One of the problems is there are so few gunsmiths that specialize & do good work on our beloved Parkers. Because of this, the smiths that get the good reviews are swamped with work & turning customers away.
I've always suspected that they all for the most part have good intensions when they give us a time frame to have the work done, but I also know from experience that they very seldom hit the mark for their promised time frame. I just appreciate it when they do hit it.
Every now & then you get a pleasant surprise. I recently sent a set of Parker barrels to Kirk Merrington to have a lite bore clean-up hone. He wouldn't give me a time line until he saw the barrels. He received the barrels on a Monday, I waited to call him until that Friday to see if he had looked at the barrels. I was shocked when he told me he was packaging them for shipping back to me because he was done with the hone job. He said that I lucked out in that he got the barrels on the day he was starting to do a batch of hone jobs & he was able to include mine in the batch. He said if it had been a few days later it might have been a few months before he had put together another batch to do. Some times you just get lucky!!
IMO; We can all do these smiths a favor by taking a deep breath & being patient with them up to a point. Good work takes time & we aren't their only customer that wants our gun fixed right now. In the mean time grab one of your other guns and go enjoy it until the other one is done.
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