About Us
KRA Customs is our small family business owned by my wife, and I. We live in North Idaho with our four children near the Kootenai River. We love the outdoors, hunting, fishing, and exploring God’s beautiful mountains, and of course, building and shooting our own custom rifles!
It’s difficult to say when this journey really got its start. Perhaps in 1999 when I first took a Hunter’s Safety Course, it really sparked the first serious interest I took into hunting and firearms. I remember seeing and handling many different rifles in the class. I was most interested in and gravitated toward the lever actions, probably from the influence of all the western movies and shows I would watch with my dad. He wasn’t particularly interested in guns or hunting himself, but he did teach me about firearms safety and the basics of shooting and sight alignment with a pellet gun. My first rifle was, of course, a lever action! A Marlin 336 chambered in 30-30. I shot my first deer with it in 2002. Over the years I’ve grown an appreciation for bolt action rifles as well, and I tend to use them when hunting in more open country and lever actions for close quarters woods hunting.
For the first couple of years that I hunted, I had friends and mentors take me under their wing to show me the ropes, after that, I was on my own. I mostly hunted alone until 2011 when I married my wife Nicolle. She and her father were hunters, and for the first time, I had family to hunt with!
I could go into telling you about my background as a shipyard mechanic; how I worked as an apprentice and then journeyman, learned the skills of machining, precision measurement, etc. Many people have learned such things; however, few have a passion to continue to learn their trade to a level of true craftsmanship. Most of the skills I’ve learned have not been just to perform a certain job, but are skills that I sought out with a purpose of excellence. Any job worth doing, is worth doing well.
I’ve taken up many hobbies and interests over the years, but there is really only one that I’ve always returned to, or never left: guns, and more specifically, hunting rifles. The hobby of firearms can lead down many different paths, and I’ve gone down many of them. Self defense handguns, tactical rifles, historical military arms, to name a few, but I’ve always returned to the hunting rifle. It’s the firearm that I actually use for its intended purpose on a regular basis.
If you’re looking to have a custom rifle built from the ground up, or if you would like to have your rifle re-barreled, crowned, threaded, or epoxy bedded, or perhaps you have an old 22 that you would like to shoot but needs the barrel relined, send us a message and we would be happy to help you complete your goals! Our philosophy is to treat our customers the way we would like to be treated, with honesty, and integrity.