Has anyone used Robert Gradous for a custom build recently. Want to know if situation has improved.

You just send your parts and take your chances, do you feel lucky...................

Spoke to him a little bit ago. He has a helper who knows guns very wells. He takes orders, and does the packaging and shipping which takes a lot of time of time.

Big improvements

Got my 243 back in a couple weeks! Waiting for action on next build more than likely will be headed that way to build with him!

Are you thinking about sending him another rifle? How did the first one end up?

funny how easily smoke is blown up some folks asses.. I gurentee you there is 100 guys named earl that came plumb a rifle every bit as true as those held in high esteem.. shooters know this .

Carry on.

FYI.... Robert had a guy before that helped with packing and shipping
More hands are involved with the building so they may have helped to shorten the build times these days .... but I would still proceed with caution!

Not trying to pick a fight here but have you built any rifles or are you just making assumptions? I've seen it done a lot of ways in a lot of shops (including Robert's) and not all Earls are created equal. As a matter of fact, ive had two "well known" smiths absolutely butcher my rifles. That is one of the reasons that I do most of my own work these days. When it came time to learn to do it myself, the gunmaker whose abilities I respect the most told me to go see Robert.

I would never question Roberts skills as there is only a hand full of smiths that can compete with him......it's more about him being upfront with his completion times and avoiding customers phone calls in the past!

he did call me out of the blue for absolutely NO reason, and this is many months later, just to ask how my gun was doing. I thought that was pretty above and beyond. Human nature is that those that are most worried about details are the worst at communication and social skills.

No argument there, just challenging the "bubba is just as good" mindset. The list of guys that I will use at this point doesn't take all of my fingers to count.