Bavarianbrit
Well-Known Member
He is an American ex Blackhawk pilot who did his 20 years then started stocking engraving "to keep me occupied" now 70 y/o he has a pal here in my jagdhorn group where he stays while in Germany which is how I met him (I had met him over 10 years previous but had forgotten it) who stores his stock blanks to season. His source is only from Armenia where he goes by himself for 6-8 weeks per year to cut them, the pictures of Armenia he showed me were of some really amazing landscapes. He did have strong opinions as to the source of blanks from other dealers that show at IWA Nurnberg etc ie often they were cut from trees hanging at say 45 degrees over riverbanks where the wood would (pun) have built in stresses. He rents a mule and a helper and then goes into the deep forests far from the beaten tracks to find fallen walnut trees, then out comes his Stihl with a 1.25 metre blade to cut the roots into the blanks as he wants them. Interestingly a comment he made ref laminated stocks, the adhesive used increases the weight so much that in his opinion it is a product only good enough for cheap rifles walnut being his choice due to its strength/weight ratio compared to other woods like maple. The dealers he speaks to in Europe/ USA almost never have any knowledge of where the blanks came from whereas he can give the full history of where he sourced and cut each blank. How he makes this a living? As most blanks are seasoning he said his Army pension lets him do his thing as he wants to. He knows/knew a lot of the big names like Hagn RIP from BC. I have a phone picture I took of one of his photo prints with him & his big Stihl on top of a monster tree that had fallen over that he was harvesting blanks from, but he hate the internet so told me not to post it further so I will not. He is quite a photo & print them out nerd, he had a 2 inch wad of prints of the blanks he was seasoning at his pals home near me they have been there 15 years so far with some stunning grain patterns in some of them and most showed a good straight grain through the wrist area, it looked to me that he really knows his stuff, he flies back to NC, USA on 11th December. He does have strong opinions ref rep/democrats too he is a republican to the core.
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