The last time I heard from him was a month ago,he said my one rifle was done and was ready to goin the mail,and that the other was almost done.

No rifle or rifles here yet and haven't heard a peep from him.

Hopefully someone has talked to him recently,to re-issure me that he hasn't taken a vacation to Bermuda for a month or his house burned down or whatever.

Brian.

Brian - Your post is somewhat disturbing to me, in that Jack apparently gave you an update then went silent. I have been trying to contact him for months regarding a project of mine he has had for a very long time. He has not even answered my letters.

I wish someone close to him would try to convince him to "surface" and let everyone know his situation and his intentions regarding his current backlog.

Send him a registered letter. If no response then do what you have to do to get your guns back.

[ 10-09-2003, 17:53: Message edited by: alvinmack ]

Last thing I want to do is piss someone off that has several hundred dollars of mine for work AND over $5K of my guns,and lives a 1000 miles from me.

I am not mad or upset,I just want to know what is going on.I was told in early August that my 458 was done and about to get shipped off,and that my 270 was nearly done.I was looking forward to getting the 458 as I wanted to take it hunting this season.

After the rifle not arriving for several weeks,I was worried that it had gotten lost in transit.Going through someone else,I finaly got ahold of Jack in early September.He then told me the same thing as before,but that he hadn't gotten a chance to go to the post office yet,but the 458 would go out in the next day or two.

Now I don't know if he still has both rifles or if he shipped the 458 and it got lost or what.No e-mails are being answered and every time I phone him I get a busy signal.

I am just very concerned.

Brian.

Send him a registered letter, return receipt requested. Ask him to ship the firearm(s) immediately or to make arrangements to have them shipped.

If you still don't hear from him, get on a plane and collect the firearm(s) in person.

Jack may have gotten himself in some sort of jam, and may be too embarassed to get back to you.

George

George,
I think that's what I am going to do.Thanks.

Brian.

Brian & Glen,

I was in touch with Jack via email on about September 16 or so, since then I sent him one email that he did not yet respond to.

He is working on a project for me as well, and I too am a bit concerned by the lack of communication. At one point I had not heard from him in over six weeks, then he sent me some pictures of the work, which looked great! So, now I am just waiting. I think he is OK, probably just busy. Although in Brian's case, the matter is a bit more "sticky". Like Glen, I do not know him well, but feel relatively confident that he is a man or his word, and that he will eventually finish the work in due time. It just may take longer than I had hoped.

One thought for you Brian, I believe that you could arrange for UPS (or similar carrier) to go and pick up the package at Jack's shop for a fee. That way he would not actually have to go anywhere, just prepare it for shipping. If you can raise him on the phone or send him a registered letter notifying him to that effect, maybe that can work. Just a thought. Worst case senario is that UPS leaves empty handed.

Bob

I think Ray Atkinson lives close, 100mi or so, to Jack and that they are friends. Why not ask him?

BlackBart - Is Jack's e-mail address correct in his profile? It is somewhat encouraging that he has corresponded as recently as mid-September. Maybe if I "spam" him with a bunch of e-mails he will answer one.

Call Ray. He's within 15 miles. I do believe Jack "turned off the phone" so he could get some work done. It's hard to build rifles and type at the same time...... JMO, Dutch.

I sent an email to Jack a couple of days ago, and got a reply the next day. I wouldn't sweat it...

Glen71-

Sent you a PM

I bet he's buried in work from all of the unintentional advertising he did on these forums. Who wouldn't want a Mauser that had been worked on by Jack?

Just give him some time, he'll come through.

Not shipping a finished rifle for two months and ignoring e-mails is not good business,no matter how busy you are.

For all I know he mailed the rifle and someone is now using it for a lamp stand.

I shouldn't have to call other people to play phone tag with Jack.He needs to get his communication problems worked out,period.

Jack may do exellent work,but if I had known I'd have to play detective just to find out where my rifle is,I would have sent it to someone else.There are a lot of other 'smiths out there that good equally good work and don't require playing detective to get ahold of.

RickF's post worries me even more-it means he is getting my (and others)e-mails,and is ignoring them.

I hate doing this in public,but about the best hope I have is that he sees this and gets motivated to ship a rifle that he has had finished for two months and the work that has been done on it has already been payed in full.

Brian.

This doesn't sound good. You're being ducked, and you're being ducked for a reason. I've been in this position before myself with one gunmaker, and in that case a one-page letter from my attorney solved the problem inside of one week. Talk is always cheap. Personally, I wouldn't shy away from pissing anyone off on a deal like this one, and to heck with the consequences. It's your investment that's at stake here, for Pete's sake, and YOU are the guy who's really in the position of power and you should act accordingly.

If this was my deal, I'd try the certified letter approach first. If that failed, I'd step things up without any further delay.

AD

I enjoy reading Jack's post's and pitures, but dont feel it is fair for him to email one person and not the rest. 10 minutes of pounding the key board every couple of week's is not to much to ask.

Jack Belk was also all over the net on his evaluation of the MRC M 1999. Then when the Walex episode happened he never commented on it although Burgess and Leeper did right away.

If I was only 1000 miles away I would get in the car now and be there tommorrow AM.

Savage,

What was the Walex episode ????

Regards,

Pete

Allen Day has given good advice.

I sure hope the "Walex Episode" doesn't have anything to do with this discombobbulation. Strange.

Maybe MRC sent him a check.

Pete,

I believe this is the beginning of the Walex episode (although there were a few other related threads).

Walex

Regards,

Terry

I sent Jack B. a letter, seeing if he could work on my MRC 1991 action, and I indicated that I would not need it immediately, but wanted confirmation he could/would do it and then I have this settled, and send it to him when he was ready. He never replied back...

At one time one gunsmith mentioned that they don't make alot of money and their margin of profit is thin. If Jack is too busy with too many projects at one time, he should raise his fees and this would control his query of rifles awaitin' to be worked on. That is how business works.

Well, I am about to get my action and I guess JB is not interested in building a rifle for me...time to move on.

BTW, I believe JB is a man of his word and is swamped with too much work. BUT you should have indicated if you wanted your rifle before the season and he agreeded to have it done.

I got an idea....set up a text with the words you want, as in an email to Jack B.

Create a job to send him emails every hour with the text included. He will get 24 emails everyday...

Just kidding...folks but would that be sumthin?

I, myself have not heard from Jack in quite a while since we sent out the Walex rifle for evaluation. I know he had a lot of computer problems there for a while, but don't know whether or not he ever got them solved. If he emailed someone lately he could have had them solved or was doing it through some other means. BTW he still has the walex rifle.
Personally I have all the confidence in the world in Jack and believe that anyone who feels there is a problem will find out that there was no problem at all.

dan...i agree. jack has built exactly one rifle for me. i couldn't be happier with it. as soon as he gets caught up and starts taking in work again, i have another one ready to send to him. whatever the problem is, i feel that he'll work it out and get things back to "normal". things i'm sure of...his level of knowledge and quality of work is second to none. he's also one of the honest ones, even if it makes some people mad(which he has done many times ). these things make his work worth the wait to me.
i hope you guys waiting on rifles get them soon. cheers...bud

Belk talked about living in numerous places around the country,this isn't exactly the background of someone who is stable.

The lawyers letter is a good idea.Another idea,is to call the local cops and have them do a welfare check on his ass. You'll at least know wether the fucker is even in idaho still. Just tell the cops that you've been talking to belk and he just all of the sudden dropped off the edge of the world and you're just worried sick about his ass. Be creative,after all jack did have surgery here a year or two ago. The cops aren't going to give you indepth info,but they'll tell you if they ran into him or not.

[ 10-11-2003, 04:26: Message edited by: RMK ]

I don't even think I can send him a registered letter now that I think of it,because the address I have is from back in March,and I remember him saying something about selling his house in August.So much for that idea.

Blue Ridge,
The rifle was finished well over a month before season started.He told me the rifle would be shipped out the following Monday.A month later,just before season started,it still wasn't here,and after more prodding I found out he hadn't shipping it yet,but "it was going out the next day".I though ok,great,it'll get here and I can still hunt with.Now season is damn near over and best I can guess,Jack still hasn't shipped the damn thing.

I consider myself a pretty easy going person and it takes a lot to piss me off,but holding someone elses rifle for two months after it has been finished has no excuse.

But ignoring my e-mails and answering others is what really pisses me off-I sent Jack $400 with the two rifles,$100 to bed one and $300 to reinlet,bed,and refinish the other.As a paying customer I at least deserve the minimal respect of answering the OCCASIONAL e-mail.

Brian.

Looks like the vultures are swooping in. I have no beef with those who are pissed, I would be too. I also agree it appears as he is being very unprofessional. But I certainly don't agree with those who have a OBVIOUS axe to grind and are taking this opportunity to take pot shots, you're a bunch of damn cowards. I've never met the man but he has never struck me as a crook/thieve/fucker(the moron from Wy's words) He certainly has some answering to do and if he had one of my guns that was loooong overdue I would be taking whatever steps necessary to retrieve my goods. But I would and am, be concerned for his well being because I like the guy and he has been MORE than helpfull to everybody here who sought out his advice.

I don't usually like to make generalizations, but most gunsmiths I know, of all different skill levels, usually have a slight problem with organization.

Usually enough that if they were to live in California they could probably be diagnosed with a disability.

I certainly hope Brian gets his gun back and in proper working order with what he paid to have done to them, but the rest of the grumblers out there goddammit, it is probably the busiest time of the year to be a gunsmith right now! Look at all the other smiths here on the forum, don't see them posting with their usual regularity do you? Wonder why?

Mr. Belk would not have gotten this far in life if he made this practice his norm, so I think he deserves the utmost benefit of doubt here, at the same time feeling bad for Brian who should not be in his sitaution either, but maybe the fire and brimstone approach right now is how do you say, ignorant and possibly counter-productive?

Mark is right,and I'd like to make something clear.

I am not looking at putting Jack up on a cross or anything like that,like a lot of people here seem to want to do.I just want my two rifles back,one of which has been done for two months now according to Jack.

RMK is troll ASSHOLE who would take pot shots at his own mother if he got the chance.Calling the police in a situation like it is at the present is way too extreme.

I am not happy with Jack at the moment,but I certainly wish no harm to the man or his business.The purpose of this post was to try to play detective (which I hate doing as I have better things to do)and find out where he is and what's going on with him,not to bash him,which it seems to have turned into.

Brian.

Jack has always been upfront and honest with me. He must be having a problem of some description. I think he will straighten things out in time. There may be a reason for his lack of response.

You can reach Jack by mail or UPS at

JBGW (Jack Belk Gunworks)
4592-B River Road
Buhl,Idaho 83316

But bear in mind it is "Tax Time" for a gunsmith
everyone wants it Right Now(hunting season) If you brought your work to a custom smith with a reputation in as large an area as Jack, well you can imagine the backlog of buisness.

I for one, do not agree with the slams! Brian, have you tried to write a letter? Jumping on a person on the web, to my mind is .....@#%@%$&&%$....quite severe.

Mike

Yes he's building one for me also

I have been reading this thread for some time now and am amazed at how some of the people on this thread have responded. "...maybe Jack has a problem..."??? I'll say he does. There must be an awful lot of liberals that participate in this endeavor. How many of you remember the "One Eyed Jack" and how many of us got duped by that one. This is only some of the history that goes along with this. I have known of/about Jack for about 12-15 years now, perhaps not as well as others but just got around to figuring out the guy is a con-artist. He may be talented in the gun business, but he is a con-artist, make no mistake about it. I sent Jack an envelope with $500 in $100 bills when he was looking for some help with an eye problem. The following January, I talked to him at the ACGG show for quite a while. Not once, not once did he acknowledge my contribution, and I know he did get it. He responded with an email after I inquired if he got it or not with "...wow, yes I did..." not thanks. Boy did I feel like a sucker. My advice gentlemen, Get on the road and go to pick up your belongings in person. If the guy is still around is another big "IF". Those of you who don't want to go, write this off, cause you ain't never gonna see your goods again. 'nuf said

Soundman,
That is the address I mailed the rifles to.He claimed a month or two ago that he was selling his house,so he probably doesn't live there anymore.

But sending him a letter is pointless,as he's selectively ignoring e-mails by those with work he owes them.

Jack's had the two rifles since late March/early April.The 458,which was a simple bedding job that probably didn't take an hour for him to do,was not done until early August.It has now sat in his shop (as far as I know) for two months now.

I'm NOT jumping on Jack-I just want some answers.One of two rifles he has (replacement value almost $2000 on the 458,$5000 on the 270)is supposedly done,and has been done for two months,and I really have no idea where it is.I made it clear to him both in August and September that I wanted to hunt with the rifle this season.

You'll be ancy when you get into my same shoes with your rifle.

Jim Kobe,
The 270 isn't done,probably hasn't even been touched yet.If I drove there,he wouldn't give me the money back for the work on the 270 anyway.

I'll call his buddy Ray and have him pass on a message.

Brian.

I have known Jack from the HuntAmerica forums, Jack seems like a standup guy. I have had a few customs guns made by various smiths and they ALL are 1-3 months off thier due date. Jack seems to be a perfectionest and people like Jack see thier work as an extention of who they are and seem never totally satified. I also have noted most smiths I had work done by were MIA when trying to get ahold of them. I am not excusing a total lack of communication as it seems Jacks case is a little excessive but I am sure after being out of work due to illness he has bills to catch up on and if he has had a PC problem as one poster noted this also adds another kink to communication. Perhaps Jack did sell his house and if so this involves disruption of work, machinery removal relocation and now weeks behind on production. I have had times when with the Air Force where I didnt know if I had time to reply to the act of nature let alone call or e-mail anyone. I totally expected my wife to put an APB out on me numerous times. I pray this is all that the case is and Jack hasnt got a real world severe problem. As others have said I hope someone can clear this up.

Vic,
All perfectly good excuses for work not getting finished,all of which I understand.

They are NOT perfectly good excuses for not being able to mail a rifle to a custom who's already payed for the work to be done for TWO MONTHS after it's been completed.

Would you let a mechanic keep your car in his garage for two months after he finished working on it,because he can't get around to moving someone elses' pickup out of the driveway so you can drive yours home?

I didn't think so.

Brian.