Firearms enthusiasts love wooden gun stocks. They enjoy the idea of prestige and luxury that wood conveys and that it gives a tactile and sensory experience that is unthinkable with other materials. Wood is also sustainable, which is important today.
To get perfect wooden gun stocks, however, you need to select experienced gun stock makers. How do you do that? Let’s discover the answer in this article!
Gun stock makers are many: how do you select the best one?
An expert manufacturer has the right technologies and tools to create top-quality and successful wooden objects, customizing them according to your clients’ requirements, guaranteeing the maximum cost-effectiveness.
In the video below, you can see some examples of premium custom-made wooden gun stocks that you could offer in your catalogue:
Table of contents
Here are the topics we will cover in this article. You can click the link to read the corresponding paragraph.
- Some considerations about wood as a raw material
- The characteristics of the most competent gun stock makers
- Precision & quality
- Innovative finishes & customization
- Ability to meet market demand
Some considerations about wood as a raw material
If you want to offer wooden firearm components in your catalogue, it is not as simple as it might seem. Especially if you need to customize them according to your clients’ expectations, you need to find a supplier that can totally satisfy your requirements and standards. Very often, it is a big challenge.
In fact, you must consider some important aspects of the process:
- Wood is expensive, and creating custom rifle stocks could cost a lot of money. Among the high number of custom gun stock makers, you need to find one that can guarantee cost-effectiveness and provide high-quality products on time at a competitive price.
- Wood is also complicated to manage if the manufacturer doesn’t have the right competencies and machinery. Wood is alive, moves constantly, and a custom rifle stock maker must be aware of the strict tolerances to respect. Wooden stocks must be extremely precise to fit perfectly with the mechanism: that’s why tolerance is a fundamental aspect to consider.
- During the design phase, the wood maker should be able to simulate the final product providing 3D prototypes before production. The original design may be hard to replicate physically: you need advanced technologies and tools to create custom gun stocks and rifle stocks that can satisfy actual demand.
- Wood must be prepared properly. The humidity level is crucial to avoid breakages and have a high dimensional stability. If your supplier has in-house drying chambers, it is a great advantage in terms of quality and durability of the final product.
What are the characteristics of most competent gun stock makers?
Clients who want to purchase a new firearm today have many possible choices, thanks to the increasingly sophisticated technologies wood manufacturing companies can (and should) offer. To be competitive, the partner you select must be able to observe the market and understand—even anticipate—the most popular trends of wooden gun stock design. By doing this, he will be able to guarantee successful products. What specifically should you expect from your supplier?
1. Precision & quality
When we talk about wooden gun stocks, it can be very hard to find manufacturers that are able to create unconventional and precise components with innovative finishes and designs.
The first problem is that many gun stock makers aren’t aware of the strict tolerances of wood, which can move, expanding and shrinking depending on temperature and other external factors. Each type of wood has its own tolerances: half a millimetre can make a significant difference! If your supplier works with other materials, such as plastic, he won’t know the specific tolerances of wood. This may affect the accuracy and precision of the stock.
Moreover, a critical factor in solid wood manufacturing is the drying level of the raw material. If wood contains a high percentage of humidity, its shape and volume may warp over time, causing functional problems. Modern manufacturing companies must have special drying chambers to guarantee the correct degree of exsiccation of the raw material before moving to production to avoid discrepancies.
2. Innovative finishes & customization
Wood is a natural material, and many people enjoy the sense of purity and naturalness that it conveys. The most innovative finishes can enhance the natural characteristics of the raw material, making the product even more elegant and beautiful, while always preserving its typical traits and tactile sensations. 
Competent gun stock makers have a wide range of finishing options to make products according to your clients’ requests. Oils, waxes, polymer coatings, water-based organic lacquers, engraving, and embossing are just a few examples of the many possibilities available today.
An important aspect to consider is that your supplier respects market standards about environmental protection: if you want to be sure that he does, check if the company has FSC certification, which is the only way to ensure that products come from responsibly managed forests.
3. Ability to meet market demand
Competent gun stock makers can identify possible problems that products can have before production, helping their customers improve them during the design phase. The possibility of seeing and touching realistic prototypes of the final product is necessary to predict and avoid flaws and technical issues. The supplier you select must also be aware of the lastest trends and be able to advise you. The goal is to create beautiful, functional, and modern firearms that will be successful in the market.
A good manufacturer should also be able to produce semifinished objects and complete production depending on customer feedback. It means creating and putting on the market the first half of a lot; then, after a set period, evaluating the results and deciding how to continue with the remaining half.
These are the characteristics that let you distinguish from among many gun stock makers the one that can create successful and competitive stocks. Today’s consumers are always looking for a wider variety of products. They want more choices and have greater expectations. Your supplier makes the difference. The wood manufacturing company you choose must guarantee precision, high quality, cost-effectiveness, codesign, innovative technologies, and modern machinery.
At Minelli, we know these points very well. That’s why we put all our expertise and innovation at your disposal, trying to meet your needs and requests, even the most complicated. If you have a project in mind, please click here and contact us: we will be glad to help you shape your idea!
