doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Shake Your Head Gunsmith Stories

Hi all, just for fun here. What are some of your shake your head gunsmithing projects that you've had done to some of your doubles. Don't want to drag up any painful memories, just some that had you shaking your head.

I have two.

The first was when I had a guy recommended to me for stock refinishing. Well sent the gun off (it was a 12b hammergun, I still have)got a call saying the oil soaked forearm was beyond help and he could make me a new one. Okay go ahead, got the gun back, the forearm looked like the slide off a pumpgun with really crude checkering. It looked terrible. Had to send it off to a real gunsmith to have a new one fitted. Oh, the stock finish BTW just came off, not dried nor would it dry, you could take you hand and just wipe it off. Had it refinished again!

The second one was I wanted a recoil pad put on to extend the LOP, well the recoil pad with spacers was close to 4" long and get this, glued on to the stock, no screws, needless to say, it came off and had the job done right by someone else.

And yours?

Best!

Greg

Oh, gosh, here we go.

I had two Winchester 23s that were choked M/F. I wanted Skt/Skt and took the guns to a nationally recognized barrel guy. That's four barrels. When they came back, one of the barrels had never been touched. Another had the reamer only run part way through so as to leave a sharp shoulder with 90 degree corners midway through the choke. By rights he should have made the work right, but how smart would it be to give the guy another crack at the guns?

I took a gun to a local to check out the chamber length and he must have been as blind as Mr. Magoo-I watched him scratch the outside of a barrel when he somehow missed the chamber and put a scratch on the outside of the right barrel with the chamber gauge.

I bought a gun and when I tore it apart (A&D boxlock) to see why it wouldn't cock I found an orphan top lever spring squeezed into the action as a hammer spring.

Of course that gun had also been "professionally" finished with GunKote (glorified spray paint) over top of pits so bad I had to take all the engraving off the action to get rid of them.

CHAZ

Took a beautiful 30" Miroku field gun in for a new pad and it came back with ported barrels. I hate ported barrels.

I have a baggo stories, but they're no fun to tell if I can't mention names, and I won't do that.

Please no names!

Actually Greg names should be mentioned to spare future people the heartache of having their gun ruined by a nitwit.

I took my Greener in to be rejointed. While there, I asked the gunsmith to have several replacement screws engraved to match others on the gun. He rejointed the gun perfectly. He also used the narrow edge of a mill file to cut three more wide slots in each head to make a sort of star pattern. Fugly!! I ended up making new screws and engraving them myself. He was a good machinist but a bit heavy handed on the finishing side.

I have seen that done and was not impressed.