Upgrading to GHE

[John Nagel]

Hello all,

I am thinking about trading a friend for a Parker VHE that is in need of a restock. I have always admired the G grade guns and I am toying around the idea of upgrading the engraving. Anyone have thoughts on this or examples of this?

I am not sure how far I would want to go with it.. In terms of changing the forend or stock to spec.. it would still say Vulcan Steel on the rib..

John

[Jim DiSpagno]

Restocking properly is not cheap and engraving done by the few artists I would trust is not cheap either. Even if you got the gun for nothing and did it correctly, you would be upside down. If that doesn’t matter then it’s a matter of taste but remember you will never recoup your investment. JMHO. Jim

[Reggie Bishop]

I would suggest you just buy a GH. There are plenty of them out there to choose from. I have a nice little 20 GHE that I like a lot!

[Brian Dudley]

Upgrading to a G hardly seems worth the effort and expense. Anything below C or B really does not make sense from the standpoint of “just go buy one, there are enough out there”.

But... I have people pay to fully restock/restore V and G grade guns all the time. Because they want to, and I am not going to argue with that. But that is a touch different than upgrading. If you are going to upgrade... aim higher.

[John Nagel]

I understand that perspective.. I guess the difference for me is that I would like to have a G with woodcock engraved on one side and ruffed grouse on the other.. Which I know doesnt exist.

[John Davis]

I agree 100% with each of the above comments but the bottom line is: it's your gun and your money, so do whatever makes you happy. If I were to go down this road, I'd send the gun to someone like Brian and let him handle the whole project. There will be several different hands involved.

[Brian Dudley]

A pair of GH 16g. guns that I finished last year for a customer.

He wanted Ruffed Grouse on the bottom of one and dancing Sharptail Grouse on the bottom of the other. The frame engraving needed recutting after polishing, so Gournet added Fanned tails to the birds of the one and the other needed a lot more polishing and the bottom scene got wiped out completely so putting the sharptails on was no issue.

89300

I posted this because this is kind of an example of what you want done. And I fully understand why you would want to do it. To make a GHE that is YOURS and special. And it truly would make a killer looking gun for sure.

Either way, what you want done could be done with an original G grade or as an upgrade. Either way.

And may I offer the piece of advice and make sure you work in the right order on this. Don't start with the engraver. Work with a good "general contractor" that would do either all of the work themselves, or a lot of the work in house and then coordinate the whole project appropriately the way it should be.
I see too many examples of owners piece-mealing out the work themselves or starting with the engraver for an upgrade project. And the results usually end up less than desirable.

[John Davis]

That’s exactly what I was trying to get at: a general contractor.