George Hill
Staff Alumnus
Moving to the Gunsmithing forum.
Which school of Gunsmithing to attend ?
- Thread starter 11xray
- Start date
)I graduated from Colorado School of Trades about 11 months ago. I can highly recomend it. You start with the basics and progress from there. The one thing I really liked was the ability to learn and work on just about anything you wish. You can go as far as you want to. They have alot of new equipment (and some old stuff too). The head instructor is very good and has excellant knowledge. The head night instructor is a great person also and very knowlegable.
Rents are not cheep in the lakewood area, but jobs are plentyful and it is not hard to find one that pays a resonable wage.
There is a gunsmithing business one block from the school. The owner is a great guy and he hires CST students to work at his shop. If you get on at his shop he will teach you much.
If you can arrange to go to Lakewood prior to moving there and find an apartment or house to rent you will be ahead of the game.
The other great thing about CST is that after you graduate, help is only a phone call away. There are instructors there day and night.
I can not remember having so much fun at school in my life. I loved attending the school and was sorry it had to end.
One last thing. The tools supplied are included in the tuition. Ask for a list of the supplied tools and buy what you can elsewhere. You will save money and have less money to repay on your loan. The tool box is the biggest rip off. Get your own. Other than slightly high priced tools the school is a good value for your money. Good Luck- John K
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Rents are not cheep in the lakewood area, but jobs are plentyful and it is not hard to find one that pays a resonable wage.
There is a gunsmithing business one block from the school. The owner is a great guy and he hires CST students to work at his shop. If you get on at his shop he will teach you much.
If you can arrange to go to Lakewood prior to moving there and find an apartment or house to rent you will be ahead of the game.
The other great thing about CST is that after you graduate, help is only a phone call away. There are instructors there day and night.
I can not remember having so much fun at school in my life. I loved attending the school and was sorry it had to end.
One last thing. The tools supplied are included in the tuition. Ask for a list of the supplied tools and buy what you can elsewhere. You will save money and have less money to repay on your loan. The tool box is the biggest rip off. Get your own. Other than slightly high priced tools the school is a good value for your money. Good Luck- John K
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NRA MEMBER? GREAT, NOW JOIN GUN OWNERS OF AMERICA
I attended the Colorado School of Trades in Lakewood back in '75 just long enough to figure out that I'd never be a good gunsmith. (I can replace parts, and I can shoot 'em, but I just can't really do that "gunsmith magic.") However, the instructors at the school were excellent, with about 9,000 years of accumulated experience.
I still remember one of the stock making teachers, Dean Wentworth. He had a glass eye that never pointed in the right direction. He was a "wood wizard". It was rumored that after his parents died, he went around their house ripping out all the doors, door frames, and cabinet fronts because they were rosewood. He supposedly had enough to last a couple of lifetimes of making endcaps, forends, etc.
Interestingly enough, Wayne Novak and Art Lekie (sp?) of Behlert were in attendance at the same time I was.
Tidbits: the school had a state-of-the-art alarm system which was so sensitive that it had been known to alert from stocks swinging in the breeze, or large mice running across the floor. It was said that the alarm system was better than that at the Denver mint. It was also a fact that an alarm alert from the school had a guranteed 30 second police response time, MAX. The mint was a 2 minute time.
They were very concientious about safety, too. You put on your safety glasses as soon as you walk through the door, and they didn't come off 'till you were out of the shop area.
No ammo was allowed. If you needed to test fire a gun, you went to an instructor, and he would draw ammo from a locker, and then the two of you would carry gun, ammo, and a blaze orange flag on a 3 ft. pole to the test room. He would take the brass back with him. If you needed to test feed, you would be issued dummy ammo in the appropriate cal. along with a similar flag with a "D" on it to affix to your bench while you tested.
One fellow thought he could slip by the rules and brought in some -06 ammo for testing the feed. As he closed the bolt, the gun fired, and the bullet hit the cement floor and richocheted upward and hit another student on the rim of his safety glasses. He was damn lucky, the bullet bounced off the frames, and he escaped with a bruise and a black eye.
Two instructors grabbed the offender and litteraly THREW him out of the building, informing him if he ever set foot on the property, he'd be arrested for trespass, and that he could just kiss his tools, books, etc, (about $400 worth, a damn considerable sum in '75) goodbye. He was never heard from again.
Every Thursday was trap day, when whoever wanted to could take off to the range with one of the stocks instructors and shoot trap all morning. The school also allowed every student 5 hunting days off each year.
I highly recommend CST. You may be able to find an equal elsewhere, but you won't be able to find better. I'll be so bold as to state that the only way you'll learn the art of gunsmithing better than you could at CST would be to spend years apprenticing under a master gunsmith.
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Shoot straight & make big holes, regards, Richard at The Shottist's Center
I still remember one of the stock making teachers, Dean Wentworth. He had a glass eye that never pointed in the right direction. He was a "wood wizard". It was rumored that after his parents died, he went around their house ripping out all the doors, door frames, and cabinet fronts because they were rosewood. He supposedly had enough to last a couple of lifetimes of making endcaps, forends, etc.
Interestingly enough, Wayne Novak and Art Lekie (sp?) of Behlert were in attendance at the same time I was.
Tidbits: the school had a state-of-the-art alarm system which was so sensitive that it had been known to alert from stocks swinging in the breeze, or large mice running across the floor. It was said that the alarm system was better than that at the Denver mint. It was also a fact that an alarm alert from the school had a guranteed 30 second police response time, MAX. The mint was a 2 minute time.
They were very concientious about safety, too. You put on your safety glasses as soon as you walk through the door, and they didn't come off 'till you were out of the shop area.
No ammo was allowed. If you needed to test fire a gun, you went to an instructor, and he would draw ammo from a locker, and then the two of you would carry gun, ammo, and a blaze orange flag on a 3 ft. pole to the test room. He would take the brass back with him. If you needed to test feed, you would be issued dummy ammo in the appropriate cal. along with a similar flag with a "D" on it to affix to your bench while you tested.
One fellow thought he could slip by the rules and brought in some -06 ammo for testing the feed. As he closed the bolt, the gun fired, and the bullet hit the cement floor and richocheted upward and hit another student on the rim of his safety glasses. He was damn lucky, the bullet bounced off the frames, and he escaped with a bruise and a black eye.
Two instructors grabbed the offender and litteraly THREW him out of the building, informing him if he ever set foot on the property, he'd be arrested for trespass, and that he could just kiss his tools, books, etc, (about $400 worth, a damn considerable sum in '75) goodbye. He was never heard from again.
Every Thursday was trap day, when whoever wanted to could take off to the range with one of the stocks instructors and shoot trap all morning. The school also allowed every student 5 hunting days off each year.
I highly recommend CST. You may be able to find an equal elsewhere, but you won't be able to find better. I'll be so bold as to state that the only way you'll learn the art of gunsmithing better than you could at CST would be to spend years apprenticing under a master gunsmith.
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Shoot straight & make big holes, regards, Richard at The Shottist's Center
11xray, there is also a good school in north carolina.... Montgomery college i think,it's a regular school so there should be student assistance. There was a write up in one of the gun rags a couple of years ago, and it was mentioned as one of the better schools even though it is not so well known.
OK, my 2 cents worth. I am attending the gunsmithing program at Piedmont Community College in Roxboro, NC. (about 25 mi North of Durham, NC) It is more an apprenticeship program than most of the other schools. NOTE: I have attended seminars (NRA and others) at Trinidad and Montgomery Tech (Troy, NC) and have spoken to ex-students of other schools. Fred Imerhof (sp), who used to teach Remington's classes, told me that Susanville (CA) was a "gun mechanic's" school and that Piedmont was a "custom gunsmith's" school and that the others fell somewhere in the middle. I have seen nothing to contradict that. At PCC, you will fit and chamber 5 barrels (Minimum), and build 4 stocks from blank, 2 one piece and 2 two piece. I don't think any of the other schools go this far. All of the schools teach machine shop about the same. Some of the schools refered to by others are no longer in service (Pine Tech, for sure). There is a new school starting in Eastern Washington state. If anyone has any questions, e-mail me at foy223@netscape.net.
Mike Foy
Mike Foy
I graduated from CST in Nov. 1997. CST has the best program of all the schools. And the reason I say that is CST is one of the only schools that has their own gun room. They take in work from the outside. And to graduate you MUST work on AT LEAST 35 firearms before you will successfully complete the school. I personally recommend going on nights. The head instructors name is Ross Argabrite. Like all the instructors there, he is a graduate of the school (in '90 or '91) and is the best of all their instructors. I know, I was on both days and nights. I also know all the instructors there. Don't get me wrong, they're all good and they are all nice, but Ross just seems to care a little bit more about his students. He has a saying "You don't know all things yet, there are just tricks of the trade that you need to be exposed to." He also says, "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin."
Also, during the summer time, the school can become exceedingly hot. Hey, if it's 90+ degrees outside, the building inside can be 95+ or hotter. On nights, it's not nearly so bad. The flip side is during winter time it will be a little colder. All said and done, not only did I get a great education, but I get to hang out with a great group of people whenever I want (I still live here in Denver).
And I have met some of the graduates from Trinidad and Yavapi.... Well, my parents told me if you can't say nothing nice, keep your hole shut. Nuff said....
Jim
Also, during the summer time, the school can become exceedingly hot. Hey, if it's 90+ degrees outside, the building inside can be 95+ or hotter. On nights, it's not nearly so bad. The flip side is during winter time it will be a little colder. All said and done, not only did I get a great education, but I get to hang out with a great group of people whenever I want (I still live here in Denver).
And I have met some of the graduates from Trinidad and Yavapi.... Well, my parents told me if you can't say nothing nice, keep your hole shut. Nuff said....
Jim
I had a sneaking suspicion that there might be a graduate of CST here at TFL.
You fine people have made making this decision so much easier for me than it otherwise would have been.
This thread is even helping me with the negotiations with The Little Woman.
Once again, a sincere Thank You to all who have replied.
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You fine people have made making this decision so much easier for me than it otherwise would have been.
This thread is even helping me with the negotiations with The Little Woman.
Once again, a sincere Thank You to all who have replied.
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Audemus jura nostra defendere
More info for the little woman. If you do go to C.S.T. you will find Lakewood a nice city to stay in. It is a relitivily safe place to live and some parts of it are beautiful. There is plenty of shopping and lots of things to do. As I had said before jobs are plentyful and pay fairly well. The winters are not at all bad and fall, spring and summer are wonderful. Colorado is a beautiful state and there are many scenic places to go to in just an hour or two worth of driving. Denver offers lots of cultural activities (just don't take your firearm into Denver!!!). Lastly, if you want your husband to be successful in gunsmithing, CST will give him the tools he needs to become a professional gunsmith. Best of luck to both of you.---John K
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NRA MEMBER? GREAT, NOW JOIN GUN OWNERS OF AMERICA
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NRA MEMBER? GREAT, NOW JOIN GUN OWNERS OF AMERICA