Hi all.
I'm James Lederer. I thought I'd stop by and introduce myself; I figured one of these threads would pop up sooner or later.
I've been shooting benchrest in competition since 2006, and I've been working in the barrel industry since 2004. I began making barrels at Rock Creek Barrels, and got my start learning to make barrels from Mike Rock. While I have met and respect Boots Obermeyer greatly, I did not learn from him. I rifled most of the cut-rifled barrels that came out of Rock creek from late 2005 until 2012. I parted ways with Rock Creek in early 2012 and started my own company in the summer of 2012. I parked my South Bend Heavy 10 in some rental shop space, started putting together a shop, and designed and built my barrel making machinery. This included a deep hole drill, barrel reamer, and cut-rifling machine. As you can expect it took quite a while, and was quite the learning experience. I started production of 30 caliber barrels, primarily for benchrest shooters, in the early spring of 2014. I am pretty satisfied with the way they are turning out, and I have received some excellent feed back on their performance.
I am a one man operation, I do everything from cleaning the toilets (sometimes) to shipping finished barrels. I have to apologize to those that are still waiting for barrels. There have been a lot of fits and starts, and I did quite a bit of traveling over the summer to various matches. I try to give good lead time estimates, but I admit they aren't always accurate.
I am close to having 6mm production started. I have some tooling to finish up and probably will have a wrinkle or two to iron out, but I expect to start shipping 6mm's to those who have them on order near the end of this month.
I appreciate the patience of the people who are waiting for barrels, and that of those who have received them. And I have to give great thanks for all the support and encouragement I have received over the last couple of years. The Benchrest community is filled with many fine people.
I hope everyone has a great year in 2015, and feel free to contact me at any time. I do my best to return calls and emails, but if you don't hear from me make sure to be persistent. One of the great things about this job is being able to talk to different like-minded people from all over the country. Thanks.
James Lederer
www.jlriflebarrels.com (work in progress)
(608)424-0214
(608)347-6629