I thought so too, I'll have to see what my all in cost would be before making a decision.. Finding a decent enough VH to build off of, having a custom stock made, preparing metal for engraving, etc.

Rich, Gunner's Parker is truly a work of art, and a beautiful tribute to a great dog.

My Becker Fox project involved #1, buying the gun, the right gun with absolutely no mechanical or excessive wear problems. #2, having the entire gun prepped, annealing, all sculpting, filing, polishing, screw making, planning. This involved many meetings and emails to plan details. #3, off to the stockmaker with a blank that you painstakingly selected and paid for. Many meetings with the stockmaker with your special needs, dimensions, and features desired. Provide the stockmaker with the trigger guard and buttplate that you want him to use. Many more meetings and emails to plan your checkering patterns and inlays. My project is at this point right now and I have no idea what further effort will be required to get the gun engraved and finished. Good luck.

Get Rich to tell you about the construction of Gunner's Parker. I owned Gunner's Parker for many years before it became what it now is. The raw material is important in a project. Gunner's Parker needed no mechanical work that I am aware of. Start your project with a good solid gun.

Bill's advice is spot on when considering a custom gun. You don't want to start with a project gun to begin with. The VH I bought from Bill was the ideal beginning as it was perfect mechanically. This isn't an inexpensive undertaking and be advised that a custom gun is just that a gun that's for you and possibly your heirs. This isn't something you undertake with the idea of being able to sell sometime down the road and profit on. You rarely get your money back from such a project BUT it's a unique item to you and I personally wouldn't want it any other way. Gunner's gun and I have had some great days afield and on the clays course.

I'm thinking Daisy needs a gun as well, perhaps a long barreled Fox in a 20 or a 16. Thinking usually gets me into trouble especially when it's gun related:)

Thanks everyone for the advice.

Bill nailed just about everything. One thing I'll add is time and lots of it. The good thing is it allows lots of changes to be made because ideas evolve over time. On my Fox D upgrade, the walnut changed 3 different times in the 3 years involved in the project. The gun went from a straight grip to a round knob and back again a few times. Stockmakers time became elongated, engravers time became elongated. Ultimately the project came out perfect in every way possible from my point of view. PS. The other good thing about taking a long time is one has to write checks pretty far apart. I gave Gournet a deposit to get into his pipeline when I knew he wasn't going to see the gun for at least a year. In summary patience is is a virtue on these custom guns because these folks are true craftsmen and the really good ones are backed up always.

And we need to always remember - We are not their only customers.






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Agree 100 percent Dean. I have other guns to shoot and I have lots of patience. Although I do recall one time when a certain engraver (not Gournet or Strosin) had a gun of mine in the white for over a year and never looked at it. I ended up picking it up and having to have the action and barrels repolished before they could go to another engraver to be finished. That was not a pleasant experience.

If you have a plan and stick to it the time frame can be reduced dramatically. Gunner's gun from start to finish took a year.