I often joke that I have $50,000.00 of machinery to make $5.00 an hour. Most people don't understand that you don't wake up one morning and know how to fix every firearm that has ever been made. You may spend a couple hours just to get it apart. The ones that you see most often are easy after the first one. Or, you spend an hour crawling around the shop floor looking for a spring and plunger that flew out of some unknown location. A gunsmith needs to be able to do just about everything himself. If you have to depend on other people for stock work, metal finish, rebarreling and other machine work you will be on their time schedule not yours. I have been waiting on a stock to be checkered since before Thanksgiving. The shotgun was supposed to be a 2006 Christmas present. This was a trade. I blued some rifles in exchange for the checkering job. I went by there today. Stock and forend still sitting in the same place. I won't make that mistake twice.
Do I discourage gunsmiths?
- Thread starter James K
- Start date
Good posts. I've been a machinist for going on twenty years and I learn something almost every day. Some people think they can take a correspondence course and be running a successful gunsmithing operation in several months.
I have a guy that works with me that has no skill level but he's all the time talking of opening up his own shop. I told him the other day he had better learn how to set an offset first.
I have a guy that works with me that has no skill level but he's all the time talking of opening up his own shop. I told him the other day he had better learn how to set an offset first.
Seems to me that you speak the truth. Start up of any business is a daunting task guaranteed to fail if the owner doesn't understand the market, law and how to run a business. To include the highly regulated, zero tolerance for error environment that a gunsmith must endure and many otherwise qualified may well fail. Your "correspondent" obviously has limited knowledge of the subject.
--Jim, I think you're pretty much on the mark. It's difficult to describe to a fresh starter all the little headaches involved. I've always tried to stay with the older guns, especially the muzzle loaders, but get my share of the modern stuff. No matter the tools we have, someone always seems to build something requireing new tools and the game goes on.
--I found it impossible to specialize in one particular area. To do so would be to turn down a dollar, which any buisness or hobby has to have to continue to pay it's way. What we tell the new guys might sometimes seem discouraging but it's honest answers from experience worth hearing. Training helps. Hands on is good. One way or the other we had to get our feet wet before we learned to swim. The learning never ends. Now, if I could just remember where I put that spring...
--I found it impossible to specialize in one particular area. To do so would be to turn down a dollar, which any buisness or hobby has to have to continue to pay it's way. What we tell the new guys might sometimes seem discouraging but it's honest answers from experience worth hearing. Training helps. Hands on is good. One way or the other we had to get our feet wet before we learned to swim. The learning never ends. Now, if I could just remember where I put that spring...
Metaloy Industries
New member
If you guys are anything like me...you have the "parts black hole" Thats the place where all of the small super special parts will land in your shop when the fly off the bench never to be seen again. I always think one day that black hole will get full and I'll have all the parts I've ever lost. Probably won't happen.
Dfariswheel
New member
Ha, you snivelers give me a pain with your lost parts stories.
I was both a gunsmith AND a Master watchmaker.
I spent many a "happy" hour on my hands and knees looking for parts literally smaller than the head of a pin or a tiny spring smaller than a human hair and exactly the same color as the floor.
My "best" was 2 hours looking for an irreplaceable tiny gear wheel from an antique watch that snapped out of my tweezers.
After two hours, I finally found it......stuck to the BACK SIDE of my necktie.
In a recent episode, I was servicing my Kahr Arms when the extractor spring jumped out of place. I heard the "click" of something hitting a nearby book case.
I found the plunger near the case, and after unloading a BIG completely full book case, and moving it out from the wall, I found the spring........on the table where the gun was.
Seems the spring dropped to the table and it was the plunger that I heard hit the case.
You can always ID a gunsmith or watchmaker: They have dirty knees and knuckles from crawling across the floor.
They also usually have a heavily magnetized file or piece of metal used to try to attract a lost part and an attitude like a gut-shot Grizzly bear.
I was both a gunsmith AND a Master watchmaker.
I spent many a "happy" hour on my hands and knees looking for parts literally smaller than the head of a pin or a tiny spring smaller than a human hair and exactly the same color as the floor.
My "best" was 2 hours looking for an irreplaceable tiny gear wheel from an antique watch that snapped out of my tweezers.
After two hours, I finally found it......stuck to the BACK SIDE of my necktie.
In a recent episode, I was servicing my Kahr Arms when the extractor spring jumped out of place. I heard the "click" of something hitting a nearby book case.
I found the plunger near the case, and after unloading a BIG completely full book case, and moving it out from the wall, I found the spring........on the table where the gun was.
Seems the spring dropped to the table and it was the plunger that I heard hit the case.
You can always ID a gunsmith or watchmaker: They have dirty knees and knuckles from crawling across the floor.
They also usually have a heavily magnetized file or piece of metal used to try to attract a lost part and an attitude like a gut-shot Grizzly bear.
--I carry one of those magnets that looks like an ink pen and extends like a radio antenna. Leaning over the work bench, it collects things I didn't even know I had. As if wearing bifocals isn't bad enough, now I look like Helen Keller out there waving that magnet around on the floor feeling for things!
--Yes, sometimes gunsmithing is discouraging.
--Yes, sometimes gunsmithing is discouraging.
Edward429451
Moderator
I have a dark brown tile floor so dark gunparts and screws are not seen easily when dropped. One thing I do when I drop a screw is to drop another one in the same place and more often than not, the 2nd dropped one lands within a couple inches of where the first one landed, making it easy to find.
Once in awhile I wind up with two lost screws though.
Once in awhile I wind up with two lost screws though.
I finally took down the pegboard wall behind my bench because of the numerous springs and things that would squirt out of my oily fingers and hit a hole in the pegboard and fall behind the wall. I mean, what are the odds that you could hit one of those 3/16" holes from 3' away???
When I was 'smithing the senior guy in our shop went through a phase where he quit smoking cigars, and I was just starting. I took down the guys pegboard when he was out of the shop one day, soaked a bunch of cigar butts in water, and nailed them to the wall in behind his pegboard, then put the pegboard back up. I would watch him out of the corner of my eye sniff, throw a shop rag away, sniff, empty an ashtry. He could never figure out why his end of the shop smelled so strong..
Yeah, one of my very first boo-boos was disassembling a Model 12 for rebluing. I launched the magazine cap and spring into, well, it could only be geosynchronous orbit, 'cause I looked for hours and never found it. About 10 years later my ex-partner Doug found it on top of the hood for the bluing setup, and called me just to rub it in a little.."Hey, remember that Model 12 mag cap and spring you lost back in '88?"
Baaack on topic- yes, you could become a decent smith without a school, but the odds are stacked against you. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done, and very, very hard to make a living. Every business I've tried before or since had an easier learning curve.
Yeah, one of my very first boo-boos was disassembling a Model 12 for rebluing. I launched the magazine cap and spring into, well, it could only be geosynchronous orbit, 'cause I looked for hours and never found it. About 10 years later my ex-partner Doug found it on top of the hood for the bluing setup, and called me just to rub it in a little.."Hey, remember that Model 12 mag cap and spring you lost back in '88?"
Baaack on topic- yes, you could become a decent smith without a school, but the odds are stacked against you. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done, and very, very hard to make a living. Every business I've tried before or since had an easier learning curve.
First hello, i had never been here before tonight, weird that i would find this site at this time in my life...
I was born into a military family, I have grown up around firearms and been doing free-be smith work for the last decade while working as an electrical engineer and part time CAD operator. I'm in the process now of opening a shop and starting a custom 1911/ar15 offering.
I understand what you guys are saying about the difficulties in opening a shop and not knowing the business end of it or the little tricks of the trade to cut out the headaches, but maybe instead of telling people what its like, start asking them questions about what they think it will be like, as in "Do you have atleast $25k saved after tools and shop rental?","Whats your advertising strategy?" "Have you started shopping for liability insurance and added that to your overhead?", "Did you ever think about a way to minimize time lost from little launched springs and small parts, such as putting down the blue foam rubber floor mats from sports authority so they contrast with the part and dont bounce to a carpet seam?", etc.
"People with stars in their eyes cant see unless you occupy their brain with a good puzzle to get them past the star light and into the dark night" - my great grandfather
I was born into a military family, I have grown up around firearms and been doing free-be smith work for the last decade while working as an electrical engineer and part time CAD operator. I'm in the process now of opening a shop and starting a custom 1911/ar15 offering.
I understand what you guys are saying about the difficulties in opening a shop and not knowing the business end of it or the little tricks of the trade to cut out the headaches, but maybe instead of telling people what its like, start asking them questions about what they think it will be like, as in "Do you have atleast $25k saved after tools and shop rental?","Whats your advertising strategy?" "Have you started shopping for liability insurance and added that to your overhead?", "Did you ever think about a way to minimize time lost from little launched springs and small parts, such as putting down the blue foam rubber floor mats from sports authority so they contrast with the part and dont bounce to a carpet seam?", etc.
"People with stars in their eyes cant see unless you occupy their brain with a good puzzle to get them past the star light and into the dark night" - my great grandfather
orionengnr
New member
I've used that trick a time or three..
There is an old, wise saying in my field, which appears to apply to this one as well:
Q: How do you make a small fortune in aviation?
A: Start with a large one....
Harry Bonar
New member
gunsmiths
Dear Jim:
I've been off-line for sometime and don't know what happened - but I know you well enough from your posts that you are not discouraging men becoming smiths!
All you have done is give accurate information on what "becoming a gunsmith" entails. And, as you seem to be saying, and correctly so, "it's more than having an FFL.
Amen! Harry B.
Dear Jim:
I've been off-line for sometime and don't know what happened - but I know you well enough from your posts that you are not discouraging men becoming smiths!
All you have done is give accurate information on what "becoming a gunsmith" entails. And, as you seem to be saying, and correctly so, "it's more than having an FFL.
Amen! Harry B.