I can see the Threads now... my stocker got deported and my gun isn't finished. The OP might be able to have his gun repaired at a much more reasonable cost. He can do as some of us have done, and find a nice blank at a more reasonable price than one of the more expensive wood merchants. As a skilled machinist, he could broaden his horizons and attempt to do it himself, perhaps starting by practicing on some cheaper guns. He might even become damn good at it.

Or he could abandon the project, and sell the gun knowing he might be deep underwater if he hires a top flight stocker to do it. There are options that might make the project more affordable, but it starts by knowing just how bad it is now, along with the condition of the rest of the gun. A broken tomato stake isn't worth the epoxy and a couple reinforcing pins or dowels to fix it.

Because we have lots of illegal aliens who have an FFL? My goodness Karen, you are dumber than a box of rocks.

You should stick to subjects you know like being a greeter at Wal-Mart

Anyone with a brain could tell I was being facetious about low wage illegal alien gun stockers. I should have known that leaves you out.

Princess SKB Stevie, tell us again about the FFL held by Manito Lara, your Latino "amigo" who also did barrel bluing and browning for you. As you may recall, you lied to us when you said Manito only did barrel browning for you, but being dumber than a box of rocks, you forgot telling us this:


So Princess, do you think everyone employed by Turnbull has an FFL? We also know that some states issue drivers licenses to illegals, and that we have some illegals voting in our elections. We also have many instances of illegal aliens purchasing firearms. So what, besides Donald Trump and ICE, would stop an illegal from getting an FFL? Certainly no one in the Democrat Party you favor.

You have admitted that you employ others to do some of your gun work, so what's stopping you from employing a low wage illegal alien stocker... as in gun stocker???

We can see that you do a fine job all by yourself as an internet stalker. Those Spam PM's you keep sending me are really piling up. So speaking of being dumber than a box of rocks, you'd think you'd give up after seeing that I didn't even read or respond to the first dozen or so. Idiot.

Dang Steve, methinks you need a remedial course on recognizing sarcasm.
JR

John,
Do not under estimate the depth of of the mutual admiration and respect that Karen and I have for one another.

Steve

I will send you a PM Karen, it will have detailed instructions on how you can register a complaint here at Bertram and Co.

Until then, enjoy rolling in mud by yourself.