General or Specialist?

If you’re like most practicing gunsmiths, you probably started out and founded your business as being a general practitioner. Your reputation and your income was based on doing any job that came along. You did it well and reaped the rewards. Since the time that you started you have become more and more proficient and perhaps even hired an extra hand.

You may be getting a little tired of the run-of-the-mill jobs and you may prefer to do certain custom work, such pistolsmithing for specific types of competitions or working on your newly-designed aftermarket part that has taken off locally. You get a handsome figure for building and installing your new "Jim Crank" and believe you’ll do even better if you advertise—naturally. You might be able to if this is something enough shooters want.

You are now thinking that due to the increase of the price that you can command for this job, it is a lot more fun and more profitable if you concentrate on this specialty work, which along with something like accurizing work, becomes a big ticket item. You won’t have to have as many total jobs to take in in order to charge the same money as you were used to when you were handling more guns for less cost each that came in to your shop under the heading of general business. Well, stop and think a little.

All of the above may be true but there are several things to think about. One, how long will this business last? Is your idea patentable? If it is, are you prepared to layout about the thousands of dollars necessary to secure a patent? More important, are you prepared to pay even greater amounts of money in legal fees to defend your patent in court when other gunsmiths and companies (most of them having more money than you) take your idea and run with it?

The patent application process can take two or three years to complete and the possibility exists that there may be prior intellectual property on it, rendering your patent less good than you would like it. Then there is always the possibility of someone changing your idea or product just enough to evade patent infringement and selling it for less. This all depends on how popular your item proves to be beyond the immediate range of your shop.

What if the handful of local customers buying your idea aren’t representative of the gun owning public at large? Let’s say moving to a large market does work out and you avoid the issues stated above. Now you are flushed with orders from around the country and have reason to be convinced the world will beat a path to your shop. Maybe so—for awhile. You cannot insure yourself that this business bonanza will last for any given amount of time and may be fooling yourself as to how long the market will last.

Because of this, you now have dozens of orders for custom jobs in and can no longer be bothered with general gunsmithing. Your shop helper is now doing those jobs and is now the person your old customers are looking to for repairs and learning to depend on. You are left alone more and more to take care of your new business. Over a period of time you become more successful with your new item and custom job, losing contact with the very thing you built your business on—general gunsmithing.

Your helper now has the rapport with your local customers that you once had. Oh sure, they still talk to you, when they see you, but they have to talk to your helper with regard to their particular problems. Well, Ms./Mr. Gunsmith, congratulations on building anew reputation for your helper who is certain to leave and open up his own shop and take your old customer base that he has built in your shop along with him.

Now, just to make things more exciting, sales of your new, hot item and custom job start falling off. "Nothing to worry about, summer vacations and all that!" Maybe. Until in later months sales continue to fall again. If this drop continues, it indicates that the market is falling off. The rush is over. There is something even newer on the market or you have just saturated your market potential. It can get worse. What to do? First off, get back where you never should have left.

Get back to the meat and potatoes of this business: general gunsmithing. If your helper is still there you better move back to being the one who talks to the customers. Protect yourself and the shop and hopefully recapture your customers before they become convinced that you don’t want to work on their guns, but your helper does.

Divide your time up so that perhaps the turn around time for the "hot" item still gets done but it takes a little longer and allows you to remain running your shop for your local (and returning) customers. Consider that a recession might drop the market for your item to little or nothing. Then what? It could happen. Gunsmiths, not unlike many people who have their own business, often forget their roots. Stop and think how you got to where you are. What did you do to

become established in this business to the point it was before starting on the new item? If you managed to keep your shop in business, then you know you can live off doing general gunsmithing. Perhaps you should instead train your helper to install the item or do some part of the task while you keep taking care of the shop and your core, local base of customers.

Those people will always need that repair or installation job done in the future and will likely tell their shooting friends and relatives of your good work. A lack of markets, wars and recessions are great for making one realize what one had before all this happened. If you specialize by either deciding to do one type of work or by building a good aftermarket product, I have some very simple rules to follow. First, always have enough money to ride out the lean times.

This is an adequate emergency fund of cash or similar liquid assets, separate from long term investments. Second, ensure that you have enough information proving your new specialty assures you good and continuing business. Finally, be certain that you really want to lose your general gunsmithing business. My advice is: don’t sell the farm! Custom Shop Example Here’s an example of how you might take this custom shop idea forward: The Poor Man’s Custom Shop.

It is possible to produce custom rifles or products along with the best of them with a minimum of talent and machinery. You don’t have to be a master stockmaker, which is the crux of custom rifles. You don’t have to be able to rebarrel actions, which not only takes machinery but know-how as a machinist. What you must have is the knowledge of where to get these things done so that you can put out custom rifles that fill your customer’s needs.

Just as important, you can do this custom approach as an add-on to your general services. Let’s take a typical situation. You have a customer who wants a custom 398 Whiz Bang with custom barrel and stock specifications. There are several barrel makers who will fit the exact barrel you want, on your action, turned, chambered, and proofed. A word of caution right here.

You first have to realize that today if you supply the action to the barrel maker, order any stock, sights, or similar accessories that you are not only responsible for the excise tax but are considered to be a "producer" according to the BATFE. You ask, where does one obtain a "producer" license? I don’t know, but I do know that BATFE spells out that the term "producer" and "manufacturer" mean the same thing. So where is your manufacturer’s license? The official meanings of these things are spelled out in U. S.

C. 178.11, Meaning of Terms. As a gunsmith and duly licensed as such, you are restricted to repair, refinishing, and parts replacement. This does not allow you to "build" custom rifles without having a Manufacturer’s license and paying the excise tax. While I am not a lawyer and am not offering any of this as legal advice, I am offering up a caution to all of you. The whole problem is solved, I believe, by following the procedure outlined herewith.

If ownership of the receiver is kept in the name of the purchaser and he orders you to customize it, then he is the manufacturer or producer and is first subject to any excise tax and regulations for manufacturer. Should your customer order a custom rifle based on a barreled action, regardless of maker, he must buy the barreled action first so that it is his, not yours. Getting off the legalities or liabilities of custom guns, let’s get back to making honest money.

In either case, having an action barreled or starting with a barreled action, you go after the stock. You take a stock offering from a given maker, determine the type, wood or other material, and any finishing work such as checkering. You can either figure this from their website or catalog or contact the maker directly for a quote. Keep in mind you are going to get a first class job of inletting and finishing. Let’s say, for discussion, the stock runs $800.

You arrange to get 25% off of retail, making $200 right off the bat. We’ll assume the stockmaker has done a super job. You have no hours in so far and can now install the sights, trigger work, bluing, etc. to turn out a $1,500 custom gun. The day of sweating out a semiinletted stock, the hours, the finishing, etc. and then maybe it isn’t as great a quality as it should be is over. Don’t fight it!

If you don’t want your customer to know the stock was initially done by a given maker, then either order the stock with a plain buttplate or install a different one yourself. The latter is especially good if the customer specified a particular recoil pad. With these provision, I doubt if anyone can tell who made the stock. Even if they did, what’s the difference?

If you are honest about it and tell your customer that someone else made the stock that you finished for them, you certainly don’t have to apologize for work that a good company offers anymore than you do for having a barrel put on by a barrel maker. Plus, going with an offering from a reputable aftermarket maker can help signify a custom job as opposed to using the base model provided on a factory gun. Operating in this manner puts you in the custom class but it is done with a minimum of time and effort.

I have done this on a number of rifles in the past and I find it not only convenient but profitable. You offered a service and provided custom options not normally available on common factory guns. Gunsmiths that do work that makes them a manufacturer are opening themselves up to possible liability. The only definition of "manufacturer" that matters is whatever BATFE says it is. AG