Lead Time For Custom Work?

J

Joe_Pike

New member
I was put on Grant Cunningham's list to have some custom work done four years ago. I was going to have some work done on a Detective Special, but I no longer have the gun (got tired of waiting and sold it) or the money to have any work done (lost my job last month). Today I received an "update" email with absolutely no info on where I am on the list (haven't notified him because I'm curious how long the wait actually will be).

My question is what is the normal wait time for some of these custom shops? Four years with no date in sight seems very excessive to me.
 
It depends on the shop and the work to be done. Some smiths will do a bunch of easy jobs first and let more complicated jobs wait. Others will reverse that, catering to the big bucks customer, while others go on a strict "first come first served" basis.

Too often top craftsmen refuse to hire more help. The figure either that no one can do the work as well as they can, or that it will take too long to train anyone. But being known for being backlogged for months or years is not a good idea either, IMHO.

Just from curiosity, what were you going to have done?

Jim
 
I was going to have the action smoothed up, bob the hammer, gold bead front sight and refinished in a more durable finish (the gun's finish was far from perfect to begin with). He knew none of this by the way.
 
Just wondered. When I was working, I could have done all that in a day*, and probably charged a lot less than the nationally known smiths.

* We did bluing once a week, so that could have been a delay.

Jim
 
I don't care how good of work a gunsmith does, nothing is worth a 4+ year wait time. There are plenty of capable smith's out there that could do that work for you in a few months wait.
 
Nope, there are not plenty of smiths that could do that action work on a DS. :)
Four years is a bit much to wait, but he's overloaded simply because there are not plenty of other Coltsmiths who can do what he does.
Denis
 
Custom work is all over the map

Top smiths have huge followings and like to keep staffing at a minimum. Many are one person only.
I had some work done by a top smith who told me 5 months from the time I shipped it to him. It took exactly 1 week shy of a year. Shortly after I shipped it off, an online forum I posted on got together for a group project by the same smith. They shipped their guns off and got them back before mine was even looked at. I was disappointed with that aspect, but the work was top notch and I'm quite pleased. I would use the same dude again.
You just have to realize that these guys are in demand.
 
It depends on the shop and the work to be done. Some smiths will do a bunch of easy jobs first and let more complicated jobs wait. Others will reverse that, catering to the big bucks customer, while others go on a strict "first come first served" basis.
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There are 3 'smiths that I deal with.
One is a "put off the big jobs until the customer complains"-type. Unfortunately, I currently have a project rifle waiting for one of those "big" jobs.

One is a "do all the big stuff up front, and the little jobs can wait"-type. Take him a full restoration job, and he'll have it done in a week. Need a simple front sight blade fitted to a funky dovetail? Yea, that'll be 16 months.

And the last is an absolutely an first-come, first-served affair. (With minor exceptions for situations like having 3 similar firearms getting the same work done. ...there's no point in setting up the tooling three separate times.)
He always quotes 4 to 6 weeks for completion, but he's usually done in 2-3. You only have to wait longer if he needs to collect enough parts to make firing up the hot blue worthwhile.

But, of course, they all have their specialties. Sometimes, the wait is worth it.
 
Four years is a ridiculous wait.

As a totally non-serious suggestion maybe when your number comes up you could advertise and find someone else with a Detective Special that would 'buy' your place in line from you.
 
In 2007 I had a 7 year back log.

I felt a need to apologize to ever customer that wanted a custom gun from me, but I carry the ball from one end to the other and have no one helping me at all.

I am a one man show these days, so it takes me as much time as it takes me to make them.

I work 60 hours a week and 6 days a week. It’s all the time I have.

I still have to wash dishes, clean the house, cook, eat, sleep and so on. Add to this the fact that I had to take care of a few medical concerns and fix wind and weather damage to my home, and you see that there is always more work to do than there are hours to do it.

I say all this because I know the frustration I see in some customers, and I feel sorry, but I also can tell you that any custom smith that doesn’t have a long backlog is either #1 largely unknown or #2 not all that good at his craft.

Good ones do what they can, but they can do no more.
There are only so many hours in a day.
It’s not a simple matter to fix. Time is something no man can make. We use the time we have as well as we can, but I’d bet the smith you spoke to is not going fishing and hunting all the time, and taking long vacations either.

Since “the one" took over in the white house the economy is so bad that most folks can’t afford to order custom work, so my backlog is now less than 2 years. Perhaps his is getting closer too. Call and ask, but be understanding, and I am sure he’ll explain himself too.
 
IMHO, Grant is one of the most polite and reasonable gunsmiths in the country, who can probably work on guns that no one else would know what to do with. On his website, he explains how he organizes his waiting list and how you can get on it. Four years WOULD be a long time if he had the firearm in his possession. But his waitin list doesn't open too frequently and his work on Colts and Rugers in particular is in high demand, so I would not be surprised to see that once you get on the list, you may have to wait for a few years before he calls you up and says "send me the gun"

All his info is on www.grantcunningham.com
 
YOU SHOULD TELL HIM NOW. You do NOT have the right to jerk him around now or ever as your space for a non-existant pistol is now someone elses.
 
If I really wanted him to do the work, I'd be patient... 4 yrs, I don't know ....I'd probably be emailing him every 60 days until I got a better answer than - indefinite..../ maybe a letter to him with the scope of work and offer of a 50% deposit up front would have moved you into the line ..../ or at least told him you were serious about him doing the work.

For the work you describe ....it shouldn't be that big a deal...
 
YOU SHOULD TELL HIM NOW. You do NOT have the right to jerk him around now or ever as your space for a non-existant pistol is now someone elses.
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I'm not jerking anyone around. If I chose not to send him something (which I can't right now but maybe I could in the future), when or if he gets around to me (could be years from now), all that will need to be said is "move to the next customer". That doesn't affect him one little bit as far as moving a customer into that spot. A little heads up should have been given to me at the time I got on the list that it could be five or ten years before I was on deck. That would have been considerate, in my opinion, in case I wanted to use someone else that could get to me quicker. And, please, stop screaming at me.
 
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I kept a Python on hold for Jerry Moran for at least five years. My annual inquiry usually got the reply that patience is a virtue, until it got no reply at all. Somebody said he had changed specialties from revolvers to Contenders, but I never had that confirmed. He just disappeared from my view. I sold the gun.

I don't like long turnaround times, but I somewhat understand them.
One of my coworkers said it would be nice to be an engineering consultant and just take work when you needed the income. Another engineer with experience in consulting said it did not work that way. If you set yourself up as a consultant, you can't really turn down a job because if you do, people will get the idea you are not interested in working.

Same way in gunsmithing. Some shops will get two (three, five) years worth of work lined up and quit taking orders until they are nearly caught up. Richard Heinie said he had as many orders as he could reasonably expect to fill in his lifetime. But some won't, leading to absurdly long delivery times, depending on customers giving up to make way for new suckers.
 
YOU SHOULD TELL HIM NOW. You do NOT have the right to jerk him around now or ever as your space for a non-existant pistol is now someone elses.
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With this guys backlog, do you really think he is going to care one bit if the OP decides he doesn't want work done on his gun? If anything, it makes this gunsmiths life that much easier.
 
I'm sure you guys will correct me, but looking at his web site tells me he does the work he likes to do and the others wait. Also, it looks like gunsmithing is not what puts food on his table. It looks like training and maybe something else.....just saying.

Frankly, I would stay on the list. If he calls today, you're out. If he calls in 5 years, you may have another Colt and $3000 in the bullpen.
 
Whether a long wait (anything over a month) is acceptable to a customer or not, it seems to me that a responsible gunsmith would stop taking work until he can complete it in a reasonable time. It does mitigate things some if the smith has a waiting list and does not actually have the gun, but the principle is the same. There is just no excuse for a smith having a couple of hundred guns stacked in the corners waiting to be worked on.

One problem I see is that smiths want to do all the work themselves and will not hire help; that maximizes profit on the jobs they do but leaves many jobs undone that they could make money on. A staple of these sites is the newbie who wants to learn gunsmithing but can't go to or can't afford a school, or even has been to a school and can't find a job. Even if a top smith wants to do the "big" jobs himself to maintain his reputation, there must be many jobs an unskilled or semi-skilled worker could do.

OK, rebuilding a Colt DA revolver is a skilled job. But putting on a recoil pad is not, and many general smiths won't hire help to do even the unskilled work. Sure, training a helper/apprentice takes time, but a good man can learn a lot on his own. IMHO there are good people out there who would be happy to work in a top notch shop, even sweeping the floor. Another thing I see in shops is that the smith has a store and works the front counter, spending his time talking about politics or hunting while work waits. Any high school kid can do that, at minimum wage. I know one pretty good smith who works in his basement. He has a pretty wife and keeps locking the door and taking "R&R" when they feel like it. Great for him, not so much for the customers who never know when he will be working (on guns that is).

(I could go on, but I have ticked off enough people for the moment.)

Jim
 
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