Matt,
In my opinion and it is mine, you didn't do yourself any good with this post. I don't know whose bottom metal you are showing. I'll bet it's not Duane's, Blackburn's, or Sunnyhill's. Does it sell for as much or more than yours. James is a professional custom gunmaker and is well thought of by his brother custom gunsmiths and customers. He asked some pointed questions and he got your goat.
Butch
It is in fact one of the three you mentioned, costs nearly 3 times as much, and I've seen just as bad, if not worse from another amongst your list, which is why I've made the statements that I have.
As far as doing myself a favor, I'd say that prior to commenting on what turned into a one-sided justification for high-priced bottom metal, Jim wasn't doing me any favors either.
I developed bottom metal in a one-piece configuration back in 1999 for the sole purpose of selling them to USRAC, which I did in abundance, eventually supplying the entire Super Grade line, as well as the Safari Express, and Super Express models offered through their custom shop. The goal at that time was to produce what "they" wanted, not the general public and at a cost that they would bite on. After being quite pleased with what had been created, I looked at the current competition in bottom metal and realized that there was no place for a blue collar guy to go if he wanted an upgrade over the factory junk. At that point, I put the word out to Brownells and later Midway, as well as beginning our website to sell them there. It was soon apparent that there was a significant amount of people who wanted good quality wares, but didn't like the sticker shock associated with the current lineup. It also became apparent in a relatively short length of time that the custom crowd did not want some of the features that I was offering, like a push-button release, no draft, and no straddle floorplate.
It admittedly took quite a while to bring all the features my customers had asked for on board for our entire line, and in 2006 we introduced our new Inside-The-Bow bottom metal.
The new bottom metal is made from a solid piece of A-36 and has the Oberndorf-style release, 2deg. of draft around the entire profile and each and every assembly is hand-fitted to ensure that it latches properly and does not rattle. For Remington 700's they drop into the factory inletting, which was another issue I had with my older versions, which cost me sales at that time. Now the design I made has now been adopted by FN in an aluminum version, which means that our bottom metal is the only one on the market that will drop into their factory stocks, without having to be inletted. In fact, based on the numerous samples that I've seen of my competitors models, they lack the amount of material to be used on any factory stock, unless you like large gaps around the guard and front guard screw.
My main concern about this thread was that Jim had used our older-style bottom metal and had drawn conclusions on what our new bottom metal was like, before actually using one. Our first bottom metal had to satisfy our largest customer's needs at the time, but the Inside-The-Bow models have been made to offer our customers every option they asked for in a price they could afford, while not sacrificing the quality of the end product.
I didn't set out to make a cheap bottom metal.......I set out to make the best quality model I could, while using the most efficient methods I knew of to do so, resulting in a product that has all the custom features a customer is looking for, without the custom price.
