Spent a nice couple of hours today visiting with Chris Schofield of Walnut Grove Gunstocks. Ostensibly I drove over to discuss a pattern for the left handed Mausers a bunch of us bought but I came away with an idea for restocking a LH Model 70 with a piece of walnut I've had sitting around for 10 years or so.

Chris' shop and house are on about 5 acres outside of Weiser, ID, and it was nice to go drive through my old stomping grounds. He's a neat guy wih a neat place. Instead of chattering I'll let the pictures do the talking.


Walking in the front door, lots of wood. Lots of patterns. Lots and lots of really, really nice wood and patterns all around.





Closer view of some of those patterns.




Nice wood in these blanks - really nice wood.



Just chunks of wood. Expensive, very pretty chunks of wood.



The "regular" chunks of wood. I think most folks would be real happy to find any of these on a factory rifle.




Big slabs of walnut ready to made into those "chunks of wood".

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Slabs of maple.

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Outside the shop is the sawmill. A tree trunk ready to be turned into slabs. This picture doesn't show the proper size, but believe me, this ain't no little stump here.

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The beautifully figured trash! Seriously. There are dozens if not hundreds of lovely knife scales or whatever hiding inside these. Chris gave me that big block of walnut in the foreground to take home. Thanks, Chris!

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Guy stuff!



Last but not least - Chris turning some chunks of wood into gunstocks.



Neat way to set his cutters - note the coins on the tray just in front of him. He zeroes the stylus and then sets the cutters high by the thickness of a coin or pair of coins. I'm sure this is old hat to regular gunsmiths but I'm not an artisan or fabricator by any means and was fascinated by how these things are made.

Very cool!

I love the smell of milling walnut.

Wowza!
Might have to stop in sometime when I'm passing through... dig through his garbage

Impressive shop, Jim. Could spend a lot of bucks there...

What do you say the diameter of the tree was?

I'd guess it was around 5 feet in diameter at least and I'm trying to be conservative. Chris probably stands 6' 3" and those support posts are taller than he is.

Here's another picture showing how the trunk branches off into three large sections. As I understand it the intersections of those branches are where some really nice figured wood will be found.

Definitely! I had brought over my walnut blank for him to look at. It has nice grain and decent color but after looking at some of the gorgeous English and bastogne blanks he has and comparing them to mine I really got walnut envy!

Already thinking about upgrading just a wee bit, i.e. spend a lot of bucks there.

Thumper! Was that an Idaho tree? I can't imagine anything growing that long here before it gets cut off.

guess I have perused the site before looking at blanks for a mouser...bad habit...:)

Walnut

Wow! Thanks for the great post. I just love walnut. I have a stack of 1" planks air drying in an old corn crib here at the farm. I wish I could have some of the great wood in the pix.
By the way, is he a one man operation? Looks like he might need a go-fer to help out.

Jim,

That's wayyyy cool. Thanks for sharing.

Really enjoyed the tour Jim!

I believe that is an Idaho tree in the sawmill. He is an arborist by trade and takes down trees from all over. He is also a sculptor and artist and had a studio in Boise for many years. He just recently got into the gunstock business but he really knows his wood.

He is a one man shop but his wife is also a certified industrial welder. Hard working guy - three jobs and 4 kids.

He loaned me a pattern to bring home to try with a return mailing box, so I'm packing that up along with a factory stock to use to see the inletting and sending that back to him. Once he gets the pattern roughed out - which he said he will do for free just to add to his collection of patterns - then I can come over and in about an hour he'll turn a piece of wood into a semi-inletted gunstock. He inlets them so the action just barely drops in, they need that last final fitting, with a 1/2" barrel channel which a gunsmith can inlet for the correct barrel contour.

Maybe someone in Idaho remembers seeing this huge potato. He and his wife built it. That's what they do, all kinds of art and fabrication. There's a big sign over the railroad overpass going into Nampa - his wife did that one, too.

Here's the Big Potato:



I believe this is his wife working on it.

good stuff. thanks for the pics.

Thanks for sharing the pics Jim! Looks like a place I would really enjoy spending a day!