doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com now offer Teague lining in 16 bore!

The Royal Mail won't carry them out of the country, you've got to get them returned air freight hence the expense. At least that's what my friends recent experience was, maybe SKB has another method.

DLH

You'd have to be pretty desperate to pay $900 to ship a set of tubes one way from the UK to the US when you can fly your own ass there, pick them up, and fly back for 2/3 of that.

Greg, that's interesting. I have a son over there in Oxford. How do I fly over and pick up a gun or set of barrels and bring them back with me ?

$543.00 round trip was the cheapest that I could find including all taxes, BWI to London. BWI is cheap for me to get to so I used that as a starting point. Might find lower fares if you were flexible about departures points and dates. If you could carry two or three guns over and back it would be worth the expense and trip. Best if you did it several times a year and dropped off one set of guns and returned with ones left earlier. All paper work would have to be done in advance, but that should be straight forward when you get down to it.

My problem is that I would want to stay a few days and buy more guns or worse meet others with my same double gun disease.

I'd guess you could just check them in as luggage.

Every year millions of people fly with long objects - golf clubs, ski poles, skis, wakeboards, surfboards, etc. So I can't imagine it would be a big deal to check a 36" long case holding a set of tubes.

I almost flew to London last month out of Houston. The trip was canceled but the tickets were under $500 round trip at the time.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe you have to send them the whole gun so it can be proofed after the work is done.

If you were to go and pick it up you'd have to get a UK visitors shotgun permit beforehand as you'd actually have the gun in your possesion for a short time before flying home.

The permits aren't that easy to get unless you have a friend there on the ground willing to help. You get them through the local police in the area you're staying. Some area's are fairly simple but some are down right difficult. I had such a hard time getting my permit when I went over the last time that I had to call in BASC (I'm a member) and they handled it for me.


Destry

P.S. Using the agent here in the US is the way to go if they've got a cheaper shipping method. This lining process is really great, I've thought about having one done to shoot steel out of actually.

Destry is correct. You need the whole gun to go and not just the tubes. Taking a complete gun in person to the UK requires a vistors permit. If 900$ is my return cost(and I hope it is less with current exchange rates) I still think I can offer shipping for around 400$. I will need at least 3 guns to ship to make the numbers work. Overall, I think the process compares very favorably to sleeving.

SKB I was not trying to cut you out of the loop. You are making it available to us and should make money for your time. I just get tired of the cost of shipping guns over from there being so expensive. When you can go get it cheaper than have it sent over here by air freight then the numbers are out of wack.

I send a three to four pound package to Italy almost every week and the shipping runs $68-88.00 per package. So I do understand how much overseas shipping can cost. I suspect a gun which would weigh 10-15 pounds when packed would almost have to cost $300.00 at a minimum to ship. Then insurance on top of that has to be added.

I wonder if a gunsmith or agent for a gunsmith could not take multiple guns over there for less than that much per gun? Do the same thing several times and you could get all the problems figured out and the flow of guns back and forth could be fairly easy. Three or four trips a year would mean only a three month wait for the service and the mule could get a few days vacation looking a chance to cruise a whole new set of gun shops or take in a auction of two. If I was semi retired I love that type of trip.

Some have heard this before, 10 years ago I shipped a pre-1898 Damascus barreld gun direct to the Birmingham Proof House for nitro proof, postage cost me around $60 at the time.

Reproofing cost me less than $100 but the Proof House doesn't hold an exporters license for firearms, which at the time was free of cost, they just had to apply for it. I had to go through a dealer and it cost me $400.

If the guns have to go to a proof house the proof house could get the exporters license to return the gun, the cost would go down greatly and a lot of UK dealers would be losing some easy US money.

I have only had experience with England, does anyone know if it costs in the area of $900 to get a gun from Germany, Spain or Italy?

About 4 years ago I shipped a friend a Tolley double 8 bore directly from my post office to his home in Dorset, England perfectly legal and it cost about $100. Gun was considered an antique both here and in the UK plus it fell into their obsolete caliber laws as well. the getting them there ain't the problem, it's the getting them back that's tough. Right now there's a straight grip A-5 20 gauge in a shop over there for a super cheap price that I'd love to have but the shipping would make it more than the gun is worth even with the cheap price on the firearm itself.

Destry