Fella's;
I have two custom guns, and I know what the word means to me. Frankly, if someone doesn't agree with my definition, I could care less. I spent my money, got what I wanted, and consider both guns to be custom in the classic sense of the word.
A factory produced the basic gun in both cases, however, there's very little left of either factory gun left. I did indeed do some of the minor work on both guns, but the very large majority of the work was done by skilled artisans and/or gunsmiths to my specification. And no, there's no replace-parts-custom 10/22 about either gun in either case.
The first arose from my desire to own a left hand bolt gun in 6.5x55mm Swedish Mauser. The left hand donor action was trued, a one-off recoil lug radically different from the factory offering was produced, and a Lilja barrel was screwed in Dave Young. The stock was hand made by Rob Smith and the bluing was done by Dennis Earhardt.
The other gun is a left hand CZ452 fullstock, or Mannlicher. In this case, the stock barrel was shortened and Tom Stevens provided the hand made stock of his original design. Hal, of Blue Brothers in Missoula did the high gloss polishing and excellent bluing work. This gun has many non-original CZ touches, too numerous to mention for the purpose of this post.
900F