Delivering and installing on the Continent

Where it is practical we deliver and install ourselves, exactly as we do in the UK. It is a longer journey and it is priced accordingly, but the advantage is real: the people who made the piece are the people who fit it, and any adjustment on the day is made by someone who knows how it was built.

Where that is not practical, we ship. In that case you get full setting-out drawings and fixing details for a local joiner, and we stay available while it goes in. We would always rather fit it ourselves, but where we cannot, we make sure whoever does has everything they need.

Larger runs are designed to break down for transport from the first drawing, so joints fall where they can be reassembled cleanly rather than being cut about at the last minute. Crating is made to suit the piece, everything is documented, and we work with freight partners who handle furniture rather than general cargo.

Climate, and why it belongs in the specification

European houses cover a very wide climatic range, from Alpine chalets that are unheated for months to Mediterranean properties that are hot and dry for half the year. Both are harder on timber and on blued steel than an English winter.

Solid timber moves with humidity. That is not a defect, it is what timber does, and good cabinetmaking accommodates it — panels held so they can move, joints cut to allow for it, and finishes chosen to suit. The difference between a cabinet that behaves and one that opens a joint in its first summer is decided at the drawing stage.

Ventilation matters for the guns as much as for the furniture. A sealed, unheated room is very good at putting rust on blued steel. For a valuable collection in a property that stands empty for part of the year, it is worth discussing active humidity control before anything is made rather than after.

Tell us where the piece is going and what the building does through the year. It changes what we specify.

What travels

Glazed cabinets

Dentil cornices and fluted pilasters, in quarter-sawn oak.

Fitted runs

Designed to break down for transport and reassemble cleanly.

Antiqued finishes

So a new piece sits with older furniture rather than against it.

Solid timber

Fielded and arched panels in the English tradition.

Wellington chests

Cartridge and accessory storage, matched to the cabinet.

Interiors

Racks drawn around the collection, whatever it contains.

Questions we are asked

How an overseas commission works

It begins the same way as any other: send us your gun list, photographs of the room, and dimensions. From that we can give a realistic price before anybody commits to anything.

Drawings follow. Because we cannot drop in for a second look, overseas commissions are drawn in more detail than domestic ones, and we would rather over-communicate at that stage than discover a problem after a container has sailed. Full-size setting-out is done on the workshop wall exactly as it is for a Suffolk job.

The piece is made, finished and fitted out complete in Suffolk. Where a cabinet has to break down for shipping we design the joints for it from the outset, so it goes together on site without compromise rather than being cut about at the last minute.

Crating is made to suit the piece. Everything is documented for customs, and we work with freight partners who handle furniture rather than general cargo. The difference matters when the contents are hand-polished.

Europe and further afield

For Europe we will generally deliver and install ourselves, in the same way we do in the UK. It is a longer journey and it is priced accordingly, but the advantage is that the people who made the piece are the people who fit it.

Where that is not practical we ship, and provide setting-out drawings and fixing details for a local joiner, staying on the end of a telephone while it goes in. We would always rather do the fitting; where we cannot, we make sure whoever does has everything they need.

We also work in the superyacht sector, which has taught us a great deal about joinery that has to travel, go through an opening it barely fits, and then survive movement and humidity once installed. Those habits carry across directly to export work.

If you are somewhere we have not mentioned, ask. We have sent work a long way.

What travels

Glazed cabinets

Dentil cornices and fluted pilasters in quarter-sawn oak.

Antiqued finishes

Finished so a new piece sits with older furniture rather than against it.

Fitted runs

Larger runs designed to break down for shipping and reassemble on site.

Wellington chests

Cartridge and accessory storage, matched to the cabinet.

Solid timber

Fielded and arched panels in the English tradition.

Interiors

Racks drawn around the collection, whatever it contains.

Questions we are asked

The steel

The liner is the security. Over 2mm throughout, and folded rather than simply cut and welded — folding stiffens the panel considerably and produces a continuous edge rather than a joined one.

Doors are folded steel with anti-cut pins, so that the hinge side of the door is held by fixed steel engaged into the frame as well as by the hinges themselves. Both sides of a door matter, and a cabinet that concentrates everything on the lock side is only half made.

On larger cabinets we use driven boltwork, so that a single turn of the key throws bolts along the full height of the opening rather than engaging at one point. On a tall door that is a meaningful difference.

The locks

Five-lever mortice locks to BS 3621 — the same standard specified for final exit doors on a domestic property, and the benchmark most insurers work to.

BS 3621 is a real, testable standard rather than a marketing claim, which is precisely why we quote it. If you are comparing cabinets, ask any maker for the lock model and its standard. It is a fair question and a quick one to answer.

Keys are worth a word. No lock helps if the key lives on a hook beside the cabinet. Keys should be kept separately and securely, well away from the cabinet itself.

What you get on completion

Every cabinet leaves with a signed specification sheet: steel thickness, glass specification, lock model and its BS number, fixing type and centres.

It exists so your firearms enquiry officer can verify what has actually been built rather than take our word for it, and so you have a document for your insurer. Keep it with your certificate.

Before manufacture, we agree that specification with your FEO in writing. It costs a phone call, and it turns the home visit into a confirmation rather than a negotiation.

Construction detail

The rack

Set out so no two guns touch, and drawn for scoped rifles.

Glazed doors

Laminated anti-bandit glass, 21.5mm and above, in folded steel doors.

Separate ammunition storage

Its own lock and its own steel, where the certificate requires it.

Questions we are asked

Where it goes in the cabinet

The usual answer is a compartment in the base, below the barrel rack, with its own lock. It keeps the weight low, it uses depth that would otherwise be wasted below the guns, and it means one piece of furniture rather than two.

On larger commissions we make a separate ammunition cabinet entirely, matched in timber and finish to the gun cabinet, which suits collections where the quantity of ammunition makes a drawer impractical.

Either way the compartment is steel-lined and locked to the same standard as the rest of the cabinet, and it is fixed to the structure of the building along with everything else.

Cartridges, chokes and everything else

Beyond what the certificate requires, a shooting household generates a remarkable quantity of things that need a home: cartridges by the slab, chokes, keys, cleaning kit, rods and solvents, ear defenders, spare parts, cases and slips.

Left unaddressed it all ends up in a boot room floor, which is how good guns get knocked about. Drawer banks solve it, and they are the part of a commission clients tell us afterwards they use most.

A Wellington chest is the classic form: a tall, narrow chest of shallow drawers, made in the same timber and finish as the cabinet. Shallow drawers suit cartridges and small kit far better than deep ones, because nothing gets buried.

Where a room is being fitted rather than furnished, the same storage is built into the run — drawers below the rack, a slide for a cleaning rod, and a leather-topped bench to work on.

Ammunition and cartridge storage

A compartment in the base

Its own lock and its own steel, below the barrel rack.

Wellington chest

Shallow drawers for cartridges, chokes, scopes and cleaning kit.

Drawers under the rack

Where the room doubles as a study, the drawer bank does both jobs.

One piece, not two

Guns above, ammunition below, in a single fixed cabinet.

Questions we are asked

The joinery is doing two jobs

On a glazed cabinet the timber frames the collection. On a solid cabinet the timber is the entire object, and it has to stand up to being looked at as furniture rather than as storage.

That means the door panel does most of the work. A fielded panel — raised in the centre with a bevelled margin — throws a shadow line and gives the door depth, and it is the detail most commonly found on the older furniture these pieces sit alongside. An arched fielded panel does the same with a little more formality. A flat panel suits a painted finish and a plainer room.

Around the panel, the mouldings, cornice and plinth are matched to what is already in the room rather than to a house style of ours. Where a cabinet stands alongside eighteenth-century furniture, that is the difference between a piece that belongs and a piece that has been delivered.

Behind all of it the construction is identical to a glazed cabinet: steel over 2mm lining the carcass, folded steel doors with anti-cut pins on the hinge side, and BS 3621 locks. The timber is the finish. The steel is the security.

Solid-fronted cabinets

Arched fielded panel

A single tall door with an arched fielded panel over a carved plinth.

Solid doors, lined inside

Plain outside, baize-lined and racked within.

Double doors

Two fielded panels, matched across the pair.

Or set into panelling

Taken further, a solid front can disappear into the wall entirely.

Questions we are asked

What laminated anti-bandit glass actually does

Laminated glass is two or more sheets bonded to an interlayer. When it is struck it does not fall out of the frame — the fragments stay bonded to the interlayer and the pane stays in the opening. That is the entire point of using it in a door somebody may attack, and it is the difference between a barrier and a hole.

Anti-bandit is a recognised glazing category rather than a marketing adjective, and it describes glass built to resist repeated manual attack rather than a single accidental impact. It is not the same as toughened glass, which is stronger than ordinary glass but shatters into fragments and leaves the opening clear.

We use 21.5mm as standard. Where a door is taller the glass gets thicker, because the resistance of a pane falls as its unsupported area grows — the same specification in a larger sheet is not the same specification in practice.

The weight is considerable, and it changes the joinery. Doors carrying laminated glass are designed around that load from the first drawing: heavier stiles, more hinges, and hinge positions worked out for the finished weight rather than adapted afterwards. A door that drops on its hinges within two years was designed for a lighter piece of glass.

Glazed cabinets

Single glazed door

A single door in solid oak with dentil cornice above and a moulded plinth below.

Four-door run

Four glazed doors over a panelled base for a larger collection.

Twin doors, antiqued

Dentil frieze and twin glazed doors, finished to sit with older furniture.

Limed oak

A paler timber and a fitted base, glazed to the same specification.

Fitted into the room

Scribed to wall and floor so it reads as joinery rather than furniture.

Behind the glass

Lined interior, guns standing without touching, scoped rifles left scoped.

Questions we are asked