Any of you gunsmiths here know a gunsmith named George Stringer out of Earlington Kentucky. and if so what's his track record?? TIA
Rick

I don�t know him personally but I do know he recently had some serious health problems that have put him way behind schedule. I�d heard that he�d been contacting customers to inform them.

I�ve never seen his work but have read reviews by some who were pleased with their results.

z1r,
The reason i asked that question is to see if anyone here got burned by him other than me. in july of last year i sent him a 6.5 carcano rifle to be re-barreled by him. being an uncommon caliber i had to have P.T.G. in Oregon make me a 6.5 carcano chamber reamer and headspace guage. that cost me $172.00 i paid him $550.00 for a 6.5 sheilen C/M barrel blank and he was to true the action thread/chamber/and headspace it and also re-blue the whole gun. when i sent it to him in july of 2002 he told me it would take him two months to complete. after two months i called him and he said that sheilen sent him the wrong barrel. in late november that year i still did not recieve the gun and finally was able to get ahold of him and he told me to send him the balance owed by Pay Pal and he would have the gun to me before christmas.
after xmas and still no gun i continued to call him and e-mail him and still no reply. come january 6th of 2003 i get a e-mail from saying that my gun was finished but just needed to be blued and he would have it to me by that next week. well the next week came and still no gun. again i tried to call him and e-mail him but got no reply. two months latter after e-mailing him everyday i finally two months latter get a e-mail from his wife telling me that he had a heart attack an d that it would be a while before he went back to work. so i e-mailed him back and told him to send me back the gun gun finshed or not and to deduct from the $550.00 for any work that he did and refund me the rest and to also make sure that he sent me back my carcano reamer and headspace guage.another two months went by before i was able to to get ahold of him. i finally got the gun this last tuesday and was horrified when i opened the box. nothing was blued, the threads on the barrel shank looked like they were stripped and did notmatch the threads in the reciever. you can slide the reciever three quaters of the way on the barrel shank before it will start to screw on. i put a sized 6.5 carcano case in the chamber and i slid in the chamber and the rim of the case was below the breach face so it is not chambered right.
and my 6.5 carcano reamer and headspace guage was not in the box. when i called him and asked him where those items were he said that they forgot to pack them with the gun but he would send them to me next day air. next day air and still no reamer or headspace guage. so i try to call him and Lord and Behold his phone number is dissconnected. also his web page is gone and he is not answering any of my e-mails. so it looks like he burnt me Big Time as now i am out of pocket $772.68 and have a rifle that's just parts now. it doesn't even look like i can salvage the barrel the way he hacked on it. so to any of you reading this be wary of any gunsmith working out of Earlington Kentucky as he probably has changed his business name already. it's guy's like this that give gunsmith's a bad name. oh, he solicated me over at the AGI forum the i frequent that's how all this came about. but i'll never forget George Stringer "THE CROOK" hope this info helps some one.
Rick

Sue him.

George

If you decide to go after him legally, you should take the time to have another smith, one that is reliable and recommended, do the job correctly, replacing the barrel if necessary, and get the receipts from that. The difference in cost would probably get tagged on to his original charge.

it's unfortunate that things like this happen. And it would be more unfortunate if you did have to resort to suing him. Possibly you can get him to refund the money without having to take it that far. I would think that the actual time and energy spent in squeezing the money out of him might exceed what you would get.

Good luck.

Red