Prices

Gun cabinet prices start at around £7,000, delivered and installed in the UK. Fitted gun rooms start at around £20,000. Those are honest floors rather than headlines that evaporate on enquiry, and this page sets out what sits behind them and what moves them.

Very few makers at this end of the trade publish anything at all, which wastes everybody’s time. If those figures are a long way from what you had in mind, you have found that out in ten seconds rather than after three meetings and a survey — and there is no hard feeling in it. If they are in the right territory, the rest of this page explains what sits behind them.

Where things start

What	From	Includes
Bespoke gun cabinet	£7,000	Designed, made, delivered and installed in the UK
Wellington chest / cartridge storage	On application	Depends heavily on size, drawer count and timber
Fitted or built-in cabinetry	On application	Driven by the run, and by what it has to match
Fitted gun room	£20,000	Steel lining, firearms door, cladding and all joinery

Prices exclude VAT. A gun room figure assumes the room has been prepared by your builder — we fit out, we do not carry out building work, and the gun rooms page sets out exactly where that line falls.

What moves the figure

Seven things, in roughly the order they matter.

1. Size, and the number of doorsSteel, glass, hardware and bench hours all scale together. A four-door cabinet is not twice a two-door.
2. Glazing21.5mm (0.85in) laminated anti-bandit glass is expensive, extremely heavy, and it changes the whole door — heavier hinges, structural glazing bars, a stiffer frame. Glazing is the single biggest step in a cabinet price.
3. Timber and figureBook-matched figured walnut is a different material cost from hardwood built for paint, and it is a different setting-out job before anyone cuts anything.
4. FinishFrench polish and hand-antiquing are bench hours rather than materials. They are also the finishes people notice from across a room.
5. Interior complexityMixed collections, cased pairs, scoped rifles and separate ammunition provision all take more drawing and more making than a rack of eight identical slots.
6. Matching existing joineryMatching a moulding, a timber and a forty-year-old finish is skilled work, and it is not quick. It is also the thing that makes a piece look as though it was always there.
7. Installation distanceWe survey and install UK-wide from Suffolk. Distance is a cost line — travel and, on longer installations, accommodation — not an obstacle.

Where the money actually goes

Worth setting out, because a bespoke cabinet is a genuinely unusual object: a piece of security equipment and a piece of drawing-room furniture, built to the top of both specifications at once.

The steel

3mm mild steel (0.12in) throughout the enclosure, folded and reinforced rather than butted, with folded doors and anti-cut pins to the hinge side. This is materially heavier than a domestic installation is likely to require. We build to it on every cabinet because the cost difference is small against a piece at this price, and because a cabinet built tight to a minimum is hostage to the minimum changing.

The glass

Laminated anti-bandit glass at 21.5mm as standard, thicker where the height of the pane calls for it. It is the reason so few glazed cabinets are made this way — not the glass itself, but everything the glass then demands of the door carrying it.

The timber

Quarter-sawn solid oak, walnut or mahogany, selected board by board where doors are book-matched, so the figure runs continuously across a pair rather than stopping at the join. Timber is bought for the piece, not drawn from a rack of whatever is nearest.

The hours

The largest single component, and the one nobody sees. Drawing, setting out, machining, bench work, fitting, and then finishing — French polishing in particular is measured in days and applied by our own polisher, in our own finishing shop, which is why we can match an existing piece and stand behind the match.

The installation

Our own fitters, anchoring into masonry or located structural timber at recorded centres, with a signed specification sheet handed over on the day. A large part of the security of a cabinet is how it is attached to the building, which is why we do not sell delivery-only.

What is included

• Survey, and 3D CAD drawings before you commit
• The specification set out in writing for your firearms enquiry officer, at design stage
• Design, making and finishing in our own Suffolk workshop
• Delivery and installation by our own fitters, properly fixed
• A signed specification sheet, drawings as installed, and care instructions
• Attention in the first year if timber moves, which in a house with new heating it may well do

What is not

• Building work. We do not knock through, form openings, alter structure, run electrics or plumbing, plaster or lay floors. For a gun room, your builder prepares the room and we fit it out.
• Electrical connection. We install cabinet lighting; final connection is your electrician’s.
• Alarms, safes and monitoring. We are cabinetmakers. If you want the room alarmed, your alarm company should do it, and we will make sure the joinery does not get in their way.
• Removal of an existing cabinet, unless it is quoted. Old cabinets are usually bolted in and are rarely a pleasure to take out.
• VAT. All figures on this page exclude it.

The £400 question

People sometimes ask, reasonably, why a cabinet costs what a small car costs when a steel gun cabinet can be bought for a few hundred pounds.

Because they are different objects with different jobs. A mass-produced steel cabinet is a security product, and a perfectly honest one — it holds guns securely, it costs very little, and for a great many shooters it is entirely the right answer. Nobody should be talked out of one.

What it is not is furniture. It is designed to be put somewhere it will not be seen, it is built to a price against a specification, its interior is a standard rack rather than one drawn around your guns, and it will look exactly as it looks now in thirty years’ time, which is to say like a steel locker.

Our clients are generally buying for one of three reasons: the cabinet has to live in a room where a steel locker is unthinkable; the collection has reached a value where the storage ought to reflect it; or the house is being done properly and this is part of the joinery package rather than an appliance bolted to a wall afterwards. If none of those describes you, buy the steel cabinet with our blessing and spend the difference on cartridges.

How to spend less without buying worse

If the figure is above where you want to be, there are sensible reductions and there are false economies. These are the sensible ones, and we will suggest them ourselves rather than waiting to be asked.

Do this	Rather than this
Solid panelled doors instead of glazed	Thinner glass. Glazing is the biggest single step in a cabinet price, and a solid front is also more discreet
Hand-painted hardwood instead of figured walnut	A cheaper timber under a stain. Paint is an honest finish; disguised timber is not
One larger cabinet instead of two	Two smaller ones now and a third later. You pay twice for delivery, installation and setting-out
A wall of fitted cabinets instead of a room	A cut-price room. A room half-done is worse than good furniture
A simpler interior with room to grow	A tight interior sized exactly to today’s collection
Straight oiled finish instead of French polish	Fewer coats of polish. It is the coats that make it repairable

What we will not do is reduce the steel, the glass, the locks or the fixings. Those are the specification, not the trim, and a cabinet that has been value-engineered through its security is not a cheaper version of our work — it is somebody else’s.

Insurance and valuation

As a collection rises in value, insurers take a closer interest in how it is stored, and they increasingly ask for detail rather than a photograph. That is why every piece leaves with a signed specification sheet stating steel thickness, glass specification, lock model, fixing type and fixing centres.

It is worth telling your broker what is being installed before it is installed rather than afterwards. Requirements vary between insurers and between policies, and it is far easier to build something in at design stage than to add it to a finished cabinet. If your broker has a written requirement, send it to us and we will design to it.

The ten-year view

A bespoke cabinet is bought once. It is solid timber, so it can be repolished rather than replaced; the finish is repairable by hand; the ironmongery is solid brass or bronze rather than plated; and the interior can be re-racked when a collection changes, because it was drawn in the first place rather than pressed.

The honest comparison is not with a steel cabinet. It is with the rest of the joinery in the house — a good kitchen, a library, a boot room — all of which cost real money, all of which are expected to be there in thirty years, and none of which anybody describes as expensive after the first decade.

Quotations and payment

Quotations are fixed and itemised, issued against approved drawings. Fixed means fixed: if the brief changes we tell you what the change costs before we make it, and you decide. What does not happen is a piece arriving with a different number attached to it.

Payment stages are set out in your quotation, agreed before anything is committed to the workshop programme. If you would like to see the terms before you go to the trouble of a survey, ask and we will send them.

Trade

We work regularly with architects, interior designers and main contractors, and are used to being one trade among thirty on a large house. Drawings are issued into your set, in your format, at your revision points; we work to your programme; and we will tell you honestly when a date is not achievable rather than agreeing to it and disappointing you at the far end.

Trade terms are available on application. There is more detail on how we work with architects and builders.

Questions we are asked

Gun cabinet prices and gun room prices, by scheme

Every one of these is a real range from work we have actually made, delivered and installed in the United Kingdom, exclusive of VAT. Where a figure moves, we have said what moves it.

What the figure includes

Survey at your house; design and production drawings; all materials; manufacture in Suffolk; finishing in our own shop; delivery; installation by our own fitters; anchoring into structure; a signed specification sheet and a key schedule. Travel within East Anglia is included. Beyond it, travel and any accommodation are shown as their own line so you can see what the distance costs.

What it does not

VAT. Builder’s works — structural openings, first-fix electrics, making good. Final electrical connection and certification. Decoration to surrounding surfaces. Any alarm work. For gun rooms, the lining allowance in the wall build-up is the builder’s, not ours.

Paying for it

A third on order, a third when the piece goes into finishing, the balance on completion. We do not ask for money before drawings are approved and a price is fixed, and the price does not move afterwards unless you change something. Deposits are held against the commission, and if we cannot make what you want we say so before you have paid anything.

Spending less without buying worse is a real conversation and we are happy to have it: oak rather than walnut, solid rather than glazed, a fitted run rather than a lined room, one good cabinet now with a matching second in three years. What we will not do is thin the steel, drop the lock class or make the ammunition provision an extra — the things the Firearms Security Handbook is actually about.