i know at one time not too far back, richards micro-fit was being trashed left and right for several issues from poor quality to bad customer service. have they gotten any better lately?.

With people like Roger Biesen and Michael Kokolus available to supply semi-inletted stocks, I wouldn't want to take a chance on repeating my bad experience with Richards. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Avoid Richards like the plague. I used one on my target puncher. It cost $1700 in shop time to get it finished. Danger! Danger! Run! Run away!!

They have gotten better at delivery times.2 tears ago it took 8 or 9 months,now about 3 to 4 weeks.They leave a lot of wood to remove but the stocks i have ordered lately have good grain.Good Luck

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They have gotten better at delivery times.2 tears ago it took 8 or 9 months,now about 3 to 4 weeks.They leave a lot of wood to remove but the stocks i have ordered lately have good grain.Good Luck

The only problem that I have had is the difficulty in contacting them. I have had or have at least six of them and all finished quite nicely. I guess I just haven't had any real bad experiences with them nor am I a good enough stock maker to compare them to others. I know you can buy a better semi but I don't think you can get a better one for the price.

Great wood for the price, piss poor inletting, and really rough. I bought one that was in stock and had to wait 3 weeks to get it from Ca. to Ut. DW

I ordered a semi-inletted stock for a Sako AIII action, and being a special order, it would take 10 - 12 weeks for delivery. The stock arrived in 6 weeks, and while it took more than the 4% inletting to finish the job, I was very happy with the stock, the price, and the delivery time. I will buy from them again.

good to hear that it looks like they maybe got thier problems sorted out. all the roughness and and stuff doesn't worry me. i am trying to decide between getting a laminated semi or gluing up a lam by myself or just getting a walnut (or maybe even maple!) or laminate blank and doing the inletting from scratch. i have a real heavy drill press and a compound vice on it. so the inletting would be started out by machine,....much easier.
if i do the lam by myself, it would be with a .700' center core and 5-.125" laminations on both sides of that for a total of 2" to get by the front ring with about 3/16 material, then a few more laminations on the cheek side of the butt for the cheek pad. glued with either died epoxy or or resorcinal glue.
i though a laminated stock of bigleaf curly maple with dark gluelines (res. glue is dark-dark reddish brown) and some pilkington's red or something similar, to bring out the fiddle might look decent and give me that one maple stock everyone has to have. i have a real good sorce for real nice figured bigleaf maple nearby. i just bought 150 bd.ft. of it for a sleighbed and two dressers i have to build and every piece is loaded, so the idea of gluing up my own laminated blank popped up.

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Originally posted by plainsman456:
They have gotten better at delivery times.2 tears ago it took 8 or 9 months,now about 3 to 4 weeks.They leave a lot of wood to remove but the stocks i have ordered lately have good grain.Good Luck

There's a good question for stockmakers, how much wood to leave for finishing? Personally I'd like to have a bit of wood left so that I can do a little bit of shaping myself, especially in the comb area. Other people want the stock almost finished and are willing to accept whatever the stockmaker decides is the proper final shape. Which do ya'll prefer.

personaly, i like to have a little meat on the outside to shape. if i buy a semi, it's to avoid the mistakes i might make getting the action in the wood. in the past, once the basic hole is there i have no problem with the final fitting. and blank with the action let in and a barrel channel is enough of a "semi" to me happy. i am lucky in that i have a lifetime background of woodworking and a good freind that's a real good smith that allowed me to pick his brain and watch every step of the three guns he built for me. on the last one, my G33/40 he got done with the chambering and barrel fitting, took it out of the lathe, turned to me and said,"well my part is done,there's the mill, what are you gonna do with the trigger guard?"
now that i have the good drill press, doing the initial inletting is a breeze compared to getting that hole in there with drills and chisels. set a dial on the quill so you can keep track of depths off the top of the blank get your center and away you go, just make sure you index off of the center and top for every step.

I consider stocking from a blank to be a real A-number-one gold-plated PITA but am coming to hafta do it more and more as time goes on. I simply haven't found a pattern with which I'm happy, since my tastes have gradually changed/refined over the years.

One of the better local smiths does a heckuva job on a Mauser but all his rifles look just alike. Now I know for a fact that all his customers aren't built the same so how can he expect to fit them all with the same shape stock?

Plus, if you build 'em all the same then how are you ever gonna improve? By stocking from a blank, I can try different effects and treatments to discover whether I like 'em better that way. Or not.

Yes, using a semi is lots easier in the beginning of the inletting/shaping process and it'll save a blunder or 2 occasionally, but I can't always obtain the shape that I want while using someone else's pattern. And I don't want all my rifles to look the same either.

But at the same time I'm using a local Guild smith to duplicate a stock that I've already done, except with a few minor dimensional changes. My 'pattern' stock is one I've inletted and shaped 98% but left slightly oversize in a few critical areas for the time being, and I'll have the smith leave more wood in other areas when he shapes the new stock. The 2 finished products won't look exactly the same since one shooter is 40 years older and 30 lbs heavier than the other, but the overall impression will be very similar aside from the checkering.

So I guess after all those weasel words I'm saying that I do it both ways (VBG).
Regards, Joe

the individuals who have duplicators have really made it allot easier on the stock makers......a great boon to the trade in my opinion. you can have the meat where you want it and be real close where you don't need to spend..."waste"....time beating on a chisel or pushing a rasp and you still get a stock that's individually made for a certain person. every well known stockmaker has/had a particular style and shape that signifies his work, with the duplicator, your signiture is accurately repeated into every stock you do. nothing wrong with that, all through the wood industry, the famous woodworkers have a design trait or method of construction that signifies thier work. with duplicators, they can do it allot cheaper than the bigger shops can because they don't have a half dozen accountants counting every penny