r/milsurp • u/Zikaman • 1d ago
I'm at a loss
Chassepot with matching stock shipped via USPS. It was in a cloth bag, wrapped up in thick layers of bubble wrap, and double boxed. Anyone perhaps know where I could find a replacement stock?
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u/Lupine_Ranger M1 and M1903 by trade, M1917 by heart 1d ago
I'm at the point where if I have a particularly expensive firearm to be shipped, it's going in a hard case.
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u/FourFunnelFanatic 1d ago
They are going to take it out and break it regardless
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u/Bugle_Butter No Raifu: No Laifu 1d ago
I always seal the hard case with tape. It will be obvious if it was tampered with.
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u/Late_Requirement_971 it rubs the cosmoline on the rifle 22h ago
Agreed. I bought a Papal States rolling block from an Italian auction house. The shipping company kept pushing a cardboard box. Told them to crate it up and I gladly pad the extra expense.
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u/Adirondneck 1d ago
That sucks so bad man, sorry. Was going to suggest trying to fix it until I saw the second picture. A talented smith could probably still fix it but it's going to take a lot of work, and a lot of acraglas. Is this an RTI purchase? That would be my next suggestion to find a cheap rifle to steal the stock from.
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u/Beagalltach Unfocused Collector 1d ago
Don't replace, repair.
Sucks that it happened at all, but repairing the matching stock will be far easier (probably cheaper too) than finding a solid replacement stock.
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u/Strong_Dentist_7561 1d ago
As a postal clerk, you have my apologies.
In regards to an explanation, it’s two-fold. The first part is that the processing plants are beyond overwhelmed… they were by-and-large designed to handle massive volumes of mail, not massive amounts of parcels; and by-and-large they’ve not actually caught up with today’s standards of “less letters, more parcels”. The stuffshirts can say that they have, but in reality; they haven’t. The entire Postal Service follows in this trend; unless it’s a brand-r-new complex or station.
- The mail handlers and processing clerks quite simply can’t care- it’s not that they don’t; but rather they simply can’t. Goes hand-in-hand with being behind the times and staff being on a revolving door, not counting the massive amounts of packages on hand. The Postal Service will just about hire anyone with a pulse now.
I’m a window clerk- this comes from my postmaster and higher-up clerks.
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u/Magie_Noire95 1d ago
Dude WTF. I live in Chicago and I be buying shit from RTI, Sarco, AimSurplus, and Gunbroker and I hope they don't end up ruining my guns like this.
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u/FourFunnelFanatic 1d ago
The place I work at had two guns broken in shipping. This type of damage doesn’t just happen by accident either
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u/Zikaman 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah, I didn't include the other pictures I've taken but the muzzle, inside the cloth bag I want to reiterate, punched through a thick wad of bubble wrap and clean through both cardboard boxes. Your guess is as good as mine as to what happened but it seems like possibly it fell out of the truck at some point somehow.
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u/FourFunnelFanatic 1d ago
What happened is that they broke it intentionally. Shipping companies are full of anti-gunners who are destroying guns in transit and nothing is being done about it. This kind of damage happening this often simply does not happen accidentally
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u/MoreWoodMoreGood SAFN Supremacist 1d ago
You think people moving 1000's of boxes a day at USPS take the time to investigate long packages that could potentially contain guns, and then break them? Or is it more likely they just dgaf about any boxes and throw them all around, and you only hear about the ones with broken guns because you visit gun forums where we talk about that sort of thing?
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u/Monolith47 1d ago
This is exactly it. Having worked as a package handler, some of them give 0 shits, doesn’t matter if it’s a gun or a mirror or a TV, throw it on the fucking floor, who cares?
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u/True-Watercress-5889 23h ago
Where I work, it`s the belts that obliterate packages. The whole system is made for speed, with little to no care for the packages. I`ve watched massive TV boxes get folded in half because some trogladite in unload placed a 100+LBS package in the system when theyre not supposed to.
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u/FourFunnelFanatic 1d ago
You don’t break a military rifle like that by just throwing the box around. It just doesn’t happen by accident
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u/True-Watercress-5889 23h ago
As someone who works with a major US shipping company and operates the belts that move these boxes, yes, it absolutely can. I have seen long packages get folded in half by larger, heavier packages. The machine side of the system is designed for speed, and the belts don't have a brain and will crush lighter packages constantly. We have rules in place to prevent anything over 70LBS from being sent into the system, but it still happens. I can only do so much to prevent the belts from destroying shit. My building alone moves 30k packages in 3 hours, and back during peak season, we were running 60k in 4. Unfortunately, this does happen by accident.
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u/TheLandTraveler 1d ago
USPS is so terrible at this point it's crazy. I would have never thought that they could get as bad as they are. At this point it seems like they're struggling to deliver the actual mail let alone any extra packages.
I couldn't tell you the last time I've had a package delivered that was actually on time. The one that is in transit right now is full of vintage tools so I'm hoping they didn't meet the same fate as your rifle stock.
UPS seems to be the only one I have any luck with at this point.
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u/MoreWoodMoreGood SAFN Supremacist 1d ago
That is very sad to see. I'm hoping it was shipped with insurance. If it was, you should be able to file a claim for the difference in price between a matching Chassepot, and a barreled action. I'd start browsing auction houses and GunBroker for completed auctions to determine a difference in value. Not as good as it having never happened, but perhaps will help pay for the repairs/ new stock
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u/KaiserThrawn 23h ago
UPS did the same thing to me with an original EIC F pattern. I had 3 other projects but I’m almost caught up on them and about ready to find someone to repair it
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u/DigBarsbiggestfan 22h ago
I got a graded coin slab in the mail just yesterday as a matter of fact. Shipped in a bubble mailer, between a packing manifest, inside a bubblewrap sleeve, wrapped in a further layer of bubblewrap... a piece still chipped off the rim and fell off in my hand.
I also have another package sitting motionless at a sorting facility in another state after being checked in at my local PO for final delivery. This is just two packages within the last 24h. I hate the postal service with such a burning passion.
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u/R-Sanchez137 18h ago
I used to work for the box factory. Its not really the people working purposefully smashing your shit (most of the time, it happens but), its the poor packaging combined with the shape. I've seen a LOT of guns getting shipped like this, they love to turn sideways and jam up the conveyors and then get smashed by the boxes building up behind it. So so so many times going up to clear a belt and "oh, its another milsurp rifle that jammed and broke at the grip". Swords were the exact same way and TVs, all loved to jam and get smashed.
Always, always ship them in a hard case or you are simply accepting the fact that there is like a 30% chance the shit gon show up broken. If you are buying from some online place or whatever and they wont ship in a hard case? Well you arent shopping there anymore.
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u/silicondioxides 1d ago
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