I was wondering just where and how much a guy could get a stock duplicator for? I have seen one of them for like 10k- no thanks.

I was also wondering if those that have them use them to do the inletting also? Or just the rough "outside" finish of the stock?

Anywhere a guy could get plans on how to make one? I would think you could with a router and other pieces.

Those that use them and for inletting - what/where do you get your router bits?

Sorry for all the ?s but I'm here to learn- You all have been so helpful!

Andrew

I bought a Roto-Carve about 15 years ago it is mounted on a Table Saw and will duplicate a Gun Stock and many odd shape items, but it only copies the outside it don't do inletting. When I bought it the cost was about $650.00 if you are interested I will look and try to find the address and phone number. You might try a web search on duplicators.

Swede44mag

I saw a Hoenig for sale for 17.5k if I remember right. that is the creme de la creme of duplicators. (from what the pros say). Do a search on the gunsmithing forum, last year, subject line only, for duplicators. You will find a lot of information. The reason they cost so much is they really are complex some of them. They also might take up more room than you are thinking they will. I know you were talking about space constraints re: checkering cradle. (try having one 10x10 room for ALL shop type stuff, and mine is jammed to the gills).

And they say that with a Hoenig it takes a day to duplicate a stock. The time savings comes from the fact that the new stock can be very close to final fit when done. Chic Worthing says that when he gets a stock duplicated on a Hoenig he can normally finish the inletting in 2 hours. I am going to try to do my first total stock by Christmas, but won't be able to afford a hoenig duplication so will have it done on a different machine.

I think that Les Brooks who replied to your other thread has plans for a duplicator, I saw that mentioned here somewhere.

Red

Yes, Mr. Brooks' reply got me thinking- I googled it and came up with the 1 for 10k- I am trying to build a "file" as to different machines, ideas tricks and such for later.

Man a guy would have to do a TON of stocks to pay off 17k!!

Thanks guys!

Andrew

Did the search - very informative. 1 question- the pattern stock what is that exactly? Say I have a Ruger in a lam from boyds- love the shape everything but for some reason I want that same stock in Exibition grade turkish walnut, can I not use the Lam stock as a "pattern" in the duplicator?

Like I said trying to build a "file" of knowledge !

Early in my career I made a very good income with a duplicator. I first owned an old 4 spindle machine I bought from Fisher. I then bought an Allen and settled on a Hoenig. Very early on I had quite a few hours on a machine made by or at least bought from Harry Lawson and one designed and sold by Dale Goens.

17K is 17K. You wanted to be in the business so be in business.If thats the model you want and thats what you need to do the job then market the skill and allow the machine to pay for itself. However you'll need alot of patterns, you wanted to be a stock maker well patterns are made by the stockmaker. I first learned and have made alot of stocks "from the blank". This skill is very, very valuable when using a machined stock. If you can't build one from a blank you'll have a very hard time making a correct pattern in my opinion.With a stock made from the blank your steps will go from A to Z, with a machined stock you are starting in the middle of the alphabet and often times it's in Cyrillic. Without a correct pattern the overall process can be very frustrating.

If you buy the machine you will need a lathe, mill, and surface grinder to set up and maitain your tooling. Today I do not make any finished stocks from the blank, but do at times make a pattern from the solid when I don't have a pattern to use to make the desired pattern.

Some will say that a machine turned stock is not a custom stock, Oh Really!. First off I defy anybody to tell how I made a finished stock when it was finished. You can take it completeley apart and you will never be able to conclude how it became it's final form. How it got there is of little concern as long as the results are obtained. Having said this I still admire those that still continue to build stocks from the stick. I feel I personally have better ways to spend the effort.

Before you buy the duplicator learn how to build a stock from the blank. not one, about twenty would be a start.

I have a Dakota Arms or Don Allen duplicator which I bought new in 1992 and it was $8500 at that time. When I got it Don Allen offered to teach me how to use it if I came to Sturgis. I did and took my shop foreman with me and we spent 4-1/2 days learning how to use the machine. Read Darcy Echols reply and listen to what he is telling you. Getting the patterns is a constant job and you better know how to make a stock from a block because the machine is only a tool not a crutch. It takes me about six to eight hours to turn out a stock from a pattern. It took me five years to get that good. Stockmaking is not my principle work and there are times I fret about the floorspace the machine takes. You need to get to both sides of the machine when you are setting it up to run a stock. So the minimum floor space for a single spindle Don Allen machine is about 10 x 8 feet. For your information the cutting head on this machine is a Milwaukee 1-1/2HP Router. Unless your principle business is stockmaking it is pretty hard to justify the cost of a duplicator. Any way just the rambling thoughts of an owner. Jerry

I highly recommend the reading of Dr. Echols post over and over again.

If you want to learn how to make stocks or make money with a duplicator you have the ability to wack them out of a blank. I highly recommend learning the blank process. In the 4 1/2 years I worked at Dakota I was the only one that built any stocks completely from a blank. Don shaped a few after inletting on the CNC, or duplicator, but nobody else had any interest in it. They were all "spoiled" on CNC inlets and mostly CNC shapes. A few there would build a personal Mauser and have to dig out the pattern and spend some time on the manual duplicator. I really enjoied the blank process because it really made people stand back and avoid all the chunks that were flying around my bench. I did pull a few fast ones on some of the tours that went through the shop. My bench was one of the first on the tour and if I was building a pattern from a blank they would see me pounding away with my gouge and rawhide mallet on a blocky blank at the start of the tour and before they came back I'd grab another stock that was ready for sanding and scatter a big pile of wood chips around my bench. When they stopped and checked my "progress" I'd usually be just touching up the shadow line. A few tourist's got a big kick out of seeing their friends believe I could shape one in 15 min.

In response to your inletting questions, I've only used the Don Allen and Northstar machines. The northstar is not a user friendly and I don't recommend them at all. I hear people talk about the fantastic accuracy possible on some models and have to caution anyone interested in buying one that the stock and pattern can flex more than 1/2" in some cases and that pretty much nullifies any accuracy garrantee. The alignment of the machine is the MOST important part when it comes to accuracy. If one tailstock is out of line then it makes a WORLD of difference. I've cut a lot of stocks on the Allen machine and found it to be adequate. Usually took about an hour from bandsawing the blank to finished semi inlett. Don't expect to cut a great looking stock for a while untill you can learn how to keep the cutter on the higest spot on the pattern for each indexing position. If you don't you'll have stair steps all over the stock. It took me 6 or 8 stocks to get the feel. The first ones looked horrible and it was very discouraging. I tried duplicating a baseball bat and that "cured" me. The perfectly round shape was very easy to find the high spot on and the part I cut looked great.

I've got a duplicator drawn up to manufacture and would like to sell them in the $5000 range. This might be a box of unpainted parts with a video to assemble it. I assembeled and dialed in quite a few when I worked in Sturgis and this process adds to the BIG price. There's about as much machine time as assembly time in a good duplicator. Letting the customer assemble would pass on big savings but it would take time.

As far as cutters go, you can make them, use endmills, or buy commercial cutters from many different vendors. It's handy to have a lathe to make different stylus in varying oversizes for your cutters. McMaster Carr sells them and has an online catalog.

gunmaker

Oh I have printed of the response and it is in my folder. I am one of those guys that has bout 400 books on the shelf from the civil war to psych, greek philosophy to Russian History -If I find something that interrests me I wont rest till I know more about it.

I am in no way looking to buy a duplicator - that is not to say I don't want to know about them!

Right now I am just looking to get the stuff together to start my hand at checkering with a move into cuttin them outta blanks - over time - that is until I can go to gunsmith school- I'm just looking at all aspects of the art of wood stocks. Kinda like if you wanted to sell cars you would learn bout financing not just selling the car and letting the bank worry bout getting your customer the $$ to pay you!

I appreciate all that is said here! And thanks for the info!!

Andrew

There is no way I would ever REALLY know if the stock that came off the duplicator was correct unless I had done some by hand first!


Andrew

here is another one in case anybody is looking

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~greene2003/index.html

Matt I first began using the Lawson machine back in 1978. It was owned by John Lux who owned Colorado Custom Gunstocks. John bought it on David Millers advise.This was the first machine I ever used and it turned out a pretty good product for it's time and probably still does. I'm pretty sure David Miller still use's theirs monthly.The tooling was real advanced for that period. I can remember not tightening a cutter into the spindle tight enough and watching it bore a hole into the cheek piece area of a $200.00 french blank before I figured out what was going on, the first of many such disasters I'm afraid.

D'arcy
So, you got a $200 stock duping blank huh? while I haven't done that, i have done the "well, that action is now good for practice on feeding work"... just glad it was my gun and action...

machine tools are hungery... and will eat anything in their range... they dont' care that YOU didn't mean for THAT part to slip...

shesh, I still remember the first time I needed to take of .010 on a barrel... and cranked it in .010..

needless to say, that barrel wound up on a small ring


jeffe

This thread is a real education, especially for a mere rifle buyer such as myself who couldn't even put on a recoil pad properly.

As a client, my first understanding of stock duplicators came from visiting Earl Milliron's shop in Portland. This was in the early to mid-1980s, so I'm not at all sure as to what make of machine Earl was using. But at the time, Milliron turned a great many blanks for other stockmakers (some of them very well-known), and he made that work a significant part of his business, or so it seemed.

The turned stock blanks that he produced were superbly executed, but there was still a great deal of handwork remaining, and there is simply no way that such a blank could in any way serve as some sort of a crutch for an unskilled stockmaker.

One of my friends still has a couple of Milliron's turned French walnut blanks stored away, unfinished, in Earl's 'Russ Leonard' pattern, and he's had them for at least twenty years. I'd love to have those myself, but I'm not sure what I'd do with them!

AD

The last time that I got to see Harry was in 1991, and at that time he'd just built himself another machine. He said he'd no sooner get one made until he had somebody walk in the shop and buy the damn thing.
You'll never meet a guy who knew more about timesaving shortcuts that wouldn't detract from the quality of the end product than Harry.
While his stocks were a little on the "wild side", he knew what it took to make a rifle shoot long before the mainstream gunmakers had it figured out in the late sixties.
The ability to turn, thread, chamber, and crown a barrel in 45 minutes, and acheive under 1/2MOA accuracy was quite an accomplishment, and still is for that matter.
If he found something that needed to be more efficient, he'd just make a new machine for doing it. He'd have some scrap iron and a couple of motors laying around on Friday and by Monday he'd be making chips.
One of those interesting stock designs that he ever had was for the XP100.....He called it the Two-Fisted Fireball. Basically what it amounted to was a double thumbhole stock that would allow the shooter to push with their left hand, while pulling with their shooting hand simultaneously. The results were phenominal for offhand shooting. Very abstract looking, but like all of his designs, they worked better than anything else going.
He wasn't much of a bench shooter....He figured if a guy couldn't shoot off his own "hind legs", you didn't know how to shoot at all. He was probably one of the finest offhand shooters anywhere around. He reputation definitely preceeded him. He was no doubt a big loss to the firearms community when he passed away a couple years back.

teal325,

To start with teal, let me tell you that the stockmakers/gunsmiths that have responded to your thread have probably forgotten more than I know about it, but I have some thoughts that may be of some value to anyone considering entering the business.

I started building custom stocks about 20 years ago as a hobby. Up until I got my duplicator I built all stocks totally by hand. My clientele grew to the point that I couldn�t keep up with the demand and had to buy something. The hobby has grown into a 30 hour a week part time job. (Can�t quit my regular job, health insurance, etc.) I realized long ago that I couldn�t compete with Fajen, later the CNC machines and the Boyd boys. So I specialized in high quality, custom fit, laminated thumbhole stocks. I guess my point is I tried to find a �niche� in the market. If you are considering your own business some day, knowledge of the market and your competition is critical.

I bought a new Terrco K-Star several years ago. It is a two spindle machine. I paid just under 3k for it. I can�t compare this machine to others as I do not have any experience with other machines. My guess would be that, (as with most things of this nature) you get what you pay for. With all due respect to Gunmaker, I have not experienced the amount of flex he mentioned. (Thank God). I have made some improvements to the machine and with using jigs for inletting I am able to keep variations within .008 of an inch. I use the duplicator to get me close. All metal is hand fitted after that. And so, as others have stressed you must know how to do it by hand. After maybe 70-80 stocks from the machine, I am still learning tricks that help me out. If I was asked, what is the best way to break into the business, I would tell them to apprentice under a respected gunsmith/stockmaker. The experience will put you years ahead of everyone else.

If you are planning on making a living at it, my opinion is you must start young. It takes many years to build your reputation and contacts. I mentioned to an old gunsmith that I was thinking of getting into the stock making business, his gruff answer was, �too old to start now�. I was just over 30 years old. At the time I didn�t understand what he was saying. I know very well what he was talking about now. It seems the more I try to prove him wrong, the more I prove him right.

You mentioned books. One of the books that helped me and is just plain fun to read is Alvin Linden�s book on stock making. I don�t know if you can still find it around, but if you do buy it for any price. (What ever you do, don�t look at the picture of him removing extra wood with a hatchet from a stock he had already inletted!!!!!) Hope this helps. Good Luck. pdhntr

PDHNTR

Actually, that Linden book has been reprinted, and is now available from Brownells. I have a copy, have read it, and agree that it is a very good book to learn from. Another outstanding book is by David Wesbrook and is called Professional Stockmaking. It too is available from Brownells.

Blue