I fully understand the almost sacriliegeous nature of putting monobloc barrels on a gun that started life equipped with chopper lump barrelss. But if the finances do not go up to the sums mentioned above, and they sound reasonable by English standards, some makers charge double that, then monobloc maybe a solution. It can put a loved gun back in action safely.

The Effebi factory offers barrel sets. I would say they are as good as the 626 barrels and you have a choice of tubes. A friend has had work done by Lutterotti e Lira, a gunsmith firm and they offered Boehler tubes too. Striking up is a matter of skill for the man who will fit them on the action.

That line thing is definitely a matter of aesthetics. Perazzi uses monobloc on their best and to me, and obviously to many others, they pass the beauty test. On the other hand, I lost the argument with the man who made my boxlock years ago, he would not let one of his guns go out with that monobloc line. So he gave me an ultimatum: dovetail lump or no gun. I relented.

By "repairability" I had something like the Pieper, the Robust, the SO Beretta line, the Parker and the model 21 in mind. A replaceable shim on the hook, a shoe on the rear lump, are hardly noticeable, and they can fix loose barrels without resorting to spray welding, dovetailing etc which to me seem a little too drastic for what is needed. I would rather have the smith push out a well designed shim and the new one fitted with a few passes with a scraper.

If more guns had this feature we would not be agonizing about what to do with our old guns now. They would have been fixed easily and at a reasonable cost by any fairly competent gunsmith.

The cost is a factor but not the only factor. Referring to repairability I had the aeronautic and marine use of the term in mind. There there is no "repair" mentality. the job must return the system back to its original condition, the more fitting word perhaps would be "renewability". In guns the best example is the Beretta trunnions, locking bolt and replaceable shoulders that bring loose barrels back to new condition. They have them on the SO and later models and they are not cheap.

Last edited by Shotgunlover; 08/08/13 06:17 PM.