When you get to the decision point to have a nice gun restored by a top person like Dewey you don't let price be your guide. Dewey doesn't do half ass work and we should be willing to pay him to fix it right. Now being able to afford it might be another issue. Restorations and repairs are almost all labor cost. The materials might be fifty dollars but twenty hours labor will be well more than a thousand dollars.
When we look at a buggered screw we think that's not too hard, maybe a hour. When it gets done right it might be three to four hours. Maybe more. So a hundred dollar job becomes a four hundred dollar job. Work done right takes a lot of time and expertise. Most of what he does is hero smithing. Fix the last buggered repair which was done on the cheap or done by a smith who doesn't know how to do it right.
I am looking at a full restoration project that will cost between three thousand and four thousand dollars. The gun will never be worth the extra investment to anyone else. But the gun is rare, interesting and I shoot it fairly well. Maybe I can get three extra grands use out of it in this lifetime. Hope one of my boys likes it after I am done. If not someone will be getting a well restored gun for about half price.
