Do any of you guys know him? I have been looking at one of his rifles to buy. Beautiful work. All I know is that he is retired, is in his 80's and has a good reputation. Any info would be appreciated.

From what I have seen I always thought that Goens had the finest line style wise. His stocks looked modern to me but have such good taste.

For a "western" bolt action rifle stock I like his work the best.

kynadog---

As part of the American Custom Gunmakers Guild Audio history series there is an audio tape of Dale Goens.

Go to the ACGG site and follow the Publications/Video link. Audio tapes are down at the bottom.

Dale is a pioneer of the craft and one who's work is reconizable and set a level of perfection that many younger makers strived to equal... Dale Goens made American custom rifles better and the people that make them better too. He's one of the gurus.

Some examples of Mr. Goens work, (I pulled these off of the internet).









Regards,

Terry

Thanks for the picture. It brought tears of joy to my eyes.

When I was in Albuerque he lived in Ceder Crest, just east of town at the foothills of the Sandia moutians.

I like the style of Dale Goens' stock the best of all stock designs. Of course, Al Biesen's and Dave Miller's stock shapes are very simliar to the Goens design, and these epitomize the American Classic-style stock. The comb is high enough and thick enough to work perfectly with a telescopic sight, and the grip is just tight enough to control the stock with the shooting hand, which is the correct method.

After WWII, Biesen and Goens corrected the faults and modernized the pre-war era custom rifle stock, and for that we owe them a lot.

Any custom stock I'll ever order will have a stock shaped to this same basic pattern or forget it!

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