The first 2 I had made were by Wild West guns in Anchorage. Nonoman made the third. The one I loaned a friend to take to Africa. I sold all three before I retired and moved back to my home state, Florida.
Jim West was fairly reasonable when he started reworking the marlin guide guns to shoot 50 Alaskan ammo. The first one I had him make was a pistol grip guide gun, blued finish. He rebarreled it and reworked the innards to be reliable and hard chromed the gun. I used mine in southeast Alaska where we had lots of rough seas and salt spray to contend with along with about 200” of rainfall annually. So we wore Healy Hanson rain gear and extra tough boots most of the time. Everything was wet a lot.
When the stainless guide guns came available I had Jim Wast build a straight gripped stainless co-pilot model for me. It separated into 2 pieces and was just about the slickes gun I ever had seen.
Then I heard about Noneman and liked the octagon barrels he used. We did have occasional feeding problems. But I still liked the gun. But in the end the Nonemam rifle was not reliable enough for a dangerous game gun. So I ended up selling it to my friend that barrowed it to take to Africa. When he came back he offered to buy it so I sold it to him.
Jim West eventually priced himself out of the market by the time I retired and left Alaska. But his guns were always reliable.
