Indians For Guns

herb wrote: Nice wood on this specimen, Wonder if this grade of wood is standard on all guns

Kuzu stands alone in a hanger-like space filled with pallets piled high with gun blanks. There are around 100,000 in here in all, worth approximately £2.5 million. He says he’s personally chosen each of these and no Yildiz gun is made with the lowest grade one timber, they use only grades two to five.

In one corner there’s a pile of blanks under a black cloth. He pulls this back to show me his trove of timber. “This one is 300 years old,” he says, showing a gun blank covered in swirling figure. “If you wanted this stock for your shotgun,” he says, mentioning a leading Italian gunmaker, “the price you would pay would be $5,000 just for the stock.” These blanks go into Yildiz’s custom guns, which typically sell for £4,000.

In adjacent rooms, the stocks are carved from the blanks either by machine or hand, depending on the grade of the gun. Most are pistol grips, but there are some in the ‘English’ style. Along the floors, boxes filled with stocks and fore-ends in rows await the next step in production.

In the finishing room, hundreds of stocks are arranged on racks for oiling. Each receives five coats of oil with three days’ drying between coats. Kuzu plucks one stock out: “You won’t see a better stock in Turkey,” he says.

Read more at http://www.shootinguk.co.uk/guns/inside ... Z5GsGCV.99