We've noticed that many other websites include a picture and a bit of history ..... so we thought "why not us too?" We do however apologise to anyone who may be eating as they view the above image of the motley crew which makes up South Yorkshire Shooting Supplies Ltd!!
More seriously, the business was established in 1985 by Roger & Sheila Francis The business concentrated on handguns and accessories until the events of 1997 which effectively resulted in the loss of around 85% of our trade. However, Roger had a stroke of genius (as he puts it) and decided to start working on the Ruger 10/22 as he felt that this little rifle would replace handguns for many shooters. This turned out to be the case, but we didn't forsee the interest in these rifles would generate with pest control shooters too! To cut a long story short, the business continued to grow at a fast pace. Unfortunately it became obvious a few years ago that two people just couldn't continue to cope with the work involved, and this was compounded by long term health problems which resulted in Roger requiring two hip replacements in 2005. Towards the end of that year we realised that we were faced with a major decision .... should we close down the business? However, perverse as usual we decided to do just the opposite ..........expand!! In order to do this we took on Dave Wylde who worked part time for us until the end of 2010 At this time Roger was starting to have more orthopaedic problems and feeling the effects of pain rather more than he would like to, so we were again confronted with the prospect of retirement being forced upon us. With this in mind we encouraged Dave to go solo and run his own business here on our site and renting one of our workshops. Now, nearly two years further down the line Roger's problems have worsened but neither of us feel we want to retire just yet so we adopted a new working system for 2012 which sees Sheila looking after our retail shop on her own while Roger tries to spend more time in the workshop. This has worked quite well as Roger frequently is unable to start working until mid or even late morning so this is why you are more likely to hear Sheila's voice on the end of the phone. This has also proved to be useful for us as Roger's hearing has continued to deteriorate and he frequently finds it difficult to understand phone conversations! Although a third hip replacement is now likely for Roger we are quite happy to bumble along at our own pace but we feel we do need to apologise if we come across as a bit vague and confused at times........that's because we are!
To finish on a more serious note, although we attempt to deal with our customers with a sense of humour, we continue to be proud of our reputation for fairness, keen (but not suicidal) prices, and an aftersales service which we honestly believe to be amongst the best in the gun trade. Naturally we wouldn't be where we are today without the trust and support of our loyal customers, to whom we offer our grateful thanks.
South Yorkshire Shooting Supplies Ltd, Everill Gate Farm, Broomhill
Back from Proof this week and available right now we have the Sport model at £675 and Performance Centre version at £875. All rifles have been lubricated and test fired and are ready for shooting! Meanwhile we have a furthe batch at Proof with more of the Sport and Performance Centre rifles but also some Magpul MOE-SL rifles too which we are hoping will be back with us in 2-3 weeks.
Apparently there were some problems with earlier production rifles which whereby occasionally the extractor would go AWOL during use. Volquartsen Custom now offer a modified extractor which we have in stock at £15 each. We can fit one for you on request and our tests show that they tend to throw fired cases a lot further from the rifle than when used to replace the factory part.
With around 650 of our Rimfire Magic rifles now sold we have constantly sought to improve the performance and reliability of our flagship product. So we are pleased to announce a couple of upgrades which are now available as options in the receiver unit which is of course the core of the rifle. Firstly we have the latest Competition bolt manufactured by Power Custom in the US which is CNC machined to give the correct headspace of .044" and the rear of the bolt is slightly radiused for easier cocking and smoother cycling. A titanium firing pin is retained by a pin to assist in preventing the pin from rising away from the rim of the cartridge , it also has the correct firing protrusion at the rear of the bolt to help aid consistent ignition.
Finally a titanium extractor is tuned and installed which helps with both extraction of fired cases and feeding of live rounds. For the immediate future we are only supplying this part as an option when building a rifle. Whilst we are looking at offering this bolt as a replacement part this idea is hampered by the fact that is is deemed to be a controlled part of a firearm and as such cannot be supplied by mail order and in theory would require a variation on the shooter's FAC. Please see our "build list" page for price.
A few weeks ago we wrote here that we had recently closed for one Thursday afternoon due to a hospital appointment we could not change. However one or two people misread this paragraph and thought we had closed completely ..... ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE!!!! So please do not panic as we are still very much here, alive and kicking and deviously planning news of more exciting products to bring you. So please keep checking our site. Finally, in order to quell any rumours out there we will use this opportunity to tell everyone that whilst retirement has been a serious thought for a while now due to our longstanding health issues we will NOT be making a decision on this matter until the end of this year at the earliest and even if we do eventually decide to retire be assured that we will give everyone several months notice of such a major decision. So don't forget it's BUSINESS AS USUAL here at South Yorkshire Shooting Supplies!