Why spare battleship guns do not create a free ship

Could guns from decommissioned battleships be reused in new 14-inch or 16-inch designs?

Possibly, but a paper design still needs money and industrial capacity; spare guns alone do not make a new battleship affordable or buildable.

Reusing large guns from decommissioned battleships can look attractive on paper. The decisive questions are whether the programme can be financed and whether the state can execute the design. A later exchange notes that the inner rifled tube is the expensive part of a new gun and that cutting the rifling cannot simply be stopped once it has begun. The Queen Elizabeth-class discussion supplies another British constraint: armour-plate production was already at its limit near the start of the Second World War. Possession of expensive guns solves only one part of a battleship programme and does not remove the industrial demands of building and protecting the rest of the ship.