Shooting Show, 2014

[The Gun Pimp]

From Vince:

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Why on earth does Mr Westlake choose to put his extensive engineering skills onto the cheapest revolvers around?!!!

Firstly an Armscor and then an Alfa- Proj.... The mind boggles.

'Cause he needs to sell 'em! Shooters are a tight bunch and seemingly for many - price comes above all else.

[Primer]

I was there yesterday too and seeing as the last shooting show I went to was the Phoenix a couple of years ago, it blew my socks off, loved the 50 cal society stand. I took a couple of non-shooters who had a great time and we even had a good belly laugh at the folk in the airsoft creche.

Accidently bought a GP K22 from Caledonian Arms with an extra 4 mags and an Alpha MLR from Westlake with 3 extra cylinders, just got to wait for Hants to process the variation, which will probabily take longer than Alan to get any stock in!

All in all a good day out, would like to see a PSG demo next year, plenty of space for it?

I must say Caledonian seem to have had plenty of K22's available for sale at the show, which is very annoying when they can't seem to supply them to people who have had them on order for months. We've had 9 X-trim + on order with 5 x 20 rd mags per gun since October with promises of delivery every month since then and failure to deliver and excuses every month. They sent us 3 last week but with only 2 x 19rd mags (2 mags no use for the comps we do), they couldnt send them all as needed stock for the show, supposedly the rest of our order is due in this week but I'm not holding my breath with the amount of people who have said they brought one at the show, plus they have gone up quite a bit since we ordered them.

[IsleShoot]

I've only paid a deposit and got one on back order so I'd imagine you're ahead of me in the queue Primer? Rosie said they were taking delivery of 75 this week which had already been sold so hopefully yours is in that batch? I'm in Hants patch so my variation will be 10wks minimum so won't get a K22 in hand till after Easter at the earliest.

[Mike357]

Scott was hoping to have the "race" K22s in stock before the show but no cigar. I'll go over and pick one up the minute they land :-)


Sent from my boing using "An application"

[Sim G]

'Cause he needs to sell 'em! Shooters are a tight bunch and seemingly for many - price comes above all else.

Really? 16 years ago there were many of us that easily spent £2.5K on a IPSC race gun and recently two threads on this forum have got people gooey, a new AI rifle at around £3K and another three grand gun, a Smith & Wesson LBR from Germany....

Like anyone else, shooters do like a bargain, but perhaps the "price point" being baulked at is because that price tag is attached to "shoite" as far as they are concerned, no matter how good Mr Westlakes conversion work is..?

And if you have to go to the Philippines or the Czech Republic to source revolvers, surely closer to home in the more free parts of The a British Isles, quality revolvers are available?

[The Gun Pimp]

'Cause he needs to sell 'em! Shooters are a tight bunch and seemingly for many - price comes above all else.

Really? 16 years ago there were many of us that easily spent £2.5K on a IPSC race gun and recently two threads on this forum have got people gooey, a new AI rifle at around £3K and another three grand gun, a Smith & Wesson LBR from Germany....

Like anyone else, shooters do like a bargain, but perhaps the "price point" being baulked at is because that price tag is attached to "shoite" as far as they are concerned, no matter how good Mr Westlakes conversion work is..?

And if you have to go to the Philippines or the Czech Republic to source revolvers, surely closer to home in the more free parts of The a British Isles, quality revolvers are available?

Yeh, really! How many shooters use surplus ammo or secondhand brass? Why would you? Except to save a few pence! Yes - there are plenty of shooters who have a £3000 plus gun but I'd bet less than 10% of users of this forum fall into that category - poll ovenpaa?

The problem with Alan's project is as always - supply (of the donor revolver) and demand (from the small number of British shooters - who just have to have a pistol).

He did originally carry out his ML conversion on Taurus revolvers but the price was around £1600 and that was several years ago. Problem is, the gun must never have been a s.5 gun and Taurus eventually refused to supply cylinder-less guns in such small numbers. The Armscor leaves the factory as a complete ML revolver - the Czech one the same - with an ML prefix to the serial number but less cylinder.

The Armscor ML was a reasonable £500 - there is currently a waiting list. The latest one will be around £800 - the price that we would pay for the equivalent S&W - if only we could.

With Alan's CNC'd cylinder, the Czech project looks and feels right. However, I suspect sales will be small - it would be difficult to build a competition around this type of gun and they will probably only appeal to a minority of shooters as an occasional plinking tool.

Having said that, I wholeheartedly support Alan and his attempts to put revolvers - as we knew them - back into the hands of British shooters.

[Sim G]

With Alan's CNC'd cylinder, the Czech project looks and feels right. However, I suspect sales will be small - it would be difficult to build a competition around this type of gun and they will probably only appeal to a minority of shooters as an occasional plinking tool.

We saw the prototype Alfa at Phoenix last year. Terry was very enthusiastic, but he is about Alfa anyway as he imports them. This gun was discussed at great length in my club where 30 to 40 of us are ex pistol shooters and we've seen all of the "put pistols back into British shooters hands" items that have hit the market. No one in the club has an Armscor and only one fella has put in an order for an Alfa. And there is only one reason why, the quality of the donor revolver. That is why sales will be small.

[The Gun Pimp]

The 'quality' thing - i.e. the donor gun - is difficult to get around. It must never have been an s5 item so it means finding a manufacturer who would play ball. Large manufacturers - like S&W just aren't interested. If they were, they would supply us with their existing 12 inch barrel revolver with a six-inch bit of steel on the butt and it would be UK legal - as an LBP.

Someone like Korth would be ideal but can you imaging the price?

As a matter of interest what would forum users be prepared to pay for an ML pistol of S&W quality? The Armscor was affordable at £500 and sold quite well. The latest one will be around £800.

I must admit, I enjoyed putting a few rounds through the Armscor - when loaded, it's a 'normal' revolver. It's obviously more fiddly to reload but once you got into the routine it would be just like doing your reloading at the range rather than at home. With pre-weighed charges it works quite well.

[Gaz]

Is there a reason the parts bin argument (a la straight-pull SLRs) can't be applied to quality revolvers brought in for UK conversion?

[The Gun Pimp]

Explain the 'parts bin' thing Gaz.

If S&W would sell say ten revolvers in bits which had never been assembled (as s.5 weapons) then you could do it.

But, if you bought ten S&W revolvers in the US, dismantled 'em on the boat coming back and threw the cylinders into the Atlantic - then converted 'em to ML pistols in the UK, they wouldn't be legal as the serial number would confirm that they left the US as s.5.