I've have only had a few experience with gun smiths in the past and all have been bad. They normally went something like this...
Gunsmith - "Drop off your stuff and I'll give you a call when it's ready."
Me - "When do you think that will be?"
Gunsmith - "I'm working on a 6-9 month lead time right now"
Me - Choking back my vomit in my mouth I can't talk any longer...
So when I start working on my first long range bolt gun, my goal was to do it on a budget and do it all myself. Except I ran into an issue with needing the barrel threaded for a suppressor compatible brake. Well lucky for me Mile High Shooting Accessories is now offing some gunsmithing services and they are 10 mins down the road from me. And, they just happen to be where I'm planning to buy the suppressor for this gun.
So the day I picked up the left handed Savage 10 in 6.5 Creedmoor (Predator Hunter Max 1) from my FFL, I swung it buy and let their gunsmith, Adam, take a look at it. My first thought, his too, was that the barrel was a little light for what I wanted to do and due to the aggressive straight contour there was not much meat at the tip of the barrel. But after thinking about it and measuring it several times in reference to several brakes they had on hand, Adam came to the decision that the 9/16" brake from SAS would work just fine with the amount of material he had to work with.
Knowing how some gunsmiths have a tendency to tell time in a weird way, I asked if I could hang onto the gun until he was ready for it and I would bring it down as soon as he called. My goal was to be able to play with the gun, break in the barrel and get it all setup to make sure it worked before we started cutting on the barrel. That way, if needed, I could return it to Savage. Adam was cool with that since I was right down the road. Well two weeks later he was ready for it and I dropped it off at 1pm yesterday and as promised it was ready to roll this morning. WOW, was I happy. Gotta put it all back together tonight and hit the range tomorrow to play.
The work looks awesome. Looks like it came that way from the factory. Adam was able to time the threads for the brake, so no shims where needed. I'm very impressed with their customer service and quality of products. Hopefully I won't get Adam in trouble for posting this, as I can see where they would not want to do this all the time since people can be flakes about dropping their stuff off on time. But in this instance it really helped me out and got me going on this project quick. I'll be happy to send more work their way for sure!
I'm doing a writeup on my blog about this build that you can follow along for those that may be interested. It's for the budget mined left handed shooters. Not intended to be the end all be all of long range rifle builds so don't slam me there. My write up can be seen here...
Here's some photos of the work...
Image by FriedChickenBlowout, on Flickr
Image 1 by FriedChickenBlowout, on Flickr
Image 2 by FriedChickenBlowout, on Flickr
Gunsmith - "Drop off your stuff and I'll give you a call when it's ready."
Me - "When do you think that will be?"
Gunsmith - "I'm working on a 6-9 month lead time right now"
Me - Choking back my vomit in my mouth I can't talk any longer...
So when I start working on my first long range bolt gun, my goal was to do it on a budget and do it all myself. Except I ran into an issue with needing the barrel threaded for a suppressor compatible brake. Well lucky for me Mile High Shooting Accessories is now offing some gunsmithing services and they are 10 mins down the road from me. And, they just happen to be where I'm planning to buy the suppressor for this gun.
So the day I picked up the left handed Savage 10 in 6.5 Creedmoor (Predator Hunter Max 1) from my FFL, I swung it buy and let their gunsmith, Adam, take a look at it. My first thought, his too, was that the barrel was a little light for what I wanted to do and due to the aggressive straight contour there was not much meat at the tip of the barrel. But after thinking about it and measuring it several times in reference to several brakes they had on hand, Adam came to the decision that the 9/16" brake from SAS would work just fine with the amount of material he had to work with.
Knowing how some gunsmiths have a tendency to tell time in a weird way, I asked if I could hang onto the gun until he was ready for it and I would bring it down as soon as he called. My goal was to be able to play with the gun, break in the barrel and get it all setup to make sure it worked before we started cutting on the barrel. That way, if needed, I could return it to Savage. Adam was cool with that since I was right down the road. Well two weeks later he was ready for it and I dropped it off at 1pm yesterday and as promised it was ready to roll this morning. WOW, was I happy. Gotta put it all back together tonight and hit the range tomorrow to play.
The work looks awesome. Looks like it came that way from the factory. Adam was able to time the threads for the brake, so no shims where needed. I'm very impressed with their customer service and quality of products. Hopefully I won't get Adam in trouble for posting this, as I can see where they would not want to do this all the time since people can be flakes about dropping their stuff off on time. But in this instance it really helped me out and got me going on this project quick. I'll be happy to send more work their way for sure!
I'm doing a writeup on my blog about this build that you can follow along for those that may be interested. It's for the budget mined left handed shooters. Not intended to be the end all be all of long range rifle builds so don't slam me there. My write up can be seen here...
Here's some photos of the work...
Image by FriedChickenBlowout, on Flickr
Image 1 by FriedChickenBlowout, on Flickr
Image 2 by FriedChickenBlowout, on Flickr
