David Trevallion's workbenches are a sort of working monument to tradition. At first glance, they're just files and chisels, ranked and racked amid an orderly clutter of mallets and turnscrews, drawknives and spokeshaves, kerosene wicks, saws and pliers and scribers and gauges and gizmos--tools of the stockmaker's trade. Take a closer look, and history begins to show, as on the checkered walnut breastpiece of a gunmaker's brace with "David Trevallion, July '59" inlaid in silver wire.

"That's the date I finished my apprenticeship at Purdey's," David says. "Ken Hunt, who'd just recently finished his engraving apprenticeship with Harry Kell, helped me with the inlay."

Other tools go much farther back. David's bend-jig, used to measure the drop dimensions of a gunstock, belonged to Purdey stockmaker Cornelius Deane in the latter part of the 19th century, and then to his son Philip, who started working at Purdey's in 1909. "When Phil died, Harry Lawrence divided up some of his tools between me and another apprentice. The old thing's measured a lot of stocks, that's for sure."

Some of the chisels and gouges on David's bench have seen a lot of stocks, too; they've been in use for a hundred years or more, passed down among generations of Purdey craftsmen. And they're still in use, day by day, still working fine walnut into gunstocks.

FOR SO OLD A TRADITION, the actual process has been given surprisingly little treatment in print--even from the old-timers who went on at great length to describe everything else about gunmaking. Of 780-odd pages in the final edition of The Gun, W.W. Greener devotes fewer than a dozen to stockmaking, and most of those are taken up with discussions of how to measure length and cast. John Henry Walsh gives stockmaking equally short shrift in The Modern Sportsman's Gun and Rifle--exactly 5 pages out of nearly 500--and summarizes the whole process by saying that the stockmaker's task is "to insert the action in a piece of walnut wood properly seasoned."

Well, if that's all there is to it, no wonder stockmaking seems the most accessible of all the various wizardries involved in creating a fine gun. Think about it: How many home-workshop tinkerers do you know who've tried building a set of barrels or filing up a pair of locks? But doesn't it seem, on the other hand, that just about everybody who ever successfully knocked together a birdhouse has had a go at making a gunstock? I have, and I'll bet you have, too. And I imagine we know about 50 guys who've done the same.

Shaped and pre-inletted wood from Fajen and Bishop confers a fair chance of success to all but the most ham-handed of amateurs. But this is not stockmaking, any more than a paint-by-number canvas is a piece of art. Real stockmaking begins with a walnut blank and ends with an elegant sculpture that looks as if it grew from the steel. What happens betweentimes requires craftsmanship of the highest order, and the result is art of a rarefied form.

Which is not to minimize anyone's contribution, because without first-class work all the way from barrelmaker to finisher, you can't have a best-quality gun. Nonetheless, the stockmaker is responsible for at least half the beauty and something more than half the practical function. Metal-men, as the old adage goes again, make a gun fire, but the stocker makes it shoot.

Exactly how he does so depends to some extent upon where he learned the craft, for different gunmakers approach stockmaking in slightly different ways, each according to his own sense of procedure, style, and proportion. In any case, it's a process guided by tradition and, at its best, governed by standards in which only the highest-quality work is acceptable.

Because it's a story worth the telling, midsummer took me to the coast of Maine to watch and photograph the business of stockmaking by a master craftsman, performed according to the traditional precepts of the trade.

David Trevallion, Freeman of the Society of Gunmakers of the City of London and formerly of James Purdey & Sons, was 15 years old when he began his apprenticeship at Purdey's, under the tutelage of master stockmaker William O'Brien. "David got up to just as much mischief as any apprentice," Bill, who is now retired, told me over lunch in London last spring, "but I could see early on that he had a special talent for the work which a lot of apprentices, even many who go on to become quite successful, don't have."

You can see as much in any Trevallion stock, if you know what to look for, and there are plenty of them to see, because he's been at it in this country since he arrived here in April 1964. In the years we've been friends, I've watched him do any number of little jobs and briefly watched gunstocks progress through this stage or that. But this would be the first time I'd see the work from beginning to end--and for the first time, the gun in question was mine.

DAVID THINKS I SHOULD OWN A PURDEY (he thinks everyone should own a Purdey), and I certainly would if I could afford one. As it is, I'm happy with my 1930s-vintage best-quality John Wilkes. Even though the original stock had been lengthened and bent to a reasonably good fit, an old repair behind the right-hand lockplate was starting to give out, making clear that a choice was in the offing--either go for another repair or have a new stock made. Given the prospect of dressing a gun I dearly love with a stock tailor-made by a craftsman whose work I so admire--it wasn't a difficult choice at all.

We spent the first evening deciding on the wood and the dimensions. David's inventory of blanks turned up a piece of walnut with just the sort of smoky, streaky figure I find most appealing, a blank bearing the stamp of Teyssier, the old French wood merchant whose wares the London trade once called "the best of the best." A grease-penciled legend on the end showed that David bought it in 1983.

Using a transparent template in the shape of a gunstock, David marked the blank to establish optimum grain-pattern in the hand and head, weighed it (four pounds, three ounces), and set it aside.

For the next hour, we worked on the fit, taking measurements from the old stock and revising them step by step. Again and again, he put me through the drill, mount and point--at his eye, over his shoulder, at a spot on the wall, here and there. We finished up using a Spot Shot, a nifty little flashlight that fits into a gunbarrel; when you pull the trigger, a teacup-sized patch of light shows exactly where the barrel's pointing.

I hadn't been measured for a stock in quite a few years, and our bodies do change over time. Jack Mitchell, who's done more for my shooting than all the instructors I ever met put together, told me a good while back that I was due for something longer than the 14 5/8-inch stocks I've been using since I was about 30, and now David gradually built up the length with a slip-on boot and spacers until it felt just right--at a surprising 15 1/4 inches from the front trigger to the center of the butt. David suggested reducing the pitch for more uniform contact between the butt and my shoulder, and since a good part of what was pectoral-muscle mass when I was 30 now resides considerably closer to my belt, I had to agree. At least the drops and my old half-inch cast at heel were still good, to which David added an eighth-inch more twist at the toe to fit the slant of my shoulder. As a final check, he clamped the gun to his setting bench, turned on the heat lamps, and bent the old stock to the new dimensions. "We could set this up on my try-gun," he said, "but it's a different weight and balance, and I prefer to check things out on the gun that's actually getting the new stock. Fewer surprises that way."

Unlike some things in life, it felt just as good next morning as it had the night before, so David began marking up the blank, measuring and scribing centerlines and other marks to guide the initial cuts.

"The trick," he said, "is to let in the top-strap at a proper depth and angle so the bend and cast dimensions will be right when I bring the head up against the frame. I suppose you could fit the frame straight in and try to adjust everything by bending the wood later, but that doesn't always work. I was taught it's best to build the dimensions in right from the start."

THE FIRST CUT, A FREE-HAND PASS on the bandsaw along a carefully drawn line, establishes the top contour of the stock, a gentle curve from the head down the top of the wrist, a sharper curve up where the comb rises (called the thumbhole in the English trade), and thence straight back to the heel. A second cut, across the front end, sets the angle for the cast. So much for power tools.

"Now," David said, "when I let the top-strap down to the level of the wood, a level I've predetermined with the first cut, both bend and cast should be right on the dot, so the first stage of inletting is also the first stage of shaping--on the top side, from the action face right the way back to the heel. As I gradually let the head up, I'll have to be careful to bring it up perfectly straight and not allow it to twist; if it does, the cast gets all screwed up."

By now, my gun is long since in pieces, locks and trigger plate off, old stock removed, and all parts out of the frame--top lever, spindle, bolt, cocking levers, firing pins, springs, safety, everything. David will reassemble it bit by bit, removing wood to accommodate each piece in turn.

The first order of business, though, is the frame itself, and a good fit here is essential, both to achieve proper dimensions and to keep the gun functioning at its best. Unless the frame is in solid contact with the head of the stock, recoil will soon crack and split the wood, bringing the whole job--and the stockmaker's reputation--to ruin. Sidelock guns of English design have more bearing surface at the head than sidelocks are generally thought to have, but a good stockmaker is nonetheless careful to use every square millimeter of it and to make certain that every point of contact is uniformly snug. Since he's literally working in three dimensions, it's a slow, complex task.

Six hours after David made the first chisel cut to start the top-strap down, the wood was fully mated to the frame--six hours of patient shaving and slicing, of continually reblacking the metal with smoke from a kerosene wick, checking constantly with a steel thumbhole-gauge laid across the top of the frame and down over the tang, slowly deepening the tang at the rear to bring up the bend, fitting and cutting bit by tiny bit. At one point, I picked off a shaving he'd just cut from the top-strap channel and out of curiosity measured it with a dial indicator. Three thousandths of an inch, about the thickness of cheap, lightweight typing paper. I've taken lifelong pleasure in making things myself, especially from wood, so next time David took a break, I tried my hand at getting up a shaving equally thin. Ten thousandths was the best I could do.

By the time he's satisfied that everything fits the way it should, he slides the frame onto the wood, raps the breech face lightly with the heel of his hand, and steel and wood come together with an audible click.

"Bill O'Brien used to do this with the jobs we did, snap it together this way, then take it out of the vice and hold it by the action. If the wood fell off on the floor, he'd say, 'Do it again.' And we'd have to start over, with a new piece of wood--didn't make Purdey's very happy with their apprentices, I can tell you."

So saying, he spun open the vice and lifted my gun by the action bar, the inletting fit alone holding a four-pound blank firmly to the frame. He shook it a couple of times, and it still didn't budge. "This'll do," David said.

He put it back in the vise, belly-up, and started shaving the bottom of the wrist with a drawknife. "The trigger plate goes in next, and then I can drill the hole for the breech pin and fasten everything together."

THE TRIGGER PLATE, TOO, IS A CRITICAL STEP, partly because it plays a key role in holding the frame to the wood. A portion of it, called the trigger box, projects upward at a slight angle and forms a seat for the breech pin, which is the main tang screw located underneath the top lever. When properly fitted, the angled surface of the trigger box bears against the interior of the stock, and as the breech pin is tightened, the sloped surface, along with the front side of the breech pin itself, draws the frame and stock ever more firmly together.

The depth to which the trigger plate is let in is important as well, because this governs how well the triggers and safety work. If the plate is inlet too deeply, the triggers bear against the sears once the locks are installed, and the gun won't cock; it binds the safety besides. If it's not in deeply enough, the triggers can't reach the sears.

A few more hours of patient work with chisel and gouge, and by next day the trigger plate is in to within a sixteenth-inch of its final depth. "I won't let this all the way in," David said, "until I've fitted the breech pin and hand pin [the rear tang screw], inlet the safety bar and thumb-piece and triggers. That way, I'm leaving myself some latitude to adjust the contact between the triggers and the safety bar, and that adjustment establishes the proper relationship between triggers and sears."

In gunmakers' parlance, tension on the breech pin is called "draw." Draw is applied with a brace and a screwdriver-blade bit called a chisel, and the amount is considerable, indeed. It is, after all, what holds the gun together.

"We used to drive the finishers at Purdey's crazy," David says. "We'd put the pins up so hard they couldn't get them out, so they'd have to bring the guns over and ask us to do it. They hated that." As he talks, David is tightening my gun's breech pin for the umpteenth time, having shaved out another microscopic layer of wood. "We used to play tricks on each other, too--put a thin strip of pine on the floor, with one end on a block of wood, and then step on it just as the chap's putting the last bit of draw on a pin, make him think for an instant that he broke it."

Just then, from somewhere in the depths of my beloved Wilkes, comes a snappy little ping. David looks at me.

"I didn't step on anything," I said.

"I know," David said. "Your breech pin just broke. Happens a lot with older guns."

"Christ almighty! First you bleed on my stock, then you break my breech pin. You sure this is how it's done at Purdey's?" (That no Trevallion job is complete until it's blooded is long-standing chaff between us. You should see what he's done to some of my books.)

"Sure. I did it on purpose so you could write about how to make a breech pin--put some flesh on the story."

SO WE MADE A BREECH PIN, or rather David made one while I watched. Someday I'll have it engraved to match the old one. Or maybe I won't; it doesn't show, and its shiny blue face reminds me of that day every time I look at it.

"Once years ago, I slipped with a really sharp chisel and cut one of the triggers off a Westley Richards," David said. "Triggers are sometimes quite soft."

"Spare me that, if you don't mind. The story's fleshy enough."

By Saturday morning, beginning of day three, the frame and trigger plate were in and securely pinned; the spindle and bolt were back in place, likewise the safety and triggers, and David had the entire profile shaped. He'd brought the bends right up to a gnat's whisker, cut it to length and shaped the butt according to the geometric layout standard at Purdey's; the stock belly now showed the trim lines typical of a London best. Ready for locks.

The first step is stripping all the lockwork off the plates. Actually, David explained the sequence and made me do the work, with spring cramps and screwdriver. Dismantling these old locks, made by Joseph Brazier of Wolverhampton, was like taking apart a fine old watch, built to such tolerances that a thin coat of oil makes the parts stick together in a sucking fit.

With more smoke and more shaving, David inlets the plates, working front to back, easing them gradually down to surface-level and just below. And then the lockworks, part by part, sear spring first. The main sear, tumbler, and bridle complete the first stage. Interceptor and interceptor spring come next. Last piece in will be the mainspring.

Meticulously, David removes only enough to accommodate the parts, leaving standing wood between. "Anyplace you can leave wood supporting the plates helps strengthen the whole thing," he says. "But some of it, like here in this little comma-shaped hole in the bridle...the hole itself is purely decorative, and I'll leave a little wooden post that fits it, because the tradition says I should, but the best way to describe it is 'Gunmaker's Gothic.' It's there to show what a stockmaker can do--even though you'd never see it unless you pulled the locks off.

"The other consideration, obviously, is to have no contact at all between the wood and the moving parts, to leave enough space to let the wood swell a bit in damp weather and still not bind the lockwork. Even so, I don't like to take out any more than necessary. Touchy work."

WITH THE LOCKS FINALLY IN PLACE, holes drilled for the firing pins, and everything snugged down and trimmed up to David's satisfaction, we fired the first shots at half-past seven that evening, taking turns blasting rights and lefts at the bullet trap in a corner of the shop. A box of cartridges later, David removes the locks and examines all the inletting and heading to be certain that nothing has moved and that the fit remains tight. Nothing has, and it is. A good day's work.

The wood at this point looks basically like a gunstock--in profile, anyway--but it's still at nearly original thickness and is square-edged everywhere except at the butt. Next morning, David began fitting the trigger guard, which refines the stock belly's profile. It's a surprisingly painstaking, time-consuming affair.

"In a subtle way, the shape of the belly affects a stock's whole appearance," David says. "The line from the back of the trigger guard bow to the toe ought to be perfectly straight, or even slightly concave. But never convex. If it's the least bit convex, the stock has a heavy, fish-bellied look, not graceful at all. Bloody thing'll look like a pregnant carp.

"The first thing is to get the correct distance between the guard bow and the triggers. Guards are left soft, and they're easy to reshape if necessary. Then you let it in until you can seat the first screw. That holds everything properly in place while you let in the tang.

"From there, you keep checking with a straight-edge gauge and keep letting the tang down until it's seated and the line of the stock belly is right. When it is, you have a profile you can work to in rounding it up."

From the tangs to the butt, shaping calls for planes, a drawknife, various wood files, and a well-practiced ability to cut complex curves while keeping the wood surface free of ripples and dips. "If I have to do the job in a hurry, I can enlist the aid of Colonel Sanders over there," he says, nodding toward his belt sander, "but I prefer shaping it up by hand. The trick with the drawknife is to always work with the grain. That means you have to work each side of a quarter-sawn blank, like this one, in a different direction. Try to cut against the grain, and you take a chance on raising a big sliver, because the grain will pull the blade deeper into the wood than you want. At best, the surface will end up rough rather than smooth."

Between the drawknife and the files, David uses a lovely, old-fashioned little cherrywood spokeshave for touching-up. Another Purdey's piece?

"Actually, no. I'm told this came from the stockmaking shop at the old Parker factory. Nice tool to use." I try it. The blade glides through the wood like butter, and fragrant, paper-thin shavings curl up behind, smoothly, almost hypnotically. Left to myself, I might have gone on shaving until the stock was as slim as the barrels.

DAVID FINISHED THE SHAPING with progressively finer-cut rasps, rounded off the butt, and then checked the balance. With the old stock, the balance point was 1 7/8 inches forward of the breech face, and I wanted to keep it there. The standard method of balancing is to bore wood out of the butt. So with the gun frame held tightly in a leather-faced vise, David started in with a brace and one-inch auger bit while I steadied and supported the stock. Attacking the grain end-on requires considerable force.

"You ever break out through the side?" I asked, watching David's face turn red as he leaned against the breastpiece.

"Not very often," he said, teeth clenched. "The apprentice usually gets harpooned when it happens."

"How so?"

"Because he's holding the stock and facing the bit. Just as you're doing."

"Then what?"

"You get a new apprentice and blame the old one for a botched-up job. Posthumously, of course."

After two bore holes, some gouge work inside, and mercifully no bloodletting, the gun balanced right on the money. "That's good for now," David said. "I'll take out a bit more later, after I've shaped up the head and put in the oval." He also would hand-cut two plugs from a scrap he'd earlier trimmed off the butt, matching the grain and fitting them to the bore holes so carefully that with the butt made off and checkered, they're impossible to find.

THE STOCK IS NOW FULLY SHAPED except for the head from the fences and frame back to a predetermined point behind the lockplates. This section he shapes with chisels, forming elegant curves by eye and touch, establishing crisp, graceful edges around the locks. Finally, time for more Gunmaker's Gothic.

Drop-points apparently evolved in the late 17th century, in flintlock days, as a decorative way of blending lockplates into the hand of a stock. They serve the same function now, and they've been standard fare for best-quality London guns since Joseph Manton's time. They test a stockmaker's mettle in several ways; their layout combines precise geometry and freehand drawing, while cutting them out is an exercise in chisel work where one slip can be a serious botch. The quality of his drop-points tells you quite a lot about a stockmaker's skill, and once you study them a bit, you can readily see the difference between truly superb points and good or even very good ones.

David spends about an hour and a half on each point, peers closely at them for a few moments, makes some minute changes. "I reckon a stockmaker generally works to the tolerance of a sixty-fourth," he says, "but there are two places that don't offer even that much latitude. Being off a sixty-fourth in the heading-up affects a gun's function over the long term; being off that much in a drop-point affects its appearance. They're equally important."

By this time, there's nothing at all in my gun's appearance to quarrel with, and more test-firing into the trap suggests its function will be equally good. And the fit? Perfect is no exaggeration. So long as I do my part and lift the gun right to my cheek, it points exactly where I look, no matter whether I mount it quickly or slowly, swinging left, right, up, down, or wherever. Which of course is what a fitted gun is supposed to do.

What started five days before as a nearly 4 1/4-pound blank now weighs a shade over a pound. With plugs and oval in place, it will weigh 17 1/2 ounces, and the whole gun will scale six pounds, five ounces, a full quarter-pound less than it weighed with the old stock. If you could handle it blindfolded, you'd never guess it's a 12-bore gun with 29-inch barrels.

The blank yielded a left-over piece just the right size for a matching fore-end, but that's a job for another time. I'm booked on an afternoon flight out of Boston, and much as I'd like to, I cannot stay to watch David make and inlet a silver oval in the belly of the stock; sand it all down through successive stages, ending with a half-dozen de-whiskering treatments of oxalic acid and 600-grit paper; begin the long process of a London oil finish; lay out and cut the checkering at 27 lines to the inch.

As I write this, at the end of September, the new stock's had its maiden voyage, for doves and snipe and blue grouse in Colorado. In a few days, we'll have a go at ruffed grouse and woodcock in Minnesota. Inconsistency usually is the most consistent part of my shooting, but I'm on a highly satisfying roll so far. It won't last, of course, but that won't be the gun's fault.

The wood is taking on a fine patina, thanks to about two dozen coats of linseed and a lot of rubbing. "Don't try to rush the finish," David said when I phoned him after it arrived. "It takes time to build up properly. Just keep rubbing it with your hands."

This is no hardship, because I can't keep my hands off it. Works of art affect me that way sometimes.