That's a good question. I think that most of them are gunmakers, rather than gun assemblers -- however, not all of them are building the same sort of product, and not all of these gunmakers are equal in terms of skill and vision.

Some are much more interested in cosmetics, rather than performance, and are primarily building "art rifles", while some are clearly building true hunting rifles that'll actually be used in the field. Fundamentally, I will NOT do business with any custom riflemaker who does not thoroughly test EVERY rifle he builds for feeding, function, and accuracy before he sends it out.

Quite honestly, my favorite custom riflemakers display their wares at SCI, and all of them send out prove rifles that are built, by intent, for serious use in the field. What they build can be very, very pretty, but they're neither "safe-queens" nor "art rifles"............

AD