For rebarreling ann action? I picked up a spare 300 Ultra Mag and am thinking about a 338 Edge. Who should I take it to?

Thanks in advance!

Cheaper, faster, better, and easier to send outside...

Yes

Wild west guns.... seen it on tv. Must be true.

Here we go.

Thank you sir. That is what I figured.

Have stick, must stir!

I agree with Sitka Deer, on most G smith work send it outside.

Been to a lot of smiths in AK most of the money was spent fixing smiths work, than original work!

But Brian, (The Kid) at WW is great just want to limit my time at WW.

Andy Hawk is not bad as long as his hunting season does not interfere. The rest are "special" in their own ways.

Vince Baldauf is a good guy, but takes his smithing work to Stan Jackson.

'Slim' Lambert at Arctic Gun Trader in Nome.......... oh, wait, he moved downstates.

Homer Strickland in Anchorage, he's another very sound (and reasonable) smith..........or, wait, he moved downstates as well....

(I haven't used anyone up here since I lost the services of those two.)

Andy Hawk or Stan Jackson either one should be able to do your work. Just want to make sure Stan doesn't let one of his sons mess with your gun.

Stan started out halfassed and has not gotten better since you left... I think a lot of the stuff he blamed on his boys was not really his boys.

I have seen a ton of screwed up stuff come out of his shop.

+1 for Andy Hawk. He has done very well for me.

I've only seen a couple of rebarreled rifles by Stan Jackson. One was a .338 WM rebarreled to .458 WM that wouldn't feed from the magazine. When the rifle's owner contacted Stan about the issue, he said something along the lines of he knew about it and it'd be another trip to ANC to make it work and an hourly charge to make it right. I don't expect anyone to work for free, but being aware of the problem and not addressing it is an issue. Can't say that did much for my confidence in his work.

I've use Doug Albright in Fairbanks with complete satisfaction on a couple of rifles. He screwed the tube on my Fireball and it couldn't be any better IMO. He's done other machining work that has proven to be more than good enough.

Typically, I send rifles to be rebarreled to somewhere in the L48.

He's certainly getting up there. I wondered if that might be the case but he is good at blaming.

I have had Steve at Alaska Custom Firearms do work for me and he has treated me well.

I have direct knowledge of Steve doing some incredibly illegal and stupid things. I would never consider him for anything firearm related, ever!

I vote for Andy Hawk. He will give you a timeframe for the work to be finished and he sticks to it. He is also a perfectionist and very skilled. No surprises.

Homer Strickland moved to Arkansas and set up a various nice place. I believe he died a couple years ago with cancer. He left his machine tools to a young man in New Braunfels, Tex. This young man and Arnold Jewell were close friends of Homer. They visited Homer for several years and fished with him. I think the last benchrest match that I shot with Homer was 3 years ago at Pencil Bluff, Arkansas. I miss Homer.

Do you know Morris Melani, Alaska Arms? I have some of his scope rings and bases. I believe he also makes a Mod 70 style trigger for Mausers.

I live in rural central Idaho and commute back and forth to Alaska for work.

I use Buckhorn Gun Shop in Boise for all of my gunsmithing work that I cannot do myself. I have had them work on my bolt actions, lever actions, revolvers, and 1911's.

My fellow Idahoan, John Taffin, the fairly famous gun writer who writes for American Handgunner and Guns magazines also uses Buckhorn exclusively.

I call bullshit on that one! I know steve, nothing ilegal going on at his shop. He also does good gunsmithing work.

Well, let's meet at Steve's and ask Steve directly...

No bullshit, just some extremely stupid acts...

If be glad to meet you there. I'm sure Steve would love to set you straight himself.

I have jury duty this coming week, but if free say when and I will be there.

is this the "look out your window at all the cops" event?

No, it was a worse thing by most criteria.

Why does this infantile feces always have to crop up?

If you know a good gunsmith, say, "this guy is good". If you see someone you think is not good, say, "this guy is not so hot, PM me for details".

Call it what you like... but if it bothers you why not contact me and find out the issue before making a public response and continuing it?

I have zero concern about what folks think about my comment, but those that have checked with me know exactly what, when, and how laws were broken. None of those that know the issue are lining up to have work done there...

Looks like I do not jury duty until Wed at the earliest... So tomorrow or Tuesday work for me. Be sure to tell Steve it involves JA... I doubt seriously he really wants to set me straight.

Hint; bluffing will not work...

I can be there at noon.

Responded at length to your PM.

Any chance this meeting could be audio or video recorded for training purposes?

Not to hijack, but I thought I had read somewhere that Brian had been involved in an accident (test firing a gun?) and was in pretty bad shape, or at least looking at a lengthy recovery.

he had a m70 come apart on him while test firing. Lost 8 teeth, and cut up his lips, luckily his eyes and hands where fine. Aside from the teeth he is doing well. He is going to be getting implants to replace them.

a quote from brian “you can eat with wooden teeth, but can’t see for [bleep] with glass eyes!”

He’ll be fine. Hell of a guy.

U guys send me your guns , I have a hack saw,chain saw file (3/16th)and some old wd40...turn around is 1day !

What fault did the 70 have? Over load, something not right? Just curious, not pointing a finger at all.

it usually takes something to toast a 70 or 700 basically.

I don't know the details of this case specifically, but I do know that, 15 years ago or more, when I called to inquire about building a 44 caliber rifle on the 30-30 case (44 Van Houten Souper) - on a M94 Winchester levergun, the guy I talked to that time suggested buying a 45 Colt in the M94 and they'd rechamber it for 454 Casull. It was kind of funny a few years later I picked up a M94 in 45 Colt in a gun shop in Fairbanks. As I was looking it over, the fellow behind the counter saw me looking at a couple minor flaws. He proceeded to tell me that they had just rebarrelled it after taking it in on a trade and discovering that the chamber had been altered to take the much higher pressure 454. I don't know how many 454 cartridges it had consumed before I got it, but it has been a very good pipe through which to burn W296, 23 grains at a time behind 300 grain lead lumps. I kind of think there is some effort to flirt with the firewall at that shop.

I'm not sure what, if any, fault the M70 had in the mishap. It was a post war 300h&h that was long ago rechambered to 300wby and restocked with a very nice piece of wood by an unknown to me gunsmith. I had shot it on several occasions previously and aside from not liking the stock shape had nothing bad to say about the rifle. The customer had bought a new scope and brought it to be mounted and sighted as it needed a base modified to fit the rear bridge, involved drilling and countersinking two holes in the base nothing was done to the rifle.

I took it to the range along with a box of his ammunition which was from a longtime boutique maker and in a sealed box.

Shot the first round and made a scope adjustment and loaded the next round. Thank the big man upstairs I had remembered my rear sandbag that day or I would likely be typing one handed. The barrel and forend were still screwed together and about 25' downrange, the barrel looks almost reusable. The front ring completely disintegrated and the rear bridge is opened like a soup can. The bolt it brass plated of course and was lying on the bench right beside everything. Floorplate is a banana as is the follower, the spring is okay. The left raceway wall is wrapped back around to the left pointed to the rear.

The scope bent over backwards and is what did most of the damage to my face. The front bell hit me under the nose and cut through my lip from my right nostril down to the left corner of my mouth and on into my bottom lip. Knocked out all my front teeth and broke my pallet along with a chunk of bone under my nose in my top jaw that is still unaccounted for.

Don't know what happened or why and suspect we never will, just thankful for safety glasses and modern dentistry.

On another note. I try to do the best job possible when at work and am not shy about turning away stuff outside my capabilities. I like to think I keep my customers happy for the most part.

That said I don't generally advertise or tell people to come by as I don't agree with many things that go on at my place of employment, pricing and customer service being but a couple. I'm just a guy trying to feed my family and keep the lights on.

Glad to hear you're mending and will back to normal before long. Grace and peace to you and yours.

Glad to hear you're OK, thanks for the update.

So many rifle rounds are fired uneventfully that safety is often taken for granted. Glad to read that that's 'all' that happened to you. It can always be worse. Good luck with recovery.

Good read. Glad you did have the bag and safety glasses, should be a reminder to ALL of us to alwyas use everything you can...

Was simply curious as to circumstances and that answered that.

I often wonder how many high pressure rounds a gun can take, before the straw breaks... you know it simply isn't typically going to happen on the first round and it certainly isn't going to generally show any visible sign the last round before they go boom.

Glad you are on the mend and seemingly doing well.

Jeff

Tha ks for the kind words fellows. I figure that with all the thousands upon thousands of centerfire rifle rounds I have shot over the years that something is bound to happen sooner or later. Just be sure and remember your shooting glasses since you only get one spare eye.

TheKid sounds aok to me, hope the healing is as close to 100% as humanly possible.


sorry for your troubles, but I can like a guy with a good attitude.

Heal fast Kid,, I've learned to use shooting glasses while testing, fireforming, and experimenting!! Thanks for the heads up!
Jim

We used to shoot 20K a year or more in highpower rifle... I"ve never seen a gun related injury in years of shooting, but its bound to happen sooner or later. And I'm usually packing murphy around most of my life....I saw one AR blow a mag out, but that was about all that happened...

I wore knoblochs and was always worried about the lack of protection, but they were the only ones that fit right...

Now I wear standard glasses daily, but they are the proofed lenses just don't have the side pieces like true glasses... sure hope that if the day ever gets here its enough... should really do better though too... on my end.

Glad its moving forward for you.

Does anybody know James Updegraf?
He is retired Air Force and attended Gunsmithing
School in Denver in 1978. He told me he would retire in Alaska and planned on gunsmithing.
I don't know where he ended up?

I was competing in a Garand only match and saw white smoke out of the corner of my eye during prone rapid fire. The guy was doing a backwards low crawl to get away from his own rifle.
He had accidentally loaded some pistol powder in his 30-06.
It destroyed the stock but he was fine.
He wanted to finish the match using his ammo in his brothers Garand. We vetoed that idea!
whelennut

Last name sure sounds familiar for some reason. Maybe spelled just a tiny bit differently but I can't place it for some reason.

But now that we say that, Eric comes to mind... maybe thats who I'm thinking of....