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After going off to serve in the military, I came back to my hometown and decided that walnut wood was something I was still interested in. I started getting involved in the gun stock aspect of it rather than the veneer portion. I found that I had a knack for gunstocks, getting the trees from the orchard to the shop was something I was familiar with but I had to learn how to produce gun stocks, getting them from a slab to a rough blank was something I learned fairly quickly. I have to credit the late Jack Burris for helping me when I first got started in the gun stock business. He taught me the different grades, how to lay them out properly and then what to expect when I sold them. He also taught me that quality was for more important than quantity. I spent many hours on the phone and on the road searching out those custom stock makers, throughout the western states; many times, just with a phone book in hand and a map of the next town. I learned from the best of the best and have met many of the finest stock makers throughout my journeys. Many times one stock maker would lead me towards another, miles out of town on some windy little country road. What I learned from these individuals is something you don't learn out of a textbook, you learn from their experiences and the numerous stories they shared with me.
As I've grown older and started thinking about what I was going to do in my retirement years, I'd decided that since I still love the wood business as much as I did when I was younger. I wanted to concentrate on duplicating gun stocks. I'm having a blast taking a piece of my own milled wood, watching it go from the orchard, to the saw mill, milled into slabs & then into the rough stock form, through the drying process and then finally to a semi-finished product.
Living in the northern part of California with its abundance of places to hunt and having two sons who spend many waking hours in a duck blind or on a refuge has made me want to produce gun stocks that they and their friends can show off and be proud of, those one of a kind pieces, unlike anything you can buy from a store.
One of my boys asked if I could create a larger stock, to fit his Remington 870. He's a big boy and he wanted something with a bigger grip. So, I designed a stock just for him which I've named the "Jimerson Big Grip" that will bolt onto several different models of guns. The bigger grip gives them a little more to hang onto. My boys have shared them with their friends and I hope others will be interested in this style as well.
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