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Aspen wood? It looks good on your roller but I don't think I've ever heard of using Aspen for a gunstock. How does it do? Beautiful roler by the way.

Jerry Liles

Brent/Harry,

Sorry, that's me in the picture...Glenn is much more debonaire (he says).

Jerry, the wood is California English walnut...the folks we got it from call their company "Quaking Aspens". The rifle shoots great (when I remember to close the block...)

Greg

JDS, your Mauser .280 must rattle a bit in the woods ....

Mark, the butt trap including lid is lined with felt, the belly trap has a felt liner glued to the underside of the lid plus small springs holding tension on the contents, and the front sight insert is held perfectly immobile by the grip cap lid. I thought at first that I had everything covered but forgot about spring tension on the belly trap contents, had to add that later.

Hey, c'mon now, I already admitted it was overkill, please cut me a little slack.(G) After all, I've trimmed back to only one trap door per rifle now!
Regards, Joe

I am as seduced by trap buttplates and grip caps as any of us, but I sometimes wonder about their utility - the things we stuff into them do add weight, not much, but some. Yet a trap buttplate on a sporter at a gun show always means the rifle gets a closer examination ...

Trap buttplates and gripcaps, inlet tang sights, backup front sights, set triggers?
Why not? They're all nifty!

Utility? Utility? Bah, we don't need no stinkin' utility! Surely you haven't forgotten that more is always better and that excess has always been the great American tradition? (BG)

Of course, when you really think about it, a single-shot J.C.Higgins 12 ga and another single-shot J.C.Higgins bolt-action 22LR are actually all that we really NEED for any of our hunting and everything else is just lagniappe, mere icing on the cake of our attempts at aesthetics!

But don't forget that the aesthetics are quite important to us, the personalization, attention to detail and resulting beauty of our individualized possessions are some of our chief enjoyments in life! Plus the pursuit of aesthetics & ergonomics, even sometimes to the point of excess, is still relatively harmless & healthy and it tends to keep us off the streets & out of trouble. Most of the time anyway...
Regards, Joe

Nothing succeeds like excess!

I've just seen JDs rifle - enough trapdoors for a survival kit. It is a beautiful finished rifle that does succeed aesthetically, and it is a thoroughly practical hunting rifle as well as a piece of art. Life's too short to have ugly rifles.

Jerry Liles

When I think about early writers and the classic bolt action custom rifle I think of Whelen, Crossman, White. Unfortunately I know them mostly from the writings of others, such as O'Conner, and have almost no access to their original writings. I just found a copy of Whelen's 1918 book, "The American Rifle" to download from the web. His chapter on stocking was very interesting as he essentially describes the classic stock as his ideal. How important was this book and what other early writings could be described as "seminal"?

Jerry Liles

WJL, that is a very good question, one worthy of a separate thread. I think the illustrations in some of the early books are as important as the books themselves. I have in mind the work of Ellis Lenz, the art editor at Standard Publications in the 30s & 40s. Lenz' book "Muzzle Flashes" is important to me.