France, circa 1997, when I was there, is a universe from where we are today.
I did watch Herve’ Bruchet stock my R10 Darne in about 4 hours. Hell, I’ve got film pictures of it, somewhere around here. We dropped the stock, just the butt stock, at the checkering studio and went to lunch. We picked it up about 4:00 in the afternoon. I finished it, in oil, when I got home from France.
The wood monger showed up in the morning, at the shop in St. Etienne, on Mondays. A beat up old Toyota pickup would show up, honking his horn. He was only there to sell very high grade wood, the Bruchets bought regular, dry and pre turned blanks in 250-500 quantities every 5-6 years. The regular wood was pretty decent French walnut procured locally. The wood monger would show them 5-20 pieces that were unturned, ranging from extra nice to spectacular, and the cost was no more than $250 for any given piece. I figured I could make as much importing blanks from the wood monger as I did on guns, but, never pursued that notion.
A guy here, doing one offs for US customers, is worth every penny of what he gets. Yes, the guy who stocks the same type of gun every day in a gun makers shop will be faster, and cheaper, and probably makes less than a custom gunsmith putting old guns and wood right, but, that is his choice. We have English trained gunsmiths right here in the states who threw that yolk off and never looked back to England or Europe.
They didn’t come here to make less money. Nobody does.
We are well past the time when you hire an actual craftsman to put a mid tier double gun back into working condition. I’ve made my living for 47 years as a Journeyman in a trade, and for about 43 of those years, have listened to people piss and moan about how expensive labor is. None of those people ever wanted to share with me how much money they made, or, what they produce and how that impacts the bottom line, and I’ve had many of them beg myself or others to stay, when we finally had enough and moved on. It is economically unfeasible to pay someone to do much work ( and a restock is much work, no matter what anyone thinks) to a mid level gun, and, rather than piss and moan about the money someone makes doing what they do, your time would be better spent finding a better example of a gun to use.
Sorry to be so blunt, but, nobody can tell me I’m wrong.
Best,
Ted
