One of the great pleasures of gun ownership is the appreciation of how they are built. With this in mind I took some photographs during a recent visit to the Holland & Holland factory to see my Royal Double in .500NE in build for the first time.

There's not a great deal of detail to see but the barrels have been fitted to the action.

The metalwork as you see it above has had no input from me at all at this stage. It was in production and fortunately the few decisions taken so far would have been my choice anyway.

The rifle is scheduled to be completed in April next year and one of the first decisions to be made was to select a suitable stock blank. Having looked at around 100 blanks, slowly driving myself crazy with the random nature of such a natural material I selected this one.

The first picture shows the blank sprayed with water and the second shows the other side which had already been oiled, hence the difference in shade.

I intend to be fitted for the gun at Holland & Holland's Shooting Ground next month so that the stock can start to take form. I'm 6ft7in so I believe the length of pull will be at least 15 1/2".

I'll post some more pictures with progress reports when there's something new to see