doublegunshop.com - home Forums Thread Like Summary - Damascus barrels refinish

Please recommend a refinisher for Damascus barrels, in particular a set from a Grade B Remington 1894, thanks in advance.

He will! Got behind. Sincerely sorry about that. Always looking for economies of scale to improve.

Admittedly, when making this my sole occupation, I failed to grasp how much I could realistically do by myself. With damascus in particular, they are all different in how they respond to the process, leaky ribs to deal with, etc. Difficult to predict required time to get desired outcome.

Trying to catch up, and when I do, I’ll be taking much less work so that throughput is increased significantly.

I've done a four day stretch before. Right now, I need to do a two week stretch to make a dent in the accumulated tubes. I'm in my late 50's, and do not relish the thought. Protecting certain days for certain tasks is where I lack discipline. Each morning starts with a plan, prayer, and a solid commitment and firm commitment to do my best for every customer I have. Thankfully, I've been blessed with wonderful folks who are kind people, and many have become friends. However, I drives me crazy thinking all of the tasks I am NOT doing, when I pick the one to do at the time. Clearly, the problem is partially me.

My other issue is related to my facilities. I have half of a two car garage, and the front yard to do my work. Sometimes I will go to another shop and hour away if I need a big mill or lathe. I can have 6 barrels going at a time because of limited space, and a limited me. In two years we can move, and I spend most days imagining how fantastic it will be to have everything I need set up as workstations, instead of having to set up and tear down for so much of each day. I'm proud of what I've been able to accomplish here, but it is also extremely frustrating and pisses me off quite often. Two more years .... I can make it until then as long as the body holds up.

Starting a week long stretch tomorrow, with a day off on Sunday.

One of my go to smiths died, his son is so swamped that I only use him for certain jobs. One thing he use to enjoy doing was making and engraving screws which he was very good doing, but last time I was in his shop he told another customer he was not interested in making over another set of screws for him. Turns out the fellow had all the screws replaced about five years earlier and buggered them all up again playing home gunsmith. Last time I was in his shop he had a full years worth of work on hand.

He had a Hoenig stock duplicator in the back room he has never set up which I was trying to buy from him. He has had it for about ten years, or maybe more and never has had time to set it up and learn how to use it correctly. It is a upgrade from my Gemini. In fact I think his father bought it just before he passed away. Might see if he wants to move on from it now. Like too many of us he is not getting younger and I think he has only a nephew showing interest in following along after he is done. Gunsmiths seem to age a twice the regular rate and get cranky at three times the regular rate.

Don't do it Lloyd. Keep him to yourself. You can thank me later.
JR

Bill, with the dwindling number of good smith I expect you will always have all the work you can stand. Making money on some of it might be another issue. It comes down to economy of scale, being efficient and learning to use more consumables to save more time. It does help if you can just do one procedure over and over again to not waste time on setups. Time is the only thing that is in short supply and you can not buy anymore.

When doing a job that involves sandpaper I discard a lot of paper which still has life left in it because a new sheet is three times as efficient. I’ll pay that extra dollar to save five minutes. For too long I squeezed every bit of life out of things like sandpaper which were cheap, at the cost of wasting time.

Check out Bill Graham at Nice Old Doubles. He just finished a recase color on my c grade 1894.

Heres a link to his facebook page and pictures. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100069242126161

Contact info here. https://www.niceolddouble.com/?fbclid=IwAR2OWOcVW4lb7_xqgSVMyqUjYlkF6mLDHbKeEtoMp2y8TdOJEFBaa9-s0OU

Drew, at least one B Grade, a 32" 10ga, left the factory with Etoile 3 B.P. barrels.

Marcus

If you know of anyone who is turning around quality restoration work quickly, please let us know.

Every smith I know, including myself is way behind. There are less folks out there offering up quality restoration work than in the past and demand for restoration is sky high. I have two safes full of work waiting to hit the que and entirely too many projects in process.

Bill does good work and his services are in demand, there are only so many hours in a day. I sent a fully prepped grip cap to Turnbull for case hardening not long ago, it took them almost four months and they have a shop full of craftsmen, Bill is one guy.

I'm all ears about these guys with a fast turn around....I'll start referring all the inquiries I am turning down to those guys.

Here's a recently redone B grade Remington.

I'm eagerly waiting on a gun that is being shipped today. It has a set of freshly re-finished Black & White laminated steel tubes (& I can't wait to see it again!). This one took a little longer (as the gun needed a fair-amount of other work and I wasn't in a hurry) but this fellow is normally pretty quick. I hesitate to even discuss this here as he's a great resource that I'm planning on using again. Since good doublegun gunsmiths are few and far-between these days it's becoming hard to share.

What is more filled with peril, sharing your gunsmith or recommending a high dollar restaurant? I say the gunsmith. There are hundreds if not thousands of expensive restaurants in the country but less than a couple dozen, maybe less, top double gun smiths.

Geez Lloyd selfish much?

Haha JK...

Bill Graham once spent a fair amount of time here asking questions in the Amateur Gunsmithing forum. Lately, mosts of his posts involve selling guns or parts in the For Sale forum, and I assume he pays Dave the $12.00 fee for successful sales of those items. I hear he does nice work, but have no personal experience or recommendations because I do my own gun work.

I wouldn't blame guys for getting upset about long waits for their guns if he or any other gunsmith was obviously busy spending a lot of time here, logging in multiple times a day to read and confront any posts from Conservatives or pro-Trump Republicans... as Stevie does. It would be even worse if they were complaining about a big backlog of unfinished work while doing Free Advertising in their tagline, and then doing weasel-like gymnastics to avoid answering questions about whether they paid Dave the $12.00 fee from sales resulting from Free Advertising of their business ventures... as we saw here:

https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=643116&page=4

It was pretty nice to see Stevie's phony and disingenuous refusal to answer a couple simple questions by accusing me of wishing to play to the audience, and then doing exactly that with more insults and funny little memes. Stevie will say or do anything to avoid my simple questions. 100% weapons grade phony!

And it would be even worse if he was dragging his feet on customer's gun work while wasting even more time Spamming people behind the scenes with multiple personal attack PM's. I just got yet another such Spam PM from Stevie yesterday, and this one was also sent to Homeless jOe. Of course, I haven't opened it to read it, because I have notified Stevie that he/she should have the courage to post anything he/she has to say to me right here in the open.

jOe hasn't even posted here for awhile, but it appears Stevie wishes to Troll him into a response.

That's interesting and revealing behavior... coming from someone who has pretended to be above the fray, and innocent of the Trolling, personal attacks, and name calling that his/her pals often cry about. Thanks to Moderation, I think Dave has finally been able to see what Paul Harvey called, "the rest of the story."

Stevie, you are such a delicate little flower. I think it would help a lot if you didn't have those weak limp wrists. Actually, based upon what you have posted here in the past, it appears that the hardest part about rust bluing for you is finding someone else as a sub-contractor for the actual prep and bluing work. You have admitted to farming out a lot of the work you find too tedious, like welding, etc.

You have told us that you employed someone named Manito Lara (sp?) to do your rust bluing. And the late Doug Woodin PA24 told me personally that he laughed at you when you asked him to do your rust bluing.

I have closely followed any rust bluing Threads posted here over the years, because I often glean some useful tip or information that I didn't know or might wish to try. I've noticed you made a lot of comments that suggested to me that you were far from an expert on the subject, and probably just parroted what you read or saw in gunsmith school. This one pertaining to etching Damascus barrels was one of my favorites:


That was your post #76837 from this Thread:

https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=77129&page=1

As soon as I saw that, it was apparent that you never actually did it, or you would have soon learned how quickly a 14% ferric chloride solution at a 45 second dip (especially in mid 60's temps) would remove your blue. Battle, Chuck, and others noticed too. Chuck had earlier told us he was using about a 10% ferric chloride solution at only 10 seconds, and felt that was a bit too strong.




Of course, you quickly did some backpedaling. Who was the "we" in that post Stevie? It looked to me like the person who was actually doing the work corrected you and told you he was really etching less than 10 seconds. So 45 seconds was too long??? No shit Sherlock:


You never did post those pics you promised. I wonder why? Don't bother now. Nobody would believe you actually did it after what you wrote. It seemed to me that you might be better off keeping busy just finding people to do your work, and refrain from making posts that reveal a lack of knowledge. As I said, I sometimes learn something from those rust bluing Threads. In that one, I learned that you don't know nearly as much as you'd like us to think. Stick to the Free Advertising, subcontracting, and maybe hire an illegal immigrant laborer who has strong arms and shoulders.

What's this Stevie? It looks like you are "playing to the audience" with more of your personal attacks... instead of simply answering a couple simple questions.

We all can see how you used that "playing to the audience" line as a lame excuse for not answering, and then do exactly that yourself. You know how much those personal attacks make your Liberal pals cry, and how they say that behavior drives good people away from this forum. You don't want Dave to think your friends only cried about personal attacks just to silence and censor Conservatives, do you?

There is no need to play silly immature games. There is no need for me to make a collect call. (With cell phones and Nationwide free calling, I don't know of anyone who has any need to make a collect call anymore) Why would I want to call you and have you misrepresent what was said? What's your problem with answering my questions right out in the open forum? What are you afraid of?

There is no need to keep attempting to tar me or jOe with your deviant lifestyle. There is no need for me to respond privately to your multiple rude and insulting Spam PM's either. All you need to do to end my questions is tell us if you are paying Dave the $12.00 fee for each and every sale you make as a result of your tagline Free Advertising of your business ventures.

The other tagline Free Advertisers should do the same. But they are at least smart enough not to brag about the amounts they sell here:


None of you should be taking advantage of Dave by using his Forums to promote your businesses in any event. These little games you are playing are making us wonder what you all have to hide... especially when you know there is a dedicated For Sale forum for selling things here the right way. And other sellers shouldn't have to subsidize those who are Freeloaders. The rules are pretty easy. If you advertise here and sell what you advertise, you pay Dave a little $12.00 fee for each sale. On a $500 importing job, that's 2.4%, less than Colorado sales tax. If you are indeed paying Dave the $12.00 fees for each and every sale, same as others who sell things here, then just say so. If not, have the courage to admit it, and settle up.

It would be so easy to shut me up if you are paying Dave all $12.00 Sales Fees due to him for each and every sale. Do you seriously think it is better to keep looking and acting like a spoiled child that has been caught with his/her hand in the cookie jar?