doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com eye popper

Outsourcing a re-barrel job might have been easier than interrupting production flow already in the works for a customer. It was done to a standard not done by a craftsman who was as sought after as Becker would be for Fox. I had heard a couple makers were without in house workers but was told outsourcing was capable of keeping up with demand

A few year ago the name makers were buying a lot of their own guns to rehab in house then sell to customers who could not afford a bespoke gun at that time. Some were with worn out barrels and some were with 26” barrels which were put if fashion.

I wonder what demand there is for bespoke guns these days when you are easily able to spend 100K pounds on a gun? Are they building 50 a year by Boss, Purdey and H&H? There always will be a few people with means and interest in having one made, just not in my circle.

All of this discussion is worthless to anyone other than a fool and his money, save the odd bullshitting value. The very idea of a set of sxs shotgun barrels costing $48,000, regardless of how finely they are made or how fine the gun they are for is, is an absurdity and abhorrent to anyone with minimal intelligence. More like a really bad joke.
JR

There are women's purses for sale for $20,000....and they sell.

I realize everyone on this board already knows this to some extent.

The real question for me is where rebarrelling can be done at a price I can pay without going too far upside down.

My desire vs reality may already be ridiculous.

If the market gets so expensive that new guns don’t get made, high end double guns begin to die.

If the trade makes rebarreling impossible by price (we are almost there now) And worse no one is even doing it then all the worn out guns with thin walls become permanent wall hangers.

We are a fringe hobby that is shrinking more and more and the shrinking trade supporting it is concerning if you want to get an old gun rebuilt.

We will soon be left, if we are not already, with playing with those old guns still serviceable, that is until they wear out, then oblivion.

While it can be argued that there are plenty more side by sides still serviceable to supply our actual need, as opposed to our wants, it is that we want to be able to have.

I understand another post I read recently on the math and economics buying an already sleeved gun as smarter than buying one needing to be sleeved, true, however it ignores an underlying principle which is I want what I want. I have three guns for which I need barrels. All are shootable in their current form, I simply want new barrels on them. One I may of located a set of barrels in the white, but whether that works remains to be seen.

The other two a Purdey 16 with cut 26inch barrels that have Briley tubes that I want to replace with sound longer barrels, and a Boss with excellent wall thickness 12ga tubes on it, but I have discovered the frame is really lean and the same width or narrower than several of my light 16’s, so I want to have a set of 27inch 16ga barrels in addition to the nice thick 12ga 28inch barrels it already has.

Why because I like so many others on this board want that, and what they want, they want

New barrels are like the holy grail. A good set of new barrels will last through to my life, what is left of it, through into my Grand Son’s life (I pray he will like my guns and that I will last long enough to teach him)

The price point has been and will be the problem, I am not sure what that point is

My hope is that someone(s) on this side of the pond will start providing new barrels for classic British guns, whether someone already here or someone emigrates from the collapsing British trade and then provides the service.

In the end reality we face market forces that overwhelm desire and reason, there are not enough of us doublegun lovers with money to create the marketplace we want.

Maybe, there is a reason to support today's AR and Glock shooter. Down the road, a few of them might purchase a pump shotgun and give it a go at their local skeet range.

Yes indeed- like the clown advertising a tarted-up Winchester M24 for $22,500 there's your really bad joke. RWTF

I would agree, and sometimes we are one in the same. I hunt almost exclusively with vintage doubles, but I have a .300 Blackout on an AR platform with thermal optics, a 6.5 Creedmoor on a Ruger Precision platform, and carry a .45 ACP and a 18" barreled Winchester SXP in my truck. I find it perplexing when a shooter is so carried away with one genre of gun that he "rejects" others as being, somehow, unnecessary.

There is likely a lesson here in the ill-fated attempt by Simmons to produce new Parker barrels at a price and quality that worked for both the maker and the purchaser. There was lots of interest in the effort
I couldn't find the original thread on the PGCA but here are some follow-ups

https://parkerguns.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2188

https://parkerguns.org/forums/showthread.php?t=3342

Mention of a project by Galazan, about which I know nothing
https://parkerguns.org/forums/showthread.php?t=4944

There are a couple of sets of Purdey barrels for RELATIVELY little on Morphy's .

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#all/FMfcgzGmvpCkjbvCZxGMtrqtGXXDJLjx

Another comparison. Atlas Arms supplied replacement Parker barrels, using Vickers Nickel Steel, manufactured by ARMAF in Belgium in the 50s and 60s
Semi-finished barrels were $75 + $40 for complete fit and finish = $115 or about $1100 today.

The average hourly wage in the U.S. in 1960 was $2.26. In Belgium about $0.62.