I've spent a good bit of time around high end shotguns and the Longthorne guns are very well made IMO.

I can see what they are doing...using CNC for the parts that can be CNC'd including a lot of the wood, then finishing by hand.

There are firms who are using some very good techniques that yield amazing results...lasers for engraving, as an example. It works exceptionally well and you can do things like copy a picture of a person...that would be hard to do by hand.

There are always going to be the folks who consider any gun that wasn't made under carbide lighting by a man with a tool he chiseled out of stone, to be "too modern"...I don't agree. While I don't want something just slapped together, there can be some real advantages to modern lasers and CNC, provided they are used appropriately.

If I were buying a new British shotgun, I would have to look very hard at the Longthorne shotguns. There is no reason to avoid CNC for a lot of the parts on a sidelock shotgun. It's just silly to sit there with a file and a block of steel when the end product isn't going to be better.