doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Damascus barrels refinish

Ok. Everyone has to decide what their tolerance for waiting is. There’s no substitute for good work, but some of the craftsmen are unapologetically slow, not saying Mr. Graham is. But I suspicion there are some out there who can be found with some phone calls and due diligence who are more expeditious. Not bothering with that myself though. Thanks.
JR

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.

Both Bill Graham and Breck Gorman are great guys and great gunsmiths. I do not have personal experience with the others

Geez Lloyd selfish much?

Haha JK...

battle: Well...I will ask him about how much work he's willing to take-on these days (after this next little project of mine).

If he's game to to do more, then I'll share.

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."

The pic that the Preacher posted of the late Brad Bachelder's barrel finishing room tells a little about his process.

It seems apparent that he wasn't using the very short rusting cycles that are recommended by some finishers. Some of the barrels have a pretty dark and even coat of rust, and it wouldn't be possible to apply rusting solution, boil, and card, and repeat that many barrels in a short cycle time. But he managed to do pretty nice work, and got good contrast on Damascus. I haven't seen any examples of the work from his shop since he passed away. That's a nice little assembly line process, and I'd imagine that doing a bunch at once would considerably cut down the average time it takes, versus doing one or two at a time. Waiting to accumulate enough work to do them in batches probably often contributes to the time customers wait. I wonder how many more might be outside the field of view. With careful prep and hand carding, rust bluing and browning is pretty labor intensive and time consuming. People who do it well seem to have no shortage of paying customers.

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

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.