doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Sleeving..........

I've talked with Kirk Merrington and his price is good too! But it's a calendar year wait. Is there someone else that does this you can recommend? I just need the sleeving done, I can the rust bluing. I don't have much in this particular gun and want to possibly have it ready by this fall. If not Kirk's the man!

chris

Anybody............please!

You might ask Briley's about sleeving. Don't know that they do it but believe so. Also Teague's (England) certainly does this work.

Briley does both chamber and brl sleeving
http://www.briley.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=17#9
(scroll up about 1/2 way)

Teague is the big name in the UK and lining comes to over $2,000
Here's an article and contact infro
http://www.shootingsportsman.com/index.php/page/issue/sku/SSM2004_0304/id/18
http://www.teaguechokes.co.uk.

Teague does what I would call relining, rather than sleeving. Sleeving, to me, is cutting off the barrels in front of the chambers and inserting new barrel tubes into the "monobloc" that's left. The top and bottom ribs are then re'attached to the new assembly. This is cheaper than making new barrels from scratch because you save the locking lugs, hinge, etc. What teague does is bore the inside from end to end and insert a thin liner inside. The outside of the barrels are preserved as original.

With the wall thickness running around .024 how much could be removed and replaced safely. Any void in the soldering or epoxy would be trouble with out dropping one gauge in size, sounds a bit iffy to me, don't think i would chance it. Do you know anyone who has had this done. Rich

Craxon, For sleeving work in this country Merrington is the man! With that said there are several good smiths that do sleeving,David Yale sleeves using the tig welding process on the barrel to mono-bloc joints for a seam-less transistion,Merrington does it the conventional solder meathod were the joint will show some.

Briley uses the same process as Merrington but are terrible to work with. I had briley sleeve a set of twelve gauge barrels for me. I went with them simply for the fact that they promised a four month turn around. They did hit the four month mark but their workman ship was absolutely terrible. The bottom rib was mis-aligned, the rib solder joints not stuck properly,the ejectors worked perfect when I sent the gun to them. When returned to me they snapped every time the gun was opened. Etc.

I sent the gun back to them three times and many phone calls to finally get them exceptable to me. The four month turn around ended up being seven months. They promised to refund my shipping cost's for shipping them back the three additional times and they never lived up to that promise. The bluing is still sub-standard in my opinion,they said it's due to the two different metal's between the old barrels and the new, but the joint shows like a chicken turd in a bowl of butter milk. I think because of thin bluing and not having enough coats/cycles of the rusting solution.

Briley tried to place some of the blame on me saying the ejectors probably didn't work when I sent the gun to them in the first place. I countered that it was due to the fact that the forearm lug/loop had to be removed and soldered onto the new barrels and they didn't time them afterward to complete the job.

I feel that Briley is still a good place to have choke tube's installed because this is what they specialize in.

I can't say this stong enough though.

I would NEVER,EVER send Briley any type of double gunsmith work again period!!!!!!!!

I really hesitate to even post this again, it's been on this BBS twice with many others adding their own experiences to the thread both times it came up. I had a really bad experience with Briley's as well, a bit over three years ago now. Again, it was for "custom" work outside their so called field of expertise, which would be off-the-shelf choke tubes. It took me six months after I initially got my barrels back from them the first time to ever get the job done right, and even then they sent the barrels back to me with my brand new rust blued barrels scratched so badly I had to have them reblued again. My job involved having them make up and install a permanent choke "sleeve" in the left barrel of a very nice pre war Merkel 16 that someone had honed out too much choke, leaving only .002 in the left barrel. I simply asked them to make and permanently install a choke sleeve to give me more choke in that barrel, and make the job completely invisible inside and out. Not so terribly complicated for a good machinist, or so I thought.

There are a great many posters here who very regularly worship at the feet of Briley's, suggesting sending all manner of shotgun work to them. Just because a company is well known for one segment of shotgun work (screw-in choke tubes, in this case) does not mean they are a good all around double gun shop. I'll also never again send any work to Briley's, and would not recommend them for any work. There are lots of other good shops around that also do good choke tube work. If it was my gun, I would send it to Kirk Merrington or David Yale for sleeving and wait my turn in line.

Time is nothing to having it done correctly the first time. Unless you want Teagule to line it I would send it to Kirk Merrington or David Yale for sleeving and wait my turn in line.

David Yale Yellowjacket, CO 970-562-4225