Stratton Custom Rifles

Stratton Custom Rifles I build custom rifles to extreme tolerances. I inspect every component thoroughly to make sure your rifle gets every ounce of accuracy possible.

Quality is checked with indicators at every step. I’m a one man shop & stand behind every rifle I build.

09/08/2026

Prefit for BAT Machine Co. Vesper short!

Hot off the lathe and ready for fluting.

09/08/2026

If you’re shopping for a custom rifle, don’t buy the marketing. Study the work.

After yesterday’s bedding post, my inbox filled up with pictures and stories from people who haven’t had the experience they expected from some very well-known names in this industry.

So here’s my recommendation, and it isn’t simply “buy a rifle from me.” It’s to do your homework.

Find the builders who consistently show you the process, the finished product and the results on target. Not once or twice when everything happened to go right. Consistently and frequently.

A beautiful rifle sitting on a bench doesn’t tell you how it was chambered. A hunting photo doesn’t show you the bedding. A logo doesn’t tell you who actually performed the work. And a single tiny group doesn’t establish a track record.

There are some very good small shops and one-man operations in this industry doing exceptional work. One of the advantages is accountability. When one person is responsible for the machining, fitment, assembly and final evaluation, there isn’t much room to hide.

That’s especially powerful when that same person is willing to put the work in front of you, over and over again.

Look for a documented pattern, not a promise.

The custom rifle market is crowded. Your gunsmith shouldn’t have to tell you what you can expect.

His body of work should already show you.

09/07/2026

Precision isn’t one operation. It’s the culmination of good work at every step of the process.

Uniform clearance around the action. Smooth, continuous bedding with no voids. Full pillar contact. Bedded bottom metal. Bolt handle clearance fitted exactly where it belongs. Tang, ejection port and bolt stop blended into the stock.

None of these details happen by accident.

We precision inlet every stock before bedding so we can control the geometry and bedding thickness from the beginning. Then every interface is finished with the same level of attention.

The goal isn’t to make one exceptional rifle.

The goal is to make exceptional rifles repeatedly.

This is what an SCR bed job looks like before the action goes in, and what all that work looks like when the rifle comes together.

If you’re planning your next rifle, now is a very good time to get on the schedule. My current lead time is considerably shorter than it typically is and as usual is starting to grow per hunting season/winter.

Why do I care so much about ignition?Because I’ve seen what happens on target when it isn’t right.I’ve watched otherwise...
09/03/2026

Why do I care so much about ignition?

Because I’ve seen what happens on target when it isn’t right.

I’ve watched otherwise excellent rifles struggle with poor groups and unexplained flyers, then watched that performance change when the ignition system was corrected.

That’s why I measure it, study it, and continue trying to understand it.

And it’s why I think you should care about it too.

The measurements aren’t the point. The target is.

Have you ever measured the primer pe*******on in your rifle?

09/02/2026

I guess the 22 ARC is up first.

This blank showed up, so I went ahead and chambered the 22 ARC while I wait on another bolt for the 6 ARC.

Final verification after chambering… I indicated back into the lands and grooves first to show the barrel is still dialed in prefect. Then I checked the throat, neck, shoulder and base. .0000 TIR at every location.

I was originally planning to chamber the 6 ARC first, but I have another bolt coming that I want to check for headspace before I cut that chamber.

There’s a reason for that.

The current bolt is a newer option that has gotten quite a bit of attention lately. After getting one in my hands, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the QC.

I’ll show exactly what I found with photos in a post later.

There is no “best” action without first defining what we need it to do.Every action design is a collection of engineerin...
08/31/2026

There is no “best” action without first defining what we need it to do.

Every action design is a collection of engineering decisions. Those decisions create advantages, but they also create trade-offs somewhere else in the system.

That doesn’t make one design good and another bad. It means they may be optimized around different priorities.

This is the foundation I want to establish before we start going deeper into ignition, timing, bolt throw, clearances, mechanical efficiency and the individual design choices manufacturers make.

As this series progresses, the goal isn’t to give you a list of which actions I think you should buy.

The goal is to give you enough understanding of action design that you can look at a feature and ask:

What does this gain?
What does it cost?
And does that trade-off make sense for what I need my rifle to do?

That’s a much more useful question than asking which logo is “best.”

This is the first technical installment of the SCR Action Design Series.

The complete framework behind this series is available in The 4-Axis Framework for Bolt-Action Rifle Performance, linked in my bio.

Next, we’ll start pulling these systems apart one principle at a time.

Built this one for my boys.I wanted a rifle they could use to learn precision shooting and eventually start stretching t...
08/30/2026

Built this one for my boys.

I wanted a rifle they could use to learn precision shooting and eventually start stretching things out at distance. Something that fits them now, but isn’t something they’ll outgrow as their ability develops. Also it’s nice if it doesn’t brake the bank to buy ammo while they are leaning to shoot.
223 Wylde, 16” 7.5 twist CRB barrel, built around an older BAT Machine Co. Igniter action that I ordered a new .223 bolt for. The Manners Composite Stocks Nightstalker was an easy choice for this project. Adjustable length of pull on the fly, ARCA compatibility, Pic rail, and enough adjustability that I can set the same rifle up for each of them. The MDT Sporting Goods ltd. mags have longer mag length and feed better than anything else I have tried for 223. The Thunder Beast Arms Corp ultra 7 is perfect for keeping this quiet so I can give instructions to them without yelling.

We ran some factory ammunition through it last night just to start breaking everything in and see what it liked.

Copper Creek 77 SMK shot extremely well right out of the gate. These were two consecutive 5 shot groups, and what I like even more than either individual group is that the point of impact stayed right on top of itself.

Stack those two groups together and that 10 shot composite would be looking pretty darn good for the first trip out with factory ammunition.

I think the boys are going to have a pretty good rifle to learn on!

Who has growing boys that need one of these??

Address

14782 F Road
Delta, CO
81416

Telephone

+19704175718

Website

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