There are many like it, but this one is mine. This might sound cliche but your rifle is as unique as your fingerprint and if you want to grow as a shooter to the highest level, you have to know it like the back of you hand. You should be as comfortable behind your rifle as your are laying on your pillow at night.


A lot of people are surprised when I tell them I only own one or two rifles max. It is not that I can't afford two, it's because I know as a shooter that I will never reach true greatness with any one rifle if I am constantly changing them or modifying them. Toys have there place and collections can be fun, but it is not for the marksman.


Beware of the man with one gun isn't because he can't afford two. It is because he knows his rifle inside and out, and knows how to use it. Keeping a logbook through the years is like a roadmap of all you have learned and the little things that matter. You have your notes at your fingertips to review and refer to, and over time you will not forget them. Without written records or a journal of your progression, you are doomed to repeat many small mistakes and overlooked details that through the years you forgot or ignored.


At my prime, I really felt like I could point and whistle and the rifle would go and shoot the target and hit it without me. Some of my favorite matches that I have won and placed in honestly felt effortless. Like I was just getting lucky over and over again. It wasn't just luck. A lot of this I attribute to focusing on mastering my rifle and keeping great records as we grew together as a team. Funny thing, I have found with good luck, it always seem to follow you and hang around when you are at this level of knowledge and comfortability with your rifle. Bad luck seems to follow those who are always on their first date (with their new rifle) being uncomfortable and fidgety all the time. Just an observation. So, keep good records and master "your" rifle! You'll be surprised to find that good luck then seems to follow!

My .260 log book from 2007 to 2012

From 2007 to 2012, I ran a .260 Remington, over the years placing and winning in many matches with it including "The Allegheny Sniper Challenge" in 2012. I attribute many of the top finishes to this log book and all the records kept over the years while me and the rifle grew and learned to work together as a team. I still have this log book and will always keep one for each rifle I work with. Keeping record of any of the rifle's quirks and changes made over the years including chronograhed speeds, reloading data and DOPE for the rifle. Never forget that is truly is that important!

In life, in business and even in our relationships, you hear people say all the time of what they do, but it is not always the actions or things that you do that really define you, your business model or even your relationships. It's the things they don't do that often that better describes a person, a business or a relationship. It takes as much effort if not more to choose the things you won't do than to just do. It takes thought, planning and commitment to beliefs or one's values. It takes contemplation, reflection and more important a decision to choose. By not choosing, you have made a choice. You have made a choice to allow others or other forces to choose for you.

Without trying to sound like a philosopher or a man wise beyond his years, life has taught me to choose and to have the freedom to continue to choose. Not just what I or my business will do, but more importantly the things we choose that we will not do.

We are taking modern custom rifle building to the next level by eliminating things that prohibited most people from truly realizing their dream of becoming a custom rifle builder or gunsmith. We consciously made a decision that these things that most have to do or master to become a world class builder, we would no longer do. Not because we personally couldn't do these things, but because we didn't want our business to rely on hiring others who could. We decided to find a better way and now years in the making this has become our custom rifle building school.

By choosing what we no longer wanted our employees to learn or master, we searched and proactively changed the entire process of custom rifle building along with the skills and processes needed by the builder assembling the final product.

No longer needed is the mastering the art of machining, the expense of purchasing quality machines or the investment of tens of thousands of dollars and many years of training.  By the art of choosing what we no longer wanted our employees to do, we made the historic route of becoming a gunsmith not only not necessary, but the techniques and processes themselves needed to be learned, obsolete. Below is a list of things you will no longer have to do, learn to do, or purchase.  This list is just as important as the list of what we teach, as it highlights the transition of custom rifle building from a select skilled few to the masses and to the common man.

All of this because we made the more important decisions of what we would choose to no longer do and by doing so created a whole new world.


*Subjects no longer needed to be learned and mastered to become a world class builder thanks to the ACE system!

*Evaluate the action for accuracy issues
*Set up receiver and bolt so they are actually dialed-in perfectly for machining and trueing
*True receiver face
*True lug seats
*Straighten/true receiver threads
*True bolt face
*Reduce bolt play by machining/installing steel bolt sleeves
*Bush bolt face to reduce firing pin hole firing pin tip diameter
for smoother operation
*Gauging and correcting loose headspace 
*Action blueprinting
*Bolt sleeving / bolt play
*Hand-lapping bores
*Re-chambering factory barrels
*Correcting crooked or off-center chambers
*Using dial indicators, and specialty tools for accuracy evaluation*Lathe setup and leveling
*Learn how to machine and chamber barrels in a lathe
*Action blueprinting
*Dialing bores straight and true with .0001" indicators
*Chambering and headspacing
*Throating
*Necking
*Crowning
*Threading
*Minimizing/eliminating reamer chatter
*Lapping and accurate bolt lug contact
*Perfectly true high-accuracy crowning techniques
*Smooth/polish cocking cam
*Open bolt shroud for positive firing pin travel
*Correct/modify bolt timing
*Silver solder bolt handles on
*Smooth/polish action for smoother operation

{Morpheus} if I was to tell you that your Rem700 clone probably only contacts your "V' block style chassis with a less than 15% area contact patch.... what would you do?

We've found through the years that bedding a rifle will improve its repeatability and accuracy by at least some small margin. The actual improvement varies with both the quality of the rifle and the stock, but don't kid yourself.  A small improvement to a great shooter is important, a big improvement to a new shooter is game changing.  It will allow them to grow with confidence in themselves and in their equipment.  Getting them to enjoy themselves while in the pursuit of growing as a shooter.  So a worthwhile improvement in wringing-out the maximum potential of any rifle - priceless.  

While in the Armory recently we took the time to take some rough measurements (and photos) of a couple of chassis and and calculated the contact patch area.... and we were being generous.... its basically the width of a pencil line down each side of the v-block.  It is no wonder zero's change, float, and fliers are a constant anxiety. 

15% contact in our world is "less than ideal". You wouldn't accept that for your rings holding your scope, your bi-pod on your rifle or tires hitting the road. Why would accept it in this super critical area?
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The industry wants you to think that chassis are plug and play, that you will get all these added benefits and accuracy. But how do they inlet for round receivers that are all slightly different in diameter, some warped and others not actually straight along the axis? Answer, they use a v-block design. Works for all the above, but there is a big difference between working, working well, and perfection.

The two photos below have captured the visible "contact" patch in this Rem700 type "V-Block" chassis/Stock.

The American brass manufacturing company that is taking on and beating the best in the world!

When it comes to brass and your enjoyment in long range shooting, how much does it really matter? Well, let's look at two examples of students attending our shooting school recently and one heading out on a hunting trip to Texas. 


Both attended separate classes in 2022.  Both showed up at the school properly equipped with rifle, ammo, optics, and gear. Both used a popular brand of loaded factory ammo for the 6.5 creed. 143 ***-* by brand x. They spent thousands on the class, airfare, hotels, and food, all to have their brass fail to eject or fall off the bolt face in about 70% of the time they were here. They could not perform fast follow up shots and became an expert at clearing jams and dropping magazines. Why? Well let's look at the rifle cases closely below. At the top is an Alpha 22 Creedmoor case that has been shot and reloaded 3 times. On the bottom is brand x (very popular in the Creedmoor round - hint) and is a once-fired case shot by the student. Look at the rim and it's thickness. Brand x, besides being rounded and chewed up in appearance, is .007 thinner. Look at the chamfer leading up to the case wall. These rounds literally fell off the bolt face on extraction with an M16 claw.  
Alpha brass on the top and brand x on the bottom.​