Oregon Timberwolf Gunsmithing

[jg rider]

I do my own amateur gunsmithing and I know things can happen. But this is too much !

I hate writing this but as more time goes by and the more finish that comes off our toys the angrier I get.
I did a search to find if others have had the same experience as we did with a certain gun shop.
I found this
Oregon Timberwolf Custom Gun

My experience is almost the same
After a whole bunch of research on the hardness of Cerakote we decided to go to Oregon Timberwolf Gunsmithing. I can 't talk about their gunsmithing but the Cerakoting service was a big disappointment.
About a year and a half ago my Son, wife, and I turned over to them 2 1911 frames and slides, 2 Marvel Precision slides, a Kahr K9 slide, a Kahr PM9 slide, and parts. We were told it would take about 2 months to complete.
After more then 2 months I called to to find out the status. I was told they weren't done yet. After much prodding for another 4 months we went to pick up the toys. We found buggered up dovetail front sights, parts that wouldn't fit together anymore, and colors of parts that didn't match anymore because of having to be redone.
After 4 trips back and forth at 100 miles each time from Sherwood to Mollala, we finally got our stuff back.
In about 6 months we started to see the finishes wearing off on all corners and controls. Also on my 1911 frame under the trigger guard / front strap the Cerakoteing wore through to the blueing underneath. The buggered up front sights were filed smooth and cold blued, so that also didn't last.
Everything I researched showed that Cerakote if properly applied would out last other finishes. This was worse then blueing.

Here's some pics of my stuff. The 1911 / Marvel Precision has never been in a holster.













Oh ! I need to mention that there was one gun that the finish did turn out right. That was on my wife's Kahr PM9. We were told that one was done by the wife of the Cerakote department. The picture doesn't do justice to the color. Thank you Malissa !
This is her EDC in a holster and there's no wear.

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[Joe13]

Two words:

@NWCustomFirearms

@Velzey


Either of them can take care of you in the future and you can leave your guns with them, confident that will be returned awesome.


That's a real bad situation your in - did they offer any kind of compensation for the botched work they did?

 

[jg rider]

Two words:

That's a real bad situation your in - did they offer any kind of compensation for the botched work they did?

Hi Joe
We decided not to go back. After all the times we drove there to pick up our stuff and it had to be done over, we felt nothing would change. There was a time when my son called and was told it didn't look like they could ever make us happy. This was with Bobby , who is the son in law of the owner and the Cerakoter along with his wife Millisa who is the owner's daughter.

 

[Joe13]

Hi Joe
We decided not to go back. After all the times we drove there to pick up our stuff and it had to be done over, we felt nothing would change. There was a time when my son called and was told it didn't look like they could ever make us happy. This was with Bobby , who is the son in law of the owner and the Cerakoter along with his wife Millisa who is the owner's daughter.

I only hit like cuz that's a huge bummer man - sorry to hear that.

Small businesses are getting rarer, you'd think they would do just about anything to keep a customer - I predict they won't be around for long if that's the way they conduct themselves.

 

[jg rider]

I only hit like cuz that's a huge bummer man - sorry to hear that.

Small businesses are getting rarer, you'd think they would do just about anything to keep a customer - I predict they won't be around for long if that's the way they conduct themselves.

The main business for OR. Timberwolf is gunsmithing. It's a well equipped, clean shop, but they are pricey. The Cerakoting is a separate business run by the owner's son in law, Bobby and wife Malissa.
I was impressed with the cleanliness of the clean room where the coating is done. But the workmanship is shoddy.
I shoot steel plate matches with my .22 1911, and my son does also with his 1911 Kimber .22 conversion. I customized both RIA frames, checkering, grips safetys, and more, before having them Cerakoted. You would think with the extensive work I did they would assume that those guns would be shown around at matches and else where to drum up some side work, and their name would get mentioned.

Here's some pic of what mine looked like when I first got it back.












Here's some before pics of my Kahr K9 that they also messed up

 

[ob1]

I had the very same experience with them. Went in for (what I thought was a pretty simple) sight job and several weeks later I gave up after a number of attempts to contact them. My calls and email's were never returned. Finally I just made the drive back to Mulino to retrieve my gun, whatever the condition. I walked out with a brassed up sight and a nick on the slide. The job wasn't even finished, and I received an explanation that they couldn't replace my sight with the one I wanted, and would need to buy a complete (more expensive) set.

Supposedly this operation does the majority of referral work from NW Armory. It does seem to be a well equipped shop and the people I dealt with (father and daughter) were nice enough, so I decided not to mention my experience on the forum, thinking it may have been a fluke. This thread changed my mind..

By the way....I took my sight job next to this gunsmith in Estacada named here as Velzey , based on a referral from another member here. I told him this story and he kind of shook his head and told me to come back in two weeks. I did so to see the same sight Timberwolf said couldn't be used on my slide and a reasonable bill.

I have already used Velzey several more times this year and won't be trying anyone else. Sometimes it does seem like somebody cooks a lot of shrimp there, but that's all I have to say about that.

 

[Joe13]

+2 for @Velzey

 

[jg rider]

+2 for @Velzey

I don't think Velzy can help me with problem. We have too much money into what we didn't get.
A little more FYI.:
I have two other 1911 that have hard chromed frames and controls. I wanted to have the controls and msh Cerakoted black like my 1911.22. Bobby said he could do it. I told him that he'd first have to strip off the hard chroming and did he know someone to do it. He said he could coat over the chrome, i disagreed he got huffy and told me to take it somewhere else. By that time his father in law / owner came out and old him that I was correct, that you can't coat over hard chroming, it wouldn't adhere. I left not having them done.

 

[Joe13]

I don't think Velzy can help me with problem. We have too much money into what we didn't get.
A little more FYI.:
I have two other 1911 that have hard chromed frames and controls. I wanted to have the controls and msh Cerakoted black like my 1911.22. Bobby said he could do it. I told him that he'd first have to strip off the hard chroming and did he know someone to do it. He said he could coat over the chrome, i disagreed he got huffy and told me to take it somewhere else. By that time his father in law / owner came out and old him that I was correct, that you can't coat over hard chroming, it wouldn't adhere. I left not having them done.

Yea, I can understand not wanting to sink more cash into coating guns after such a bad experience.

Never hurts to ask though - maybe there is a way to strip the chrome useing electrolysis or some other fancy thing.

I've seen and heard from reliable people how good he is and also seen some of @NWCustomFirearms work too so between the two, I won't be going anywhere else for gun upgrades or fixes. And they are both site supporters and have a lot too loose if they botch a job.

It's a small world and even smaller active gun community so word of mouth and personal references go a long way for me.

 

[ob1]

Couldn't agree more with Joe13....

In retrospect, the one thing I think I did right in dealing with the "wolves" was to bring a single project to them first to see how I liked their service. Even that was because of a sour experience with yet another "established" gunsmith shop that has been in operation for decades in North Portland.

 

[Velzey]

I use muriatic acid to remove the hard chrome. But you have to be very careful with it, its sooooo easy to leave it in to long and eat off to much material. You have got to remove the hard chrome to be able to blast it with aluminum oxide media. With the chrome in place I don't care what media you use, you cannot rough up the chome enough to get the cerakote to adhere good.

Just let me know if I can help.

 

[Joe13]

I use muriatic acid to remove the hard chrome. But you have to be very careful with it, its sooooo easy to leave it in to long and eat off to much material. You have got to remove the hard chrome to be able to blast it with aluminum oxide media. With the chrome in place I don't care what media you use, you cannot rough up the chome enough to get the cerakote to adhere good.

Just let me know if I can help.

Had a feeling you could do something with that.

Never fails to impress me - keep on doing your excellent thing!

 

[jg rider]

I use muriatic acid to remove the hard chrome. But you have to be very careful with it, its sooooo easy to leave it in to long and eat off to much material. You have got to remove the hard chrome to be able to blast it with aluminum oxide media. With the chrome in place I don't care what media you use, you cannot rough up the chome enough to get the cerakote to adhere good.

Just let me know if I can help.

I like that you can do this, but it leaves me with where do I go then

 

[Joe13]

I like that you can do this, but it leaves me with where do I go then

Have him coat it in whatever you want.

 

[jg rider]

Have him coat it in whatever you want.

Does he do Cerakoteing ?

 

[ob1]

I've seen an example in his shop...nice

 

[pioneer461]

I hate to see this kind of stuff take on a life of it's own. I've known the owner of OTW for almost 30 years, both professionally and personal friendship. I'm not going to defend him on this matter, but to say that he has over the years done a bunch of work on my guns, including Cerakote. His work has always been top notch, and I have no hesitation in recommending his work.

As in most matters of this kind, there are two sides to any issue, and I caution folks not to make assumptions based on only one side. And yes, I did talk with him yesterday about this thread, as I was at his shop to pick up a custom rifle, he put together for me, including Cerakote. I'm 100% satisfied, as usual.

 

[jg rider]

I hate to see this kind of stuff take on a life of it's own. I've known the owner of OTW for almost 30 years, both professionally and personal friendship. I'm not going to defend him on this matter, but to say that he has over the years done a bunch of work on my guns, including Cerakote. His work has always been top notch, and I have no hesitation in recommending his work.

As in most matters of this kind, there are two sides to any issue, and I caution folks not to make assumptions based on only one side. And yes, I did talk with him yesterday about this thread, as I was at his shop to pick up a custom rifle, he put together for me, including Cerakote. I'm 100% satisfied, as usual.

Hi Pioneer461,
I have nothing bad to say about the OTW gunsmithing dept. In fact I was very impressed with how clean and well equipped they were to do gunsmithing. I was also impressed on how clean the cerakoting area was.
But the quality of work we received from Bobby ( the son in law that runs the cerakoting dept.) was terrible. The only piece that came back looking great was my wife's Kahr PM9 slide that was done by Melissa, the owner's daughter. To this day with every day c.c. in a Don Hume JIT holster plus 2x a week draw and fire out of the holster, there isn't any sign of wear.
When we bought in all our stuff in we were told about 2 months to do all the work. After 2 months we started to call and kept getting excuses. It took another 4 months to get our parts back. We also made 4 different trips at 100 miles each to pick up our stuff. And each time we had to leave without them. There was always something wrong e.g. dinged front sights that had to be touched up with a file and cold blued, over coating where parts couldn't be fitted together, mismatched colors of parts being resprayed, missed areas not coated.
These pistols were for showing off my work for cosmetics and reliability. All I have to show for my money is reliability.
I've showed these guns to other shops in an attempt to see if they could be touched up and they were surprised at how bad they looked. One shop I spoke with suspected that there was moisture on the surfaces of my parts so the cerakoting wouldn't adhere to the metals (steel, aluminum.)
Another shop suspected that the small parts e.g. grip screws, slide stops, thumb safeties etc. were coated to thin, or just blued
Also because of the uniqueness of some of these slides I offered to disassemble them for them. I was told it wasn't necessary. I asked if they had the right sight pushers to take the front sights off of the Kahr slides. They said they did. The results seem to be that the internals of the Kahr slides were not removed just sprayed over.
Both Kahr sights were dinged as if someone used a punch to drive them in and out.

Again I say I can't speak to the gunsmithing at OTW since I never had any work done by them, my issue is only with the cerakoting department.

If you want to pass this reply on to the owner and he wants to make this right, he can contact me through you, or reply to this thread
Thanx for reading this,
John

 

[therealhitman]

Well, I hate to pile on here, but I also can speak to the extremely poor quality of the cerakote work from Oregon Timber Wolf. I feel now, as I did when my coating began wearing off in a few short weeks, that the shoddy work was in stark contrast to the fantastic facilities and equipment at their disposal. I could only assume that the owner was either wealthy enough to fund an extravagant 'hobby shop' in his side yard, or (more likely) had built a thriving 'smith business culminating in a very nice workspace build. The fact that the business continues to survive as such shows something must be getting done in a satisfactory manner there. But as the stories related here reveal, that something is definitely not occurring in the cerakoting department as a general rule. I think the OP is fortunate to have had the work fall onto Melissa's shoulders for at least one of his guns to receive a satisfactory coating job. Seems most were not so lucky, myself included.
That said, the stories told here by several members echoes my own... a long wait well past the promised completion date, repeated excuses, dwindling communication and lack of returned calls as the wait stretched on and on, and finally a long drive to pick up a poorly coated gun with a buggered up sight (seems to be a trademark of theirs). Repeat customers to OTW must be very forgiving. They will not see my weapons or money again for any reason.
I think we can all agree that a truly professional and ethical gunsmith would treat all his customers property as carefully and promptly as he does those belonging to patrons having an "almost 30 years, both professional and personal friendship" with the proprietor. If I were Pioneer461 or other long time family friend I would probably be a confident return customer for OTW. But I am not, so I will seek out Velzey or some other truly professional shop with a track record of conscientious quality to each and every one of those that entrust them with the repair or modification of their firearms.

 

[jg rider]

Contacted the Cerakote Company. They're located in White City OR.
I called and asked to speak to someone about the durablity of Cerakote coating. I explained that I made my decision on these vids:
Testing
I was put through to someone.
I was told that their tests are valid and and after looking at my photos he said what I have shouldn't have happened. He didn't want to make an opionion of why by looking at photos only.
Since someone from OTW hd gone through the course and was certified by Ceakote, he was going to call Oregon Timber Wolf to ask what happened, and have records of working on our guns.

He said he'd get back to me. I haven't heard anything yet