Some advice on having custom work done. Last 8 years or so of my goldsmith career I was doing mostly high end custom jewelry for very rich and demanding people. It was nothing but trouble. Customers would come in with something very specific in their head of what they wanted. Of course a lot of the time what they wanted was either not possible or just would not work. But the real problem was them having a specific idea of what they wanted. What makes that a problem is that it is pretty much impossible to get what is their head into my head. No matter how much you talk and draw pictures it is just impossible for us to both imagine the same thing. When I would get the jewelry done it was almost always different than what they were expecting. I would have to make everything several times and in the end I think it was rarely ever exactly what they wanted.
I finally got fed up with all that nonsense and pretty much quit doing custom work. But the customers kept coming in. What I ended up doing was have them pick out the diamonds that they wanted to use, then bring in several pictures of jewelry that they liked. I would make something in the same basic style as the pictures. They don't get any drawings, no progress reports or pictures of work in progress. They don't get to see anything until it is done. Payment in advance. No returns. When it is finished they come pick it up and they are going to like it. A lot of them would get mad and walk out, but not all of them. I never had a customer that was not satisfied. Everyone liked it better than they expected to. Reason was that they never had an imagine in their head of what it was going to look like. I was not trying to do any mind reading. All I had to do was quality work. They would all be nervous about paying up front with no return policy and not knowing what they would get. But it worked. Before long I was getting calls from all over USA and Europe. I am out of that business now.
Same goes for custom guns. Decide on a style of rifle that you like and find a builder doing that with acceptable quality, price range, wait, etc. Send the builder the basic measurements you need along with pictures of rifles that you like. And then just let him do his own thing. Don't get an idea of the perfect rifle in your head because you will never be able to communicate to the builder exactly what that is. Just give the builder rough ideas. That gives the builder the freedom to design something that he will enjoy building and be able to do his best work on. That is how you get the very best work that the builder is capable of doing.
