Great Post Trax, Pictures are worth thousands of words...................DJ

Good post Trax, even though about half of the rifles pictured seem to have some fairly nice wood. Especially the H&Hs with fiddleback and the last Rigby 416 shown, it's about the minimum I'd expect for a rifle priced @ $10K. 'Course, my standards are obviously different from yours. The rest of those rifles sure are plain, just using tools I guess.

BTW IIRC my biography of Bubi Hartmann says he was shot down 8 times in over 1800 combat missions. Most of these 'shootdowns' but perhaps not all were attributable to his habit of shooting from extremely close range and then flying through the resulting debris. His famous 'coffee break' helped here but didn't always work. He was the world's best, undoubtedly, along with Rudel.
Regards, Joe

quote:

Originally posted by djpaintles:
The Grain-flow requirements for a Double Rifle are completely different than they are for a Bolt rifle like we are talking to here. ..DJ

I can only assume that you are no stockmaker, or at least not a very-experienced one. The grain-flow requirements for a double, any double, are in fact more stringent than for any bolt rifle because of the typically-smaller wrist and recoil surfaces and the extra leverage imparted by the repeated cocking operations with heavy barrels.

I've restocked about a dozen sidelock doubles, no telling how many boxlocks, and I always use hidden reinforcement on their stocks too. You need to find another argument.

For the blank that made the stock shown, I'd expect to pay $200-350, just bought a couple of similar ones the other day for $200/ea. For a stock blank for a $10K DGR as I would build it, I'd expect to pay $600-900 and get good-to-excellent butt figure with straight wrist grain. The rifle shown looks like a $5K rifle to me, too plain and not even stained for a more attractive appearance.

If you guys wanta pay megabucks for a wallflower then like I say, knock yourselves out!
BTW here's some pretty good wood, OK for a $10K rifle.

Regards, Joe

Is the rifle in the picture your work?

Lets see some pictures of the dozen sidelocks you have stocked.

If you have blanks of comparable quality to the one of the Heym stock for $200 I'll take 10, seriously I've got $2k cash for them. Put up or shut up...................DJ

A couple of years ago, Mr. Paintles, posted photos of a rifle he built on 24Hr. and I was and am enormously impressed, it was simply superb. He is, however, a rather humble gentleman and does not "blow his own horn", so, as he well deserves it, I shall do so for him.

I have been fascinated by fine guns since age 7, am now in my 64th year and my first custom rifle, from some guy called "Al Biesen" was bought after a summer of overtime night shifts in a plywood plant, I was 21. I have owned a few decent guns since and have been fortunate in that wealthy friends who want to talk about my years working alone in the BC bush, have often allowed me to handle, shoot and drool over theirs...so, I know of most highend gun makers from Fabbri to David McKay Brown to D'Arcy Echols and so on.

Yet, I have never, until these recent rather obnoxious posts of yours, even heard of you. Did you not recently post that you were a "party hearty" at gunsmithing school and now you make derisive posts about DJ and we others who admire the Heym rifle as it is??????

Well, I won't say what I could say, as I think that you have demonstrated exactly what level of "expertise" you really have and I do not mean just about guns.

Thank you for the kind words Dewey.................DJ

That Selby rifle is sure an old workhorse.
I love looking at that thing.
SS

The pictured stock is my work, all the way. The only things I didn't do on the entire rifle are the bluing and the engraving. Finished it more than 10 years ago and been hunting with it ever since, took these photos 2 years ago.


I'm sorry to say that I can't afford to keep all the guns I've owned so the only sidelock in my safe now is an Elsie 3-bbl set I'm building. But here's a photo of a 1903 stock I'm building as part of a gift for a friend's son. It's only rough-shaped but you get the idea.


Dewey, I'm not surprised that you haven't heard of me, that's the way I like it (G). I don't do this for a living or for 'clients', only for my own enjoyment (and even then it's gotta be an interesting project), so I don't have a lavish portfolio of past work photos. I'm definitely not open to the public and won't accept any new projects right now until I work down the backlog.

I'll take some photos of some blanks and post later. Have your checkbook ready.

Yeah, Dewey, I partied at Trinidad, and missed lots of opportunities for advanced learning from a guy that Boots Obermeyer called "..a giant in the barrelmaking field..", it's a mistake I've long regretted. But if you or anyone else thinks that school will teach you anything more than about 10% of ANY subject, you need to fall back & regroup. A degree, any degree, proves only one thing: the degree recipient had the time, the funds and the stamina to stay in school long enough to complete the curriculum.

If a graduate can't double his knowledge base every few years then he'll never know much. Sure, school will teach you how to operate the machines and flail around doing a few relatively simple projects, but it's only the basics. The most-complicated project I did in the entire 2 years was an action-shortening project, most of the rest was more-or-less simple stuff like heat-treatment, polishing-&-bluing, welding, stockmaking from a blank, barrel fitting, checkering, parts changing and the like. I did take some Engineering courses though, calculus and similar, that was the advantage of the Junior College over a trade school in my mind.

Dewey, it appears that now you've resorted to personal attacks. Does this mean that you've abandoned your attempts at 'logic' and 'facts' since they didn't prove accurate?
Hugs and kisses, Joe

Joe, you strike me as what we here in BC call, " a legend in his own mind". YOU initiated the nasty personal comments here, YOU posted total bullshit about DGRS on the "P-64" thread, finally admitting that you have NO experience with the topic and were relying on what you have read and comments from a friend. I merely pointed out that I, and others, actually DO and HAVE DONE what we based our opinions on and now you are having a "hissyfit"?

So, you are an amateur stockist and yet feel free to make derisive remarks about "dj", me and anyone else who dares question your specious opinions? I know a half-dozen guys here in BC who can and do build rifles much like the one you show...AND, they are hunters, real mountainmen and speak, as I do, from decades of "hands-on" experience in wilderness that would frighten you to an incoherent babbling mess.

J.D., I like the cheekpeice on your bottom rifle. It's pretty similar to the one on my 9,3x62:



We can at least somewhat agree on cheekpeice shapes.

In a lot of ways Wood is like women, some like blonds, some like redheads or brunettes. People have different tastes in wood. Mine is apparently far different than yours. To my eyes neither of the two stocks in your pictures is nearly as nice as the stock on the Heym rifle. Btw you can see the other side here:

http://www.martiniandhagngunmakers.com/projects.htm

Fiddleback is hard to photograph so in person your completed rifle might look a lot better than it shows on my computer. Of course so might the Heym. I like the long contrasting streaks on the Heym and prefer them to a relatively plain stock with some fiddleback.

And fancy isn't everything. This stock is "fancier" than the Heym stock is but it's NOT as good of wood, especially for a DGR:




...............DJ

We have another old saying among working bushmen here in BC, it is "you play with the bull, you get the horn". Simply put, I am tired of the snide, condescending tone used by Joe, in all of his posts on the threads I mentioned and I kinda let him know it in very blunt terms.

However, to spare your tender "lawyer's" sensibilities, I will edit that comment from my post.

Kev, give over, this is simply ridiculous. I EDITED the post, now, calm down and do something a little more productive, eh?

Well, Dewey, you sure proved your class (and intelligence) level with that remark. Personal insults and vulgarity are usually the last resort of the otherwise-impotent defeated, though....

I've laid offa you and your puerile opinions of the M70, also I've never questioned your SELF-claimed bush expertise. Since you're so famous as a bush expert, maybe I'll write my old Trinidad roommate, a BC smith named Dennis Sorensen, to see if maybe HE's ever heard of YOU!

I'm still waiting for you to take one of your great 'DGRs' and try the concrete wall test. My fancy-&-thus-'unsuitable'-for-'true'-DGR-status rifles can pass, why don't YOU put YOUR money where YOUR mouth is?

DJ, thanks for the kind words. My finished stock does indeed have some of the good wavy black marblecake and not just straight thin streaks although not as pronounced as I'd like and not very visible in the photo (photo was taken mainly to show the 3 traps). The unfinished 1903 stock has even more of the marblecake and fiddleback, 2 of my favorite forms of wood figure, on the off side. I originally bought the 1903 stick for myself but couldn't resist the gift for the boy's graduation. Guess I'm gettin' soft in my old age.

If a fellow doesn't want to (?) or know how to (!!) strengthen the stock, then I can somewhat see the need for plain wood. Back in the 19th century they didn't have the sophisticated adhesives of today, really they didn't have anything more than hide glue, so I can understand their emphasis on strong straight plain grain. But not today; these days IMO it's mainly an affectation.
Regards, Joe

Well, fancy that, I was just interacting with Dennis five minutes ago on HBC. I have a very rare Brno ZG-47 in 9.3x62 in one of my safes, that he glassed for it's previous owner and am having Ralf install a Lapour safety on it next month. I have met Dennis a couple of times, don't know him very well and he IS a "Remington man"....but, I can accept that.

I have also never claimed ...bush expertise..., I simply posted on the experience I actually HAVE, which, by your own admission, you lack. You have made very wide-ranging and pompous comments on a couple of threads and others have proven you wrong, YET, you still keep on with snarky remarks.

NOW, using plain wood is an ...affectation..., whereas before you opined that the makers in question NEVER did this. When PROVEN wrong, you indulged in exactly the behaviour you accuse me of and I finally responded in kind....which, I grant you, was an error.

...Concrete wall test..., how about spending some real bush time and THEN telling us about your "tests". You are simply a blowhard and should STFU and learn from guys like Trax, LB404 and "dj", who know more about this than you obviously do.

I personally like the wood on the Heym very much.
Butch

Dewey, you have absolutely no knowledge of my bush experience, or lack thereof, except that I've never been to Alaska. I freely admit that I've not killed more than about 40-50 big game animals, 'bg' being defined as whitetails or larger, and all of those were in the lower 48 or Mexico.

I DO recall that on another thread I was wrong about the mag capacity of the pre-64 375 but as far as the rest of your 'proved you wrong' rant goes....Bah, your opinion, nothing more.

Here's a pic of some wood in my shop, along with an example of the sort of thing I REALLY enjoy. Bolt rifles are OK and I love 'em but single shots & doubles are more interesting to me. The unvarnished blanks are the $200 ones and I paid $600 for the varnished one. The $600 blank is about the least I'd personally consider for a $10K rifle.

Dewey, I suggest you ask Dennis about me. He will tell you that I'm large, loud, ugly, intelligent, obnoxious, lazy, informed, excellent pistol shot, prone to impulsive behavior, like to drive fast and I don't suffer fools gladly. But I figure that most folks here already know about the truth of that last descriptive phrase....in spite of my seeming tolerance for your insults...

BTW Dewey, are you yourself a smith or merely an interested bystander?
Hugs & kisses, Joe

No doubt.

quote:

Originally posted by J.D.Steele:
Here's a pic of some wood in my shop, along with an example of the sort of thing I REALLY enjoy. Bolt rifles are OK and I love 'em but single shots & doubles are more interesting to me. The unvarnished blanks are the $200 ones and I paid $600 for the varnished one.



Joe

If the $200 ones are English Walnut (Juglans Regia) I'll take then both and 10 more like them if you have them. PM me with your info....................dj

Back to the HEYM--Martini rifle, it is one fine looking rifle. Add one of the Recknagel shrouds and it would only be more so. Great job working together to make yet another work of art.

As for all the rants above....take it to the political forum, PMs or start your own rant thread, this is about the Heym "Martini" rifle. Without the gun in hand, wood is hard to see at it's best. I like the piece of wood they picked out and would put it on one of my rifles without question. But as has been said, different strokes...

Most of us don't want to hear it. Not all but most of this personal match has nothing to do with the post.

CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG??
Good luck with that....

Dream on, young fella, this IS AR and stuff like this happens all the time. Just ignore what bothers you and read what you enjoy and don't worry about a few old pharts moaning and pissing, it ain't gonna really matter much in the scheme of daily planetary life...........

quote:

Originally posted by djpaintles:
If the $200 ones are English Walnut (Juglans Regia) I'll take then both and 10 more like them if you have them. PM me with your info....................dj

PM is incoming to you, and I'd appreciate it if you'd keep the BC guy (or the whole forum, preferably) updated on your impression of my end of the deal.
Regards, Joe

Dewey,
I wasn't really bothered. Just wanted to pitch in. That's why the
was added at the end of the sarcastic "Can't we all just get along" comment.

I may be a young guy on here, don't know. I'm 43, if that makes me a young fella, I guess I'm going to have to hang out here more often and learn from a few of you old pharts.

It's been quite a while since I have been online here. It's about the same as it always was. I don't expect that with as many different people as we have here, it will ever be a peaceful place. Enough people simply don't like it that way. It's mostly all you grumpy old guys...

quote:

Originally posted by J.D.Steele:


DJ, thanks for the kind words. My finished stock does indeed have some of the good wavy black marblecake and not just straight thin streaks although not as pronounced as I'd like and not very visible in the photo (photo was taken mainly to show the 3 traps). The unfinished 1903 stock has even more of the marblecake and fiddleback, 2 of my favorite forms of wood figure , on the off side.

J.D.
Wouldn't it be simpler to say that you like planesawn wood and that you don't like quartersawn? That seems to be what you are describing.

From what can be seen in the photos I would pick the Heym stock(blank) over the blank the you used on the finished rifle you posted or the lacquered blank you posted.

Maybe it is just the photo, but your finished rifle seems to lack two of the things I look for in a blank: contrast and color. No amount of fiddleback could ever make up for a lack of contrast in a blank, IMO.

The way I see it, fiddleback is like crotch figure, some love it while others hate it. I am more the latter. To each his own.

Jason, I DON'T like plain- or rather flat-sawn wood, that's an incorrect conclusion. Flat-sawn wood is slightly more prone to warp sideways and, in juglans regia, the figure to me appears to be minimized and sort of muddied in an often-unattractive way.

OTOH true quarter-sawn wood also often has the figure, if any, minimized by the angle of the grain, resulting in the thin & rather uninteresting streaks seen in the subject stock. So, actually, I prefer wood sawn at about a 10/20-degree angle from the true quarter-sawn 90-degrees. This slight angle allows the black swirls, if any, to appear more swirly and thus more interesting to the eye, without materially changing the stock's strength or grain orientation.

I'm speaking of juglans regia here, European walnut. Black walnut has a different appearance & grain composition and so is judged differently. I haven't done enough Claro and Bastogne stocks to form any firm conclusions about my grain-flow preferences for them.

It's quite difficult sometimes to correctly visualize what the finished stock will look like, when looking at the unturned blank. But enough experience will eventually help in your deciding what YOU really like, and not just what The Rules say you should like.
Regards, Joe

quote:

Originally posted by JBrown:
From what can be seen in the photos I would pick the Heym stock(blank) over the blank the you used on the finished rifle you posted or the lacquered blank you posted.
To each his own.

That's exactly my point. Neither one of my sticks is on a 10K rifle or even close, but I can assure you that both have far more interesting figure, color, contrast, streaking etc than the pictured stock appears to have. My amateur photo of my completed stock was taken mainly to show the 3 traps, not the more-or-less average figure. Even though it's more-or-less average, the figure is still MUCH more interesting than that in the Heym stock.

My original criticism of the Heym stock was for its lack of figure, in such a high-$ 'advertising' rifle. After all, IIUC, it's gonna be more-or-less a semi-production rifle similar to the Dakota operation, and not a true one-off bespoke rifle.

Perhaps I'm wrong here, but IMO it would have been a lot more productive to have used a more-attractive stick on the 'blurb' rifle. As it is, I personally wouldn't look twice at the pictured Heym rifle simply because it's not visually appealing, just another cookie-cutter 'DGR' rifle. And as a consequence, I wouldn't consider actually BUYING one for fear that the finished product wouldn't look any better than the 'blurb'.

Also as an aside, I'm still trying to figure out what makes this rifle worth $10K. Looks more like a $5K rifle to me, but then I'm not a fan of the Conspicuous Consumption lifestyle.

But, like you say, to each his own. Good luck with yours.
Regards, Joe