Hi Nitro,

You may wish to take a look at www.bozardandco.com It's a bit late now, but Philip may well have been able to solve your problem.

Bozard and Co were originally London gunmakers who went broke sometime in the mid nineteenth century. The "new" Bozard and Co is owned and run by Philip Turner who spent 14 years as a barrel maker for H & H and James Purdey. Everthing he makes is genuinely of the same standard but at half the price. Owing to the declining market, the London makers out source work and he uses some of the same craftsmen, who presumably he knows from his days in the London trade. The really good news is that he will build a double rifle on a box lock action if you wish. Hollands, Purdey, and Churchill will no longer do this. It will have exactly the same London "best" gun feel as an H & H side lock, and indeed the same craftsmanship and wood, at a fraction of the price: circa 18,000 pounds stirling. Delivery is around two years.

Interestingly there is an argument that a box lock requires less wood to be removed than a side lock and wood is more vunerable than steel...etc. Any experienced views? With regard to recoil. Although for some extraordinary reason a .500 Royal feels much "nicer" than a 500/465 of similar weight, perhaps it is the heavier bullet, some doubles were just built too light and perhaps this could have been the problem.

One reason London best guns are "drying up" is that a new best side lock double is now so expensive that its investment value is doubtful. So fewer people are ordering them, except of course the very wealthy. Because of the new price the used doubles are becoming more desirable and scarce.

But gentlemen nothing, absolutely nothing, feels like a best London double.

Martin