April 3, 2005 Dear Friends,

As a child firearms always fascinated me. My family used to go back to West Virginia most every summer to visit my Mothers parents and relatives who lived on a 106 acre farm in the Ripley-Ravenswood area. Growing up in Southern California in a Semi-Rural area this was a big treat to go to West Virginia and live the farm life a few weeks every year. My Grand Parents were getting up in the years and needed help with the up-keep on the farm. Being a Young kid full of beans, I thought Bucking hay and cleaning the cisterns and painting the Tin Roof on the house Green was big fun. But the best part was the Ground Hog Hunting, Squirrel Hunting, Rabbit Hunting, Coon Hunting, Opossum Hunting, and Barn Pigeon Hunting, did I mention HUNTING?

Just before one of these trips my Dad bought me a Winchester Model 190 .22 rim fire rifle with a little Weaver Marksman 4X scope on it from a department store called TWO-GUYS maybe you remember it? Then it was on those ground hogs were in serious trouble for a few weeks every summer anyway! But as Grandparents do they got older and couldn’t keep up with the demands of the farm and moved to town to a retirement community.

I got older and was playing sports and had to work to support my car cruising and dating habits so the old .22 just sat in the closet crying. I ended up getting full time work after High School as a Carpenter and after a Building slow down and Gas crunch in California in 1980 I went to work in the California Oilfields. Now these boys were some genuine Hunting and Fishing nuts. So the old Rifle began to see some use again and after my first Divorce. (Yeah, there have been a few!) I was living on Baloney sandwiches the old .22 was cheap entertainment. I have 2 Friends that were instrumental in getting me back into Hunting and Fishing Chris and Richard are Hunt Nazi’s pardon the Pun. 

Chris talked me into buying a Weatherby VGX 7mm Mag I really couldn’t afford for Hunting Deer and Bear. Richard got me back into upland game bird Hunting and of course I had to have a Shotgun for that! So now the sickness begins! I decided I wanted a .257 Ackley rifle built on a Mauser ’98 action. Chris knew a “gunsmith “ in the next town and we went to visit. He found out that I had a real nice Winchester Model 1897 12 gauge shotgun I had picked up for like $50 to $75 and he wanted it real bad and we did some trading for the building of the rifle. The time came for me to pickup the rifle and do the paperwork etc. The rifle was on a Fajen Timberline stock Glass-Bed, Free-Floated with an Adams and Bennett 24” barrel and was Teflon-Moly coated and baked had a Timney trigger etc. I was real proud till I started looking at the quality of the craftsmanship, the bolt handle had been cut and welded and a new Brownell’s was installed and the welding was just terrible. The bolt notch cut into the stock was way to big and the holes that were drilled and tapped for the scope base were crooked and the screws for the rings were miss-matched the list goes on and on. The plus side was that the gun shot extremely well. But what I did not know at the time was this guy did not even put the barrel on it. It was done by another Smith that knew what he was doing!.  I took the Rifle home and proceeded to re-weld and re-position the sweep on the bolt handle and had to shim the bases to get them straight. Then after visiting this Smith again for some stock work, which he is really good at, he showed that old Model ’97 we traded for. He took it and cut down the barrel with a pipe cutter and then very sloppily stamped U.S.M.C on it trying to make it look like a trench model ’97 I can tell you right now I still cringe at the thought of that sight and I can feel you doing the same. 

That was it right there I knew I was going to do my own metal work after that. In all fairness I should say I have seen some very pretty rifles that this guy had made but sadly to say they were his personal firearms and the stuff he did for others paled by comparison. Since I decided to do my own rifle work from now on I had to find someone to do the barrel work for me since I did not have a lathe (yet). I found out that the man who did most all the quality barrel work in the area was Malcolm Jackson. At the time I met him he was in his mid eighties and still going strong and still is by the way. By this time I was the Manager of the Oilfield Co. that I was working for and was able to take long lunches and hang out with this, in my eyes larger than life character (Malcolm). I cannot thank this man enough for helping this overly anxious kid (40 yrs old) at the time but he called me kid anyway to learn to do all my own metal and woodwork. He took the time and had the patience over a period of years to tell and show me the dos and don’ts about building rifles. 

In about the year 2001-2002 the Company I worked for actually came through with one of those Management bonuses they were always promising (bet that broke their heart!!!) first one since we were taken over by a large Houston based Company. I am Indian and Irish so I can say “white man speak with forked tongue“. Seems there was always a good reason why they couldn’t give it to us or they would make the goals just out of reach, you know the little carrot and stick trick. With this little windfall of money I purchased a Birmingham 12” x 36” Gap lathe and my first tooling and about 5 reamers as I remember. Well now all of the sudden life is good! The Company I ran had a large machine shop and I had access to tons of equipment and knowledge and we had one of the best oilfield welders in the world as far as I am concerned. We also have some of the best machinists as well. I had over a 100 years of combined machine and welding experience to learn from and I was not afraid to ask as many questions as I wanted. When I was in High School I took all the Welding and Machine Shop and Wood Shop and Hydraulics and Pneumatics classes available and my Dad is a pretty darned good wood worker and always had me doing some project to keep me out of trouble. So with this new lathe and tooling I proceeded to max out a $5000 credit card buying more tooling and building rifles. Then the wife said either make this habit pay or sell it! 

So I came across the idea of taking take-off barrels and re-threading them for the various types of Mausers and sell them on E-bay (which I still do) and doing gunsmith type work for friends and family under the supervision and watchful eye of Malcolm. Everything I build or worked on went to him for his approval for years. I still call him on the phone now and then when I run across something I have not seen before and you know what 99% of the time the old man can still tell me what to do over the phone to get it fixed he is truly amazing and still sharp as a tack at close to 90. Working for a large corporation and with the large amount of totally un-necessary paperwork that I was doing on a daily basis. On top of the fact the man I was working for and I just didn’t seem to hit it off. (Man I really had to bite my tongue on that one). I knew if I stayed there too much longer I was going to drop dead from a stress heart attack. So by now some years have past and the kids were gone and property values in California were at an all time high and the job wasn‘t getting any better. So my wife and I started looking for property in Oregon for retirement. Little did I know we would find something after about 4 years of spending our vacations looking around to find an area we really liked. After finding the Applegate Valley we knew it was time to put the house on the market and leave California and a high-pressure job. The wife said what are we going to do for money? I said I can Gunsmith and if I have to I will be a greeter at Wal-Mart just get me out of here! 

So far we have been here since July 2004 and I have stayed pretty busy and I also do some driving and equipment operation for a construction company across the road and I have 10 ¼ acres of property in hay production. As far as the Gunsmithing I work on a lot of old military type rifles and love it. I’ll take a Mauser, 03-A3, P-17 or P-14, Interarms Mark X  rifle over any other type rifle made. Do I work on Remington, Savage, Winchester, Ruger, ETC. you bet! But I got my start on the old Mausers being budget minded and wanting to build something out of nothing so to speak and still do. I like to build or help to build rifles for the common blue collar working man on a budget. I don’t specialize in $3000 custom rifles, I can’t afford one and I’ll bet you can’t either, and for the life of me I can’t see where a person can put $3000 into a rifle. I can tell you I have built myself some pretty reasonably priced rifles that have shot at least ½”MOA and better for about $2500 less than that. Now they may not be as pretty as and they don’t have that big Name on it like those $3000 rifles do but the target or animal on the down range side of it does not know the difference. 

I am sure I was a little long winded here, but I figured you may want to know a little something about the guy you are sending you hard earned money to. I am a member of the NRA, the Lyons Club International; I attend church (probably not enough). I am not a large corporation. I am just a guy trying to plink out a living and support my Loving Wife who bent over backwards to help make this happen for us. Oh and by the way I still have the first .22 and I’ll bet it has had at least 2 or 3 thousand shells through it and I still use it for those pesky digger squirrels and it still shoots incredibly well. A true testament to what a little cleaning and oil will do for you.

Sincerely,
Mark D. Skaggs
Gunsmith

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