Gunsmith Time

Yep, I’m back on the old pet project, trying to organize my time into an amount that will result in productivity as well as leave me some freedom for getting new business gained by talking to my customers. Few of us really look at how much time we spend talking and how much time we can spend working.

Let’s say you still charge $30.00 an hour for basic gunsmith work, even though a recent Brownells Shop Price Survey (brownells.com/ userdocs/miscellaneous/shoppricesurvey.pdf) currently lists this fee at $40-$80 per hour, $50-$95 per hour when it involves machine work, and a minimum fee of $35- $70 per gun. You insist it’s affordable to waste 15 minutes on idle chit chat with each customer. In an eight hour day, 15 minutes spent with six people is 1.5 hours lost.

You could have made $240 ($30.00 per hour x 8) but now you have a deduction of $45.00 so your income for the day is really $195.00. Even if you did make the $240.00, you still left 1.5 billable hours on the table. "But I still have to talk to customers," you point out. "If I don’t talk to people, how am I going to get business?" You are right of course. You do have to talk, so what do we do about it? First off, forget that billable hourly rate that is going through your head.

Simply keep that figure in mind plus the time you have spent talking and price the job out so that you are properly paid for it either then and there or later. Hourly rates are fine if you have a helper who is also on an hourly rate (lesser, of course) and every hour he works he makes you money. If your business is such that you can afford a counter man, take his salary and spread it out or divide the hours per week that he wants into his salary and be sure this overhead is covered in your prices.

You may have to increase the average you charge per job. Lone Gunsmiths A single gunsmith with no employees or other help is better off not opening shop to the public until noon. That gives you the first half of the day to work uninterrupted and still be open when many customers might stop in during a noon break or after work.

There are plenty of customers that will run in on their lunch hour, which may delay your eating your cheese sandwich, but this is a good time to take care of them as lunch hours are often lost time anyway. In addition to a later open time, I also prefer to be closed Mondays as it provides an entire, uninterrupted work day and even more productive time. I often do my bluing on Monday. Let’s revisit the hourly rate idea and time spend talking to customers.

If you’ve firmly concluded that by charging your normal hourly rate and still spending 1.5 hours (or whatever it is) talking isn’t all bad, I can’t do anything but agree with you except to point out you’re assuming that it will take only 45 minutes per job to stay in that picture. The fact is a gunsmith would have to be pretty damn good to take eight jobs in and fix them all in a 45 minute time schedule. What if two or three of those jobs took a full hour or longer?

That blows your hourly rate out the window and you end up working anywhere from two to three hours longer. What’s the solution? There is no hard and fast answer. All you can do is quote by the job, use your shop hourly rate, know the approximate time it should take, and work long enough or do what you can for the day and put the rest off until later. Only you can judge your time and the money you want to make. This all depends on what you are satisfied with.

If $100.00 per day is all you want, you’re free talk a lot and goof off more. There will be days when you won’t make even that. There will also be days when you spend an hour just to get a stubborn screw or a broken tap out. Then what? You can’t always charge for the unseen. Sometimes you can, not always. Gunsmithing is many things and different problems come up. Your judgment and experience is necessary and you have to know your customer. If you quote a price you may be stuck with it.

There are many unforeseen situations that are not your fault and you can do nothing but eat them. I have always found it best upon running into a significant, unforeseen problem to call the customer immediately, tell him I can’t do the job for what I quoted, and give him the new price based on the previously unknown issue. If he doesn’t want it done it is his election but you are being honest with yourself and him.

He should understand, at least you hope, that just because you quote a price that would’ve held had you not run into a different problem not of your making that your shop shouldn’t have to completely take the loss. Whatever you decide to do, be up front with it and why. In the long run, most people will understand. AG