doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Mike Orlan --- please respond.

From his past, Mike seems to be a good, honest, smith. Hopefully, he's in good health and Ken's barrels are fine.

A story a friend told me this last spring comes to mind. He took an inexpensive o/u gun to a local smith known for barrel work who also happened to be his good friend. The smith was tasked with putting screw-in chokes in the little 410 o/u. Something went wrong and the barrels were ruined. The answer was replacing the gun. The gunsmith found and purchased a replacement gun for his friend. How's that for a standup guy?

I've sent a number of barrels to him for common metal work - chambers, chokes, honing, sights, soldering, etc. I always received the work back in a timely fashion. Perhaps he is subbing out some of the not so common work such as finishing and his subs are the problem. I have no problem with him or his work.

Greg-




I wouldn't have known.
Have a beer.
Hopefully Ken gets his tubes back.



Tinker

I'm not personally aware of gunsmiths that sub out work they don't want to do without informing the customer. That would be unethical in my book. When I send my guns off, I'm expecting the gunsmith I sent them to to be at least supervising the work.

My own one experience with Mike Orlen was very disappointing.

I haven never mentioned it to anyone on the web but I had a similar experience with Mr. Orlen about 6 years ago. He told me the job would take 4 to 6 weeks (chokes opened and rust blue). It took almost a year. The problem was not the quality of his work which was GREAT, or even the wait, it was simply to total lack of communication via email or phone. If he would have told me it would take a year, I probably would have still used him due to his excellent reputation. Hell, I would still use him as I feel this is not an honesty issue as I believe him to be an honest guy who gets behind now and again. The irony is, I have emailed him since with other jobs I needed done and he never bothered to get back to me. Bummer for me, as now I use other smiths with whom I'm satisfied.

Everyone makes mistakes. That said, a ruined set of barrels pretty much sinks a nice shotgun. Good gunsmiths don't take on work they cant handle and don't mess-up what they can; they can't afford mistakes.

I sent Mike two sets of barrels for choke work and received his reputed excellent price, workmanship, and turn-around time. Another set of 20 bore barrels sent to him was pretty much ruined in my mind when all of the choke was reamed from one tube contrary to written intructions and measurements. He offered to jug choke the barrel but I sold the gun to a woodcock hunter rather than wince everytime I looked at it.

I now use Briley and can only hope the extra price equals extra attention.

Best,

C.

He sounds like a restaurant that serves great food half the time, and dog poop half the time. The trick is to only go on the days they are out of poop.

Mike Orlen has done perhaps 8 or 9 sets of barrels for me over the years, from screw-in chokes on one set to opening chokes on 3 or 4, repairing a loose rib, lengthening forcing cones, and polishing out bore pitting on several. The first few jobs were very quick, then followed by one job that took much, much longer than anticipated, and with poor communication, until it finally was received and a good job of it, then followed by more jobs delivered quickly. I think he simply gets over-booked from time to time. The bad communication is not a good thing, but he says he is just not good at emailing and he can't hear the phone??? As for Briley's, I have only sent a single job to them, and will never go back!! They not only botched a very nice set of pre war Merkel barrels, but were unpleasant when discussing it. Their reputation is certainly much better than the single job they did for me, so I guess the point is that anyone can indeed mess up from time to time. I'll tell you what makes me want to stick with Mike and cut him some slack: it's the many times he has posted here and shared methods and instructions on how to perform a certain task. I remember well the photos he posted and instructions on how to make and use a stock bending jig some time back. I have never seen Briley's share squat on this forum! Mike has, and his quickly finished jobs outweigh the single slow job for me. I really appreciate his sharing of his knowledge.

He has done some work for me on a number of occasions and I have been well pleased. One job (a few years back) took longer than I expected but the quality of the work was worth the wait. I will continue to use him.

I have only had internal barrel work done by Mr. Orlen. Over the years...I believe I've sent him 5 or 6 sets of tubes...He was always courteous when we spoke, always returned my phone calls and returned my emails when I've gone that route. I was never without any of my barrels for longer than 10 days, including the shipping time. Every job I've sent to him has been done as I instructed, the choke constrictions I requested always dead on. Late this last summer I sent him a set of Browning Superposed barrels, I sent them on a Monday and they were on my doorstep the following Monday and the work was first rate and of impeccable quality...as usual.

I'm sorry to hear of everyone elses misfortunes in dealing with Mr. Orlen, with that said, he is still my go to guy for internal barrel work.

Hang out on this forum long enough and dang near every working gunsmith out there has had a complaint written about them at one time or another. I've have seen some absolute iron mongering (aka gunsmithing buffoonery) performed on a couple extremely fine guns from guys who if I mentioned their hallowed names here, I would no doubt get more of my precious rating stars yanked out of my profile box faster than I can say "Jumanji"!!