Venom past and present - Midcounties Blacking

There are some names that take you right back to a time when every new tin of pellets was a special occasion and all your shooting dreams lay between the pages of a monthly magazine, eagerly awaited and avidly devoured. For airgunners, arguably the most resonant of those names is Venom, the West-Midlands–based custom shop (successively located at Lye, Cradely-Heath, Halesowen and Frankley), whose work built on the step-change in airgun performance brought about in the early 1980s by German brands such as Original Diana, Feinwerkbau, and above all, Weihrauch -and the simultaneous and not unrelated emergence of the competitive sport of Field Target shooting - to reach previously-unimagined heights of mechanical and aesthetic excellence. Thus said our magazines, and thus a lore was born.

Highs and lows

The men behind the Venom name were engineers Ivan Hancock and Dave Pope, with creative innovation provided by toolmaker Ken Turner, who would go on to found Air Arms. Dave’s son, Steve, joined the firm, then called Venom Conversions, in 1983. Their products were widely acclaimed, and their Lazaglide conversions and Mach I and Mach II trigger units became famous in their own right. So, when I came to live in Birmingham in the mid-‘90s, a visit to their new 3-story premises on Mucklow Hill, Halesowen, was very much on my bucket list. The business had recently been brought back to life as “Venomac”, and the new owner’s investment meant that the ground-floor workshop boasted a proper test range, while above it, at the back of a well-appointed retail gun shop, was a smart gun room dedicated to Venom’s custom products and reflecting a wide range of work that included re-barrelling, re-stocking, and building complete custom firearms.
A couple of years later, in 1998, Dave Pope retired and Venomac shut up shop in Halesowen and moved in with Webley & Scott (who had previously done their blacking) at their premises in Frankley, under the banner of the Webley Venom Custom Shop (WVCS). This, it was announced, would infuse new generations of Webley guns with Venom’s expertise, enable increased production of custom parts and accessories, and provide the facilities for bespoke custom work of even greater quality. Suffice it to say, that although some great work was done and some nice products made, the venture never realised its full potential. Ivan Hancock retired in 2004, and in 2005 the financial collapse of Webley & Scott brought WVCS to an untimely end.
Thereafter, in 2006, Steve Pope founded V-Mach Conversions, where he would continue to provide first-rate airgun upgrades and custom services. By this time internet forums were a thing, and a common view among contributors was that Steve should by rights have owned the Venomac name, but Ivan had sold this to Webley in 1998, so that was not to be. For what it’s worth, my own view is that it does Steve an injustice to wish he had traded under a famous name he inherited, rather than the name he made for himself through the quality of his work and the integrity of his character. It was with great sadness that we lost Steve in 2020, but it is no accident that everyone who knew him remembers him with immense respect and affection.

Lichfield beckons

Steve’s untimely passing draws one strand of this story to a close, so we must now return to Webley, whose name, assets, and intellectual property were acquired by Air Gun Sport (AGS) in 2006. UK production was now abandoned in favour of collaboration with gun-making firms in Turkey. Today, Turkey’s export market is well-developed, but AGS/Webley’s Anglo-Turkish joint ventures of the late 2000s were pioneering in their way, and a consequence of this was a substantial number of warranty returns from UK customers. In any event, AGS knew they needed a UK facility to service and repair the guns, which is where Darren Hartshorne and his company Mid-Counties Blacking (MCB) enter our tale.

Tradition and revival

Darren comes from a long line of craftsmen working in the Birmingham gun trade, a trade that has seemingly been in decline for more than a century, but which can still boast a handful of extraordinarily skilled practitioners. In its heyday, Birmingham gun production was the work of dozens of trades, but as it contracted, the emphasis shifted from manufacturing new guns to repairing and restoring old ones, which in turn called for men who could master the multiplicity of skills this required. Darren is such a man, and his workshop – wherein he is ably assisted by gunsmith Stefan Roe- with its diverse zones dedicated to stocking, blacking, polishing, filing, and milling (not to mention some more modern CNC and laser-etching facilities) attests to the scope of his accomplishments.
MCB is located in an industrial unit in Lichfield, a virtual inevitability now that most of Birmingham’s old Gun Quarter has been consigned to history by roadbuilding, rent-rises, and redevelopment. It is here that the Venom name has obtained its new lease on life.
Like his gunmaking heritage, Darren’s love of airguns goes back a long way. He showed me cased Webley air pistols and rifles, lavishly engraved in his grandfather’s time (and quite probably by the man himself) and recalls his own first visit to Venomac on Mucklow Hill, when as a wayward/contrite schoolboy he had been sent to reclaim an air rifle after it had been temporarily removed from his possession by an officer of the law!
It was natural enough, then, that one of the fruits of his longstanding working relationship with Webley & Scott would be permission to use the Venom Custom name for as long as its owners had no other plans for it. Reached in 2009, when Roger Williams acquired Webley & Scott from AGS, this arrangement has continued under W&S’ current owners, Highland Outdoors. It is in this context, therefore, that Darren works his magic on customers’ guns. Unlike the WVCS of old, he doesn’t offer off-the-shelf products, and instead, he undertakes bespoke upgrades to guns new and old. Like the original Venom, however, he specialises in Weihrauch airguns: tuning, restocking, polishing, refinishing, and engraving them as required. That is to say, every gun is a one-off, and every single one I’ve seen has been a gem.

True values

And to anyone who may murmur that they aren’t “true” Venom guns, I would both agree and disagree. Agree, because they are not the original guns of the late 20th century, and disagree, because it’s a fair bet that anyone who encounters an MCB Venom gun in the decades to come will accord them the prestige that rightfully belongs to all things that are fine, rare, and possibly the last of their kind. It is all the more surprising, then, that the cost of the work, and the typical time from order to completion, are so reasonable. I won’t give figures here because it depends greatly on what you specify, but it is most certainly not a case of “if you have to ask, ‘how much?’ you can’t afford it!”
I admit that I haven’t yet put my money where my mouth is, but it’s only a matter of time (pending the recovery of my shooting fund from a year that has seen an unusual number of enhancements and additions to my armoury). In the interim, I have been fortunate enough to watch Darren at work as he has re-plugged and re-chequered the butt of one of my old side-by-sides; cut, filed, fitted, and browned a rod-stop for the muzzle of a vintage percussion gun; and installed an adjustable comb on my Krieghoff drilling, impeccably re-finishing the stock in the process. In each case, the gun in question has either been made whole again or made better, and the quality of the work has equalled or exceeded that of the gun’s original maker.

Up the stairs

What more is there to say? Only that above the workshop there is a shop, managed by Darren’s wife Tamsyn (a.k.a “the real boss”), which conveys the understated expertise that typifies MCB. Looking around you see only things that are genuinely useful, strong on quality, and sensibly priced. It’s an inventory that has been shaped not only by Darren’s years as a hunter of a wide range of game large and small, but also by the requests of a comparably experienced clientele.

Final thoughts

To conclude, MCB may be a little off the beaten track, but as a repository of gunmaking expertise, it is at least as special as any formerly to be found in Lye, Halesowen or Frankley. Most importantly, it is a place where sporting guns of all kinds are appreciated, saved, restored, enhanced, and beautified. This makes it an essential destination for anyone who values such things. Sincere thanks to Darren Hartshorne, and also to Paul Garrity, whose career at Webley & Scott spans more than five decades, for their patience and generous help with this article.