Gunsmithing Business Tips, Part 1

A couple of years ago, I wrote and published The Business of Gunsmithing: A Practical Strategic Compendium. I had been approached a number of times by people considering a career as a full-time gunsmith and those discussions fueled the core content of the book. I have since then received a number of positive responses from people that read it and have likewise received requests for a little more depth or granularity with some of the topics.

To address these requests, I compiled three areas that I felt could be further elaborated on, mainly because I didn’t feel that level of granularity was appropriate for a book being published for the general population. The following series has been written for the American Gunsmith audience since it delves much deeper into the journey of becoming a working gunsmith. This three-part series consists of education for the aspiring gunsmith, the gunsmith persona, and working as a gunsmith.

My goal is to help people contemplating a career as a gunsmith with their individual journey and what they will likely face during their pursuit of that career. Learning Considerations Are you considering becoming a full-time gunsmith? Any thoughts on where to begin the journey? I often have people either tell me that they wish they had become a gunsmith, or are now considering becoming a gunsmith and are wondering how to get started. Where should you actually begin?

I believe like anything else, you should start by seeking out formal, accredited education. Especially if you are just starting out or are not in a position to apprentice with a well-educated and experienced local gunsmith to learn the trade from. Some people may be part of a family-owned gun shop and have the capability to learn from the gunsmith they have hired to do the work for them. But it takes time.

And just like any other career choice, you will want to maximize your education while trying to reduce the time spent getting to where you want to be in the business. Let’s look at the person that is either right out of high school and making college plans or the person that is somewhat older and has decided to try out a career in gunsmithing.

In other words, people that are just now considering getting into a career as a full-time gunsmith and don’t have a family-owned shop or other relative or friend to spend time with to learn the trade. Lacking an immediately-available place to learn, there is some debate about proceeding. Based on my experiences, I can see validity to all sides of this question.

Basically, do you simply hire on in a gun shop or outdoor retail store and start there, or attempt to do it on your own at home, or do you make the move towards obtaining a formal education in your new field of choice? The debate is, will formal education really help and prove worthwhile, or is it just a waste of time and money when hands-on experience is the best way? My advice, especially since I took the formal education route, is that education is the better way to go. It proved to be the best choice for me.

Depending upon where you are today, it could be the most obvious choice for you as well. As a full-time working gunsmith, you will quickly learn that time is money and too much time spent on something costs you. This won’t be apparent immediately, so take it from those that know to avoid making early decisions that prevent

achieving your intended goals or prolong the time that it might take to get where you ultimately want to go. Since there is no single way to become a gunsmith, or one "right" way over another, you really need to think hard before you take your first steps forward. Let’s assume you have graduated from high school or have a General Educational Development equivalent and are in a position to apply to and attend a higher education school.

It doesn’t matter one bit how old you are; you just need to be in a position of being able to apply for and be accepted to the school of your choice. Given multiple options, which one can put you on the right path quickest? And which path can maximize income, output, and physical efforts towards becoming a full-time, working gunsmith? Once you consider all of this, you may quickly see that applying to attend an accredited gunsmith school is really the best all-around option when first starting out. And why not?

If you have the time, ability to pay for such an education, and the drive to see your goal through no matter what, this is probably the best step forward that you could take. Whether any other trade school or a career requiring a college degree, this is commonly recommended. Wouldn’t you like to know as soon as possible that the job either is or isn’t for you? I know I would have wanted to know that so I could save time and move onto something else.

Formal, specialized education in afield provides an immersion into the trade and provides a clearer picture of what you will actually be doing in your new career. And unlike the basic education you have attended all those previous years, this type of higher education reduces the frills and focuses directly on the intended career choice. What better way to get going than to walk in the door and start doing the work immediately.

This path positions you to learn the absolute core fundamentals of the trade in the beginning while learning your abilities, and how well you work the necessary tasks. To me, learning the fundamentals of the trade are the most valuable as you can always reflect back on that learning experience no matter how far you go in and with your career.

True, there are those that have attended a gunsmith school and complained they didn’t feel they truly learned what was needed for a career and that their education lacked key areas critical to effectively carrying out the job as a working gunsmith. My take is this will always be true for any school education in any career. Any education can involve learning things that you might not use in the future while not covering some needed aspect but where else will you get the opportunity to become educated formally?

Would you rather learn things ad hoc and not have a formal degree? What if you decide you made a mistake and would rather do something else entirely? If you did not attend school and decided to learn on the fly, you might have invested in a career you ultimately don’t want, putting yourself further behind when trying to figure out what it is you want to do, instead of figuring this out as apart of the education process.

And, if you were to have attended and completed your higher education elective with a formal degree, you’re more likely better positioned than someone that did not. The single-most critical decision that I made many years ago was to apply for, get accepted, and successfully graduate from Gunsmithing School—hands down. Sure, it cost me some loan money that took ten years to pay back but it was smart money spent.

The life-long rewards proved to outweigh the costs incurred during those two school years as I use that education daily. I would have never been able to achieve my goals had I not taken that route. To begin with, school was a direct immersion into the field of gunsmithing while starting at the bottom and learning the core fundamentals of the trade itself.

This meant learning how to use tools, identify tools needed for particular jobs, making those tools by hand, and then making those tools look as good as, if not better, than purchased tools. The education presented me with challenges that I might never have had to face if not for the education. Those challenges tested my abilities, my knowledge, my understanding of how mechanical things work, and how I could think my way through the process of making the repairs possible. That’s just a start.

Attending a fully accredited Gunsmithing School placed me in the same room as other aspiring gunsmiths and very capable instructors. This collaboration enabled each of us to work out problems and solutions with others that may or may not have already known how to correct the issue at hand, and in some cases, we collectively worked to resolve the problems encountered. You will have the opportunity to work with

others in your field of choice that are very good at what they do, so you get to see how fine work is done and can be achieved. Those types of opportunities, for me, have never been replicated since leaving school. Sure, I have worked with other gunsmiths along the way, but those relationships were, well, just different. When you attend school with other like-minded people seeking an education to become a talented gunsmith, you all form a camaraderie that bonds you closely together.

There is no scenario like that once you leave school. Trying to obtain an education online or in a virtual environment that leaves you on your own cannot replicate attending a formalized gunsmithing school with your peers. You spend your time learning all-things gunsmithing while there. Being able to learn the absolute core fundamentals of the trade in an immersive environment in the beginning and then building upon that knowledge as you progress through school is the cornerstone to achieving results.

Just like a competitive shooter learns, you always go back to your fundamentals when things start going wrong. Depending on your school of choice, you will learn things about firearms that no book can fully describe and the education that you receive will change your focus from just liking firearms and what they do, to looking at firearms in a much different way. Schooling teaches you how guns work, why they work, why they don’t work, and how you can improve on them.

You’ll be making them before you are done with your first year, then you’ll learn how to make the tools to work on them properly, make parts, multiple nuances of many guns, their differences from one another and from different manufacturers, and how to make them work better. What better way to work on firearms early on in your career than working on your own guns rather than a customer’s prized firearms all under the direct supervision of talented gunsmithing instructors?

Clearly the risks of things going wrong or accidentally damaging them while working on them is much more palatable than ruining a gun that doesn’t belong to you.

I worked on, rebuilt, and modified a number of my own firearms while attending school for the sole purpose of becoming more knowledgeable about them, learning how to modify and improve them and creating opportunities to fully engage myself with hands-on gun work; from broken screws, to broken or missing parts, making critical changes to the firearm design that is proven to be safe to do, to making new stocks for them and ultimately refinishing them with different refinishing methods.

Yes, you can do this at home but attending school drives you forward at a much faster, more proficient, and more professional approach all while under the helpful and expert eyes of your gunsmithing instructors. You’re no longer a hobbyist tinkering with guns when you feel like it; school pushes you to take on and complete projects with deadlines, just like you’ll need to do when you’re a working gunsmith.

The majority of gunsmithing education needs to be actual, hands-on education, and not just about reading and taking tests, which is something online courses lack. My first year attending Gunsmith School dealt with basic tool making, metallurgy, learning how to heat treat parts, how to forge tools and parts, how to design, fit and polish tools and gun parts so that they work properly. Most of this education was through the use of hand tools only.

Yes, we did make some tools on the lathe, in a milling machine, or on the drill press, but the goal was to educate us on how to work on firearms without power tools at all. Machinery does help and is required for some applications but learning how to work without their assistance is part of the fundamental training. There is just something that enhances learning by making things with a file, scribe, hacksaw, hammer, some emery cloth, and measuring tools.

And you better not hand that project in if it isn’t polished perfectly, is absolutely square, and to the project specifications. You don’t want to have that conversation with your metal shop instructor, believe me! As the first year progressed, we were introduced to more machinery for projects, such turning down a barrel blank, cleaning up a Mauser 98 action, truing the bolt face and face of the receiver, threading and fitting the newly contoured barrel to that action, and then chambering it.

After all that, we had to polish, polish, polish, polish! And once that was complete, it was on to building a stock. No, not by purchasing a ninety percent inletted stock for final inletting. No, sir! The class required we purchase a stock blank, make Mauser action templates, draw the stock lines on that block of wood, and then proceeded to remove all excess wood—by hand.

That meant cutting away excess wood with a hand saw one piece at a time and then chiseling other pieces away to work down to the near final stock lines. Then, using stock inletting tools that we also forged, shaped, polished, heat treated, and polished again ourselves, we began to inlet the metal into the stock one chip at a time. Yes, this takes time but it is part of learning fundamentals. No short cuts allowed.

Let me tell you, whittling a finished stock out of stock blank with hand tools you made yourself will for sure tell you if you are allin for this career or not! Paying to be in school where this is your sole focus with other future gunsmiths provides the opportunity to see their work and approach to each project along side your own. Some will have other experiences and can pass along some tricks or solutions to you. And you will more than likely see some fine work from these folks; truly beautiful work.

Seeing that can drive you towards doing that same kind

of fine work for yourself. If you area perfectionist, you will be like the many that are never satisfied with your own work, mainly because you will know where every mistake you made is on the gun you are building or repairing. But it is the end product that you complete that will define what kind of work you do and what you can do to get better. During our second year, we focused on custom work more so than just simply building or repairing firearms.

This meant taking first year lessons and then applying it towards new projects. Essentially, you became the artist, putting ideas together towards building a firearm with personal touches. Actually, you could build more than one if you had what you needed to do so. We also spent more time on building more difficult-to-make tooling and parts, more time on the machinery aspects of the job, along with the standard course content.

There really were no boundaries as long as you were working on projects that truly developed intended career apprenticeship skills. This could be refurbishing firearms, customizing them, building another bolt action rifle, and/or making tools not listed in the course tool list manual. One of the course requirements was to make an octagon or half-octagon barrel for a firearm build. I ended up making a full octagon barrel fitted up to a Mauser 98 action for my project.

I also built a custom rifle from an 03-A3 action that I had along with rebuilding a Lee Enfield rifle and refurbishing a few other rifles. Student will to spend the time could pretty much do as much as they wanted during that year. I completely restored a Stevens Crackshot rifle for a good friend that wanted it like-new to keep as a family heirloom. It turned out really nice even though the initial condition was pretty bad when I started.

This project stands out in my mind as it was the first time I restored a rifle completely—and one that did not belong to me. You quickly find that there are added pressures when working on something that doesn’t belong to you. This is necessary to become a working gunsmith. These projects put student in front of nearly every machine tool the school had to offer, as well as quality time at the bluing tanks.

You learn so much so very quickly as long as you are committed to seeing the training through and getting out of it as much as possible. I guess the true motivating factor was simply learning for its own sake. If you stop learning, thinking you already know it all, then your abilities and skills stop at the same time. Book Feedback I talk about education in my book but in a much broader spectrum.

This was due to the book being written for the 14 year old and up age groups that are considering a career and thinking of being a gunsmith. I have since received feedback from fellow gunsmiths that have been both positive and negative on my take of getting a quality education. All are correct in their feelings but consider that individual circumstances ultimately drives the need for and type of education to move forward with your goals. Attending Gunsmith School is not for everyone.

Some people have a gift of self-learning; so much so they might not need to attend a school for their education. Others are in a position in their lives that attending an accredited gunsmith school just isn’t practical but are capable and willing to learn well on their own. I had a number of goals in mind while writing this article.

One was to shed some light on what an accredited Gunsmith School can offer, what it may not offer, and more importantly, to educate the aspiring gunsmith by providing some insight into attending a Gunsmithing School since that was my choice. I was in a position of being able to attend school for two years and earn an Associate’s Degree. If I had found I didn’t like the work or my commitment waned then at least I would have earned an A. A. S. Degree.

However, the school that I chose to attend also offered students the ability to simply take individual non-degree gunsmithing courses and some of the students did just that. It could have been that they already had a degree or didn’t want or need one. When considering a higher education path, look at all of the angles, the benefits, the types of courses offered by a particular school, and make a sound decision.

Look at what each school has to offer (quality rather than just cost) as far as the courses that you will take, whether what they offer is truly needed based on your current level of experience, whether or not they offer a degree, and whether or not they have other courses available to you at their school that can enhance your career learning goals. For example, you might benefit from business classes that are not part of the gunsmith curriculum. All of these things should be considered before making your decision.

There are many more avenues of research available now. I won’t endorse any particular school as I don’t know what each has to offer. Whether you decide to attend a formal school or not, you should always maximize the return on your efforts and money spent. This is true of any career or higher education choice that you make. Don’t wander aimlessly trying to satisfy your intended career goals. Cut to the chase and get going on your chosen career path.

If you jump in with both feet, you might quickly learn or decide this career is not for you. But then again, you may find this was exactly what you wanted all along. Just know that if you do go to school, you will carry with you those experiences, relationships, and that fundamental core knowledge in all that you do for the rest of your life. The choice is yours to make. AG