Shiffer's Custom Rifles

Shiffer's Custom Rifles is a gunsmithing shop located at 710 Franklin Street in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, in the northeastern corner of Berks County. Operated by gunsmith Harry Shiffer, the business works primarily on sporting firearms: bolt action rifles, shotguns, and older guns brought in for repair, refinishing, or complete rebuilding. It is a small, owner operated shop rather than a retail chain, and the majority of what leaves the premises is the result of hand work performed on site.

The shop can be reached by phone at (610) 562-7610. It maintains a Facebook page where customers can find current information, and because hours at a one person shop can shift with the workload and the seasons, calling ahead before making a trip is the practical approach. The parking area is wheelchair accessible.

Services Offered

The work at Shiffer's falls into several broad categories, most of them overlapping in any given project. A rifle that comes in for a new stock may also need metal refinishing, sight work, and bedding before it goes back out the door.

• Custom rifle building, including barreled action work and assembly of rifles built around a customer's chosen components
• Restocking with semi-inletted or blank walnut, including fitting, shaping, and finishing
• Hand checkering in traditional point patterns as well as decorative and game scene inspired layouts
• Oil finishing of gunstocks, a labor intensive process that produces the deep, in the wood look associated with older custom rifles
• Bluing and other metal refinishing, including polishing and surface preparation, which is where most of the labor in a bluing job actually resides
• Restoration of rifles and shotguns, including older and inherited guns that have been neglected, refinished poorly in the past, or damaged
• Repairs, general maintenance, sight installation, and function work on sporting arms
• Stock repairs such as crack repair, recoil pad fitting, length of pull adjustment, and comb alterations

Stock Work and Checkering

Stock work is one of the areas the shop is best known for. Fitting a new stock to a rifle is not a matter of dropping the action into a pre-shaped piece of wood. Inletting has to be cut so that the metal seats without gaps and without stress, the barrel channel has to be relieved correctly for the intended point of impact behavior, and the exterior has to be shaped so that the comb, grip, and forend suit the shooter and the sights being used. On higher grade walnut, the shaping also has to respect the figure of the wood so the grain runs where it is needed for strength through the grip area.

Checkering is the decorative and functional diamond pattern cut into the grip and forend. It is done by hand with cutting tools, line by line, and a single misplaced run cannot be undone. Beyond standard point patterns, the shop has executed custom layouts developed for individual customers, including motifs drawn from historical factory patterns. That kind of request requires not only cutting skill but familiarity with what various manufacturers produced over the decades, which is knowledge accumulated over a long working life in the trade rather than something found in a catalog.

Restoration Work

A significant share of the shop's business involves guns that have sentimental value. Older American classics, family shotguns, deer rifles carried for generations in the Pennsylvania woods, and military pattern arms converted to sporting use all come through for attention. Restoration in this context usually means returning a firearm to sound mechanical condition and correct appearance rather than simply making it shiny. That can involve removing old finish, addressing pitting or dings in the metal, repairing or replacing wood, refinishing, and reassembling everything to proper fit.

For collectors of classic American rifles, such as pre 1964 Winchester Model 70s and similar vintage actions, this kind of work has particular value because factory service for those guns no longer exists and correct parts are increasingly scarce. A shop that can make, fit, or restore what cannot be bought fills a real gap.

Location and Service Area

Hamburg sits along the Schuylkill River at the foot of Blue Mountain, near the Appalachian Trail and Hawk Mountain, in a part of Pennsylvania with a long and continuous hunting tradition. The borough is a short drive from Reading, Allentown, Pottsville, Lehighton, and Kutztown, and it is accessible from Interstate 78 and Route 61, which puts the shop within reasonable reach of the Lehigh Valley, Schuylkill County, and much of Berks and Lebanon counties. Customers from farther afield are not unusual, since specialized stock and checkering work of this type is not available in every town.

Franklin Street is a residential and mixed use street in the borough, so the shop has the character of a neighborhood workshop rather than a storefront on a commercial strip. Parking is available and the lot is wheelchair accessible.

Practical Information for Customers

• Call before visiting. A single gunsmith working on detailed projects is not always able to staff a counter during fixed retail hours.
• Expect lead times on major projects. Stock fitting, hand checkering, oil finishing, and bluing all involve curing times and hand labor that cannot be compressed. Custom work measured in weeks or months is normal in this field, and the busiest period generally runs in the months before Pennsylvania's fall hunting seasons.
• Bring the whole firearm and any related parts. Sights, scope mounts, magazines, and original components help with fitting and with matching finishes.
• Discuss the goal, not just the task. A rifle being built for offhand woods hunting is stocked differently than one intended for bench work with a large scope, and that conversation shapes the outcome.
• Customers who are supplying their own wood should discuss grade, layout, and inletting requirements in advance.
• Ask about estimates up front. Metal preparation in particular can vary widely depending on the condition of the gun, so an inspection is usually needed before a firm number is possible.

Character of the Shop

Shiffer's Custom Rifles operates in a tradition that has grown less common as firearms manufacturing has shifted toward synthetic stocks, modular platforms, and factory replacement rather than repair. The skills involved, inletting, shaping, checkering, oil finishing, polishing, and bluing, are learned over years and applied by hand to one gun at a time. For owners in Berks County and the surrounding region who want an older firearm made sound again or a new rifle built to their own specifications, the shop offers a local source for work that would otherwise require shipping a firearm across the country.