Fellow Sophisticates,
My gunsmith machinist wants to buy me a new cylinder. I gave him a brand new Colt SAA .38 cylinder to be bored out to .44 Special and his reamer broke. He says my cylinder it most likely trashed and he feels awful, stressed. I told him to take a deep breath and relax, I’m out a cylinder, he’s out his reamer. He’s out more money than I am. Funny thing is I ordered another cylinder from Brownell’s figuring it’d take another 9 months to get, and I got it from Brownell’s in a week. Cylinder bushings are back ordered since last –what, July? I’m still waiting for bushings.
Does he owe me a new cylinder? Eddie Janis says he cannot be responsible for tool breakage during re-boring. The job was a custom job, kind of aftermarket work. If Colt had destroyed my cylinder during a re-blue job I’d expect them to replace it, but I don’t feel that way about this job.
This machinist gunsmith signed my State Certification as a firearms instructor some 20 years ago, and we shoot together still.
What is the right approach here?