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!!!!!!!!
