The Gunsmith’s Shop: What Will It Cost?

It makes little difference whether you become a gunsmith as a result of your hobby growing into a profession, you graduate from one of the finer gunsmith schools, or if you serve an apprenticeship with an old established gunsmith; before you consider opening your own gunsmithing shop, you need to have a realistic idea of what it will take in terms of cash and commitment to get started. First off, let me offer some advice for the part-time gunsmith.

I’ve never liked the term "hobbyist" or "hobby gunsmith," for that implies that you’re not trying to make money in this business, which, of course, makes you a thorn in the sides of the established full-time gunsmiths. And it implies that your work is not up to the quality of the professional gunsmith, which is clearly not the case in all instances. Many part-timers have collected the basic tools and basic skills, and do a fine job within their area of interest.

But before you start thinking about moving into the full-time for-profit gunsmithing world, you’d better be aware of the equipment you’ll need to buy and the commitment you’ll need to make in order to compete with the established businesses in your area. And you should carefully consider how good you are, what you want to accomplish, and what services you’re qualified to offer before you consider giving up the day job.

If you’re a recent graduate of one of the gunsmithing schools, you still have to ask yourself these same questions. Sure, you’ve graduated, but how far are you going to go with this thing? In school, you’ve had access to machinery, books, and knowledgeable instructors. But that’s all gone once you graduate. Are you ready to fly by the seat of your own pants?

Or do you need to find work in an established shop for a few years while you complete your education and save for the equipment you’ll need to open your business? I’m often asked by beginners about the equipment that’s needed to open a gunsmithing shop, and specifically about the cost of that equipment (which is only a portion of the cost of opening a shop). The first thing you need to ask yourself is what kind of repairs will I be doing? What do I want to do, and what am I able to do?

Then decide what you’ll really need to cover most of those repairs, make a list, price it out, and add it up. It will probably scare you half to death, or at least, if you proceed, it will cause you to think about getting a second mortgage on the farm. The most important thing for a beginner (and even those who have been in business for awhile) to remember is: What does the tool or machinery cost, and how many jobs must I get in order to pay for it? Don’t get carried away looking at the Brownells Wish Book.

Unnecessary buying of tools that are not used makes Bob Brownell richer and you poorer. Simply having all the tools doesn’t make you a qualified gunsmith or an intelligent businessman. And buying a tool that you only use once a year doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, either. You may have learned a lot about gunsmithing, but your overall education isn’t complete until you understood the cost effectiveness of buying tools. Let’s go into that a little more to make my point clearer. Take a standard 6-inch mill file.

You can buy it fairly cheaply by today’s standards. You won’t, but you should, keep track of how many jobs you use it on and how long a period you use it before it has to be replaced. If you kept track of this expenditure, you’d agree that the cost of this tool was amortized over so many jobs and its original cost was paid for early on in the game. Now, let’s look at something on the other end of the spectrum.

Because you were able to get that second mortgage, you buy a milling machine with a 48-inch bed, because you anticipate doing a lot of mill work. Okay, if you cut 24 dovetails and do 100 other hours of something or other, you’ll found it real nice to have. But let’s look at the numbers objectively. Let’s say you do 300 hours of work on it per year. The mill cost you, new, $5,000. If you charge $30 an hour for this work, you took in $9,000. Swell, I made money. Wrong!

Look at it this way: If you credited the $30 an hour all to this machine, it would be $9,000 less the $5,000 that you paid for it, which gives you a profit of $4,000. Not bad. Wrong again! If you figure it this way, you worked for nothing for the first $5,000 worth, to say nothing of the electricity cost, the tool bit cost, wear factor, and so on. The $4,000 you call profit, if divided by $30 per hour, brings us to 133 hours of socalled profit. If you deduct your oper-

ating costs from the $4,000 you think is profit, you can cut that roughly in half and a $2,000 figure is closer to the truth. Your argument is: "But I paid for the machine in 300 or less hours." Well, if that keeps you happy, fine, but you’re not going to pay that second mortgage back with that kind of mathematics. Three hundred hours is approximately six weeks of 48-hour work weeks that you would be running that mill.

But the things you are not taking into consideration include the return of the cost of the machine, the interest on the borrowed money used to buy it, electricity, tool costs, and other costs like rent, lights, insurance, and wages. When this is all added up, you’ll find out why your local machine shop charges $50 per hour. They may not be better machinists, but they may have someone who is better at doing their books than you are.

If you want to charge $30 an hour for your labor, which will net out to about $15 after all your expenses are paid, then all of the extras mentioned above must be taken into consideration. If you don’t, and you show a $4,000 profit on $9,000 worth of billed work, the IRS is going to love you. Tax-wise, you should be able to amortize the cost of any machinery over a three-year period, but get some advice from a CPA familiar with small businesses.

If you work 11 months a year at gunsmithing, using 48-hour weeks and four weeks to the month, you have 2,112 hours that you would like to bill out at $30 per hour for or an annual income of $63,360. Now, take that figure, add up your living costs, the cost of keeping your shop open and paying not only the second mortgage but the first, your new pick up truck and your month’s vacation, and what is your balance?

You retort rather smartly: "Well, I’ve paid for my mill." Good, keep it up, but don’t get sick so you can’t work, break a $25 tool bit, or wreck the truck and have to pay the deductible, etc., etc. When you sell work that involves expensive machinery like mills, lathes, and other power tools, you simply have to charge for it. The basic labor rate does not include the cost of any machinery and you should take this into consideration when quoting any machinery-related work.

If you keep in mind the labor cost for your work is $30 and you’re happy with that, then give some careful consideration to what you have to add for the use of your machinery. This will probably put you in the $50 per hour range. Getting back to start-up costs, be sure you have a clear idea of the work you’re preparing to do. This is a simple controlling factor. You don’t buy a lathe and a mill unless you know how to run them.

And, of course, you won’t need a full set of chamber reamers unless and until you know how to use them. Build your tool and machinery inventory based on the type and amount (particularly the amount) of the type of work you can get and the type you can do well. Above all, be particularly careful about buying equipment just because it impresses you or your single-job customer. Use some not-so-common common sense.

In my opinion, the lathe is the single most important piece of equipment and is really a must for any good gunsmith. This is the instrument that makes all the different screws, pins, and other parts. It will be doing a lot of work for you. But don’t get carried away and buy a lathe large enough to do rebarreling if you aren’t going to do a lot of rebarreling. And keep in mind that a lathe capable of rebarreling work is going to be too big to easily make a 3×56 screw. Use your head.

A 12- or 13-inch by 36-inch lathe will do many, many jobs at a lower per-piece price than an 18- by 50-inch lathe, and look for good used equipment before buying anew one. Again (and again), buy the equipment you really need to do the work you can do, but don’t buy tools to satisfy your ego. Once you’ve purchased your machine tools, then you must make them work profitably for you.

Watch your business carefully and grow with it, adding more machinery only as the demand for a particular type of work grows, and then be sure your charges are right. If your start-up costs include the cost of going to a gunsmith school, you’ve already invested a sizable chunk of money even before you start looking for tools and a shop to work from. Will the fact that you graduated from a good gunsmithing program mean you’re going to be swamped with business as soon as you hang out your shingle and open the doors?

Not hardly! You’ll have to build your business the same way the old established competitors in your area had to. And think about this: You either have to get new customers (if there are any to get), or you have to take customers away from the established competitors in the area. Don’t give up the day job until you figure out how you’re going to do this. Here are some questions to ask yourself, and you’ll want to be honest with yourself in answering them: How much cash will I need for start-up expenses?

How much more cash will I need to see me through until I start to show a profit? How competent am I as a gunsmith? What are my real skills? What’s my market consist of? Who are my potential customers and what kind of work do they need? Who are my competitors? What do I have to offer that’s different from my competition?

Now here’s a tip for anyone considering going into business for himself: Rather than trying to find away to undercut your competitors on price, spend some time thinking about what you can do to make your work worth more than your competition rather than less. Generally speaking, the man who can do something better than the competition has a greater chance of success than the man who simply charges less for inferior work.

For many young men, opening a gunsmith shop is the "Great American Dream." But don’t lose sight of the fact that the road to financial ruin is often paved with dreams. If you’re not prepared, mentally as well as financially, for opening your own shop, there’s still a lot of satisfaction to be had from working in someone else’s well-run shop or remaining in the "hobby category." I

AMGFW07 AG DBI SPREAD AD (pick up from 2/07 issue)

AMGFW07 AG DBI SPREAD AD (pick up from 2/07 issue)