Rifle Gun Smith Courses

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Phill Smyth

Guest
G’day to you all, with all your knowledge and experience, I wish to get your advice and opinion of who and where offers the best Gun smithing course for Rifle smithing. Sadly there are no such courses offered at any of the technical Colleges or anywhere else in Australia. To become a qualified rifle smith, it would require doing a course in the USA, or abroad.
I am a carpenter and joiner by trade, building construction contractor. I have completed a machine and turning course and have carried out some of my own high quality work, though my knowledge is limited. The desire is there but not the range of knowledge.

If your knowledge could recommend courses in the USA. Venue, time required, and costs. I have friends in Sacramento CA if there is any close by there. Most Gunsmiths here are machinists that have an interest and have turned their hand to doing guns. Some Quality, most crap.
Being certified would be an advantage and with Gun laws and insurance becoming more and more restrictive. As you would know there are many that dabble -play at this, with very few master Gunsmith / Rifle smiths. I expect quality workmanship and Benchrest accuracy or as close to it as possible in all my rifles, this is becoming harder and harder to find, with many of our few master Gunsmiths retiring from the business. Any advice this ocean of knowledge can offer is much appreciated. Regards to you all.
 
IMO if you have the basics down of good machine shop practices, especially for lathe work, there are a few videos out there from Richard Franklin, Gre-Tan, and Gordy Gritters (Grizzly) that would probably teach you as much as you needed to know for precision barrel work. Richards video on rifle bedding is superb, his metalworking video being excellent also along with the others mentioned. These videos were produced by people that have a good rep for accurate work and they show you exactly how to do it. Given your distance from the states and the time for attending a school, this would give you the info you need for the specific tasks you want to know. AGI also has some good ones on specific tasks and they're undoubtedly more broad in topics. For less than the cost of your flight I think you could get all the info you wanted or needed if you simply wanted to build accurate rifles.
 
rifle smithing

Check with the NRA (usa) for the schools that offer the NRA Summer Gunsmithing Classes. The courses are usally listed in the Jan-Feb. time frame , corses are usally one to two weeks. Classes are run May-Sept. , you need to check to see when a class is offered. I know the Montgomery Ccommunity College in Troy N.C. has a class every year and I sure some of the Schools out west do the same. These are hands on classes so you need to kind of know your way around a lathe etc. , some of the classes are limited in number of students in a class (MCC 8).:eek: OWLSHOP.
 
Agreed to the above that you could "probably" get enough info to get started by buying video's or doing correspondence or "splinter" (summer) courses... a lot of folks go that way and the information is undoubtedly quite useful.

I guess the best answer to this would depend on whether you just intend to do some work for yourself and friends, or you intend to go into the business full time and attempt to make a living. If the former is true, then by all means keep the time and expenses down and do the short courses in residence here, or try some of the video instruction. If your aspirations are more along the lines of making this a career, you would really owe it to yourself and your future clientele to just suck it up and come here for two years and take a full length gunsmithing course at a recognized school, such as Trinidad in Colorado. This will give you a real paper diploma form a recognized school for your certification and insurance in your home country, and will also expose you to a wide variety of trade skills and practices that will be very useful to you in your future. And the hands - on and individual nature of the instruction will give you skills and insights that no amount of video watching or book study can duplicate. At a minimum it will keep you from having to learn many things "the hard way" and can potentially save you 10 or 15 years' worth of making mistakes... and I think that other school graduates on this board will know what I mean.

Oh, and check out this web site.. American Custom Gunmakers' Guild... http://www.acgg.org/ You might find some useful info there.

Think about this decision as if you're buying a rifle... you can have "cheap" (which may work ok) or you can have "high quality."
 
Phill, Perhaps a book titled "THE COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO PRECISION RIFLE BARREL FITTING" by John L Hinnant.

Don
 
Rifle Smithing- Many Thanks - Once again all your input is of high quality

Crow99 said:
Agreed to the above that you could "probably" get enough info to get started by buying video's or doing correspondence or "splinter" (summer) courses... a lot of folks go that way and the information is undoubtedly quite useful.

I guess the best answer to this would depend on whether you just intend to do some work for yourself and friends, or you intend to go into the business full time and attempt to make a living. If the former is true, then by all means keep the time and expenses down and do the short courses in residence here, or try some of the video instruction. If your aspirations are more along the lines of making this a career, you would really owe it to yourself and your future clientele to just suck it up and come here for two years and take a full length gunsmithing course at a recognized school, such as Trinidad in Colorado. This will give you a real paper diploma form a recognized school for your certification and insurance in your home country, and will also expose you to a wide variety of trade skills and practices that will be very useful to you in your future. And the hands - on and individual nature of the instruction will give you skills and insights that no amount of video watching or book study can duplicate. At a minimum it will keep you from having to learn many things "the hard way" and can potentially save you 10 or 15 years' worth of making mistakes... and I think that other school graduates on this board will know what I mean.

Oh, and check out this web site.. American Custom Gunmakers' Guild... http://www.acgg.org/ You might find some useful info there.

Think about this decision as if you're buying a rifle... you can have "cheap" (which may work ok) or you can have "high quality."
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Rifle Smithing- Many Thanks - Once again all your input is of high quality and just what I requested. High Quality is the desired and only acceptable result I wish to offer. Being certified would be the desired result, for the following reasons

a. The consistent Law changes and restrictions to the gun laws, This I am sure is just to frustrate the gun owners, shop owners, and gunsmiths to the point that they just quit. I do not know any trade certified or manufacture trained gunsmiths. I am sure there out there, though I do not know of any.

b. Being industry certified and having the knowledge of the many trigger configurations and the knowledge to repair and modify with the correct knowledge for the safety of the owner and operators is another desire.
I have seen some messed up triggers by so call gunsmiths and so called experts, and wonder how they have been so lucky not to injure or kill some poor customer thinking a person of expert knowledge has carried out the work on their trigger and firearm.

c. As you would know, being a tradesman is not only a piece of paper but the skills you have been taught , learned, the correct attitude and desire to do what it takes to produce quality results. I know many tradesmen that produce poor quality work and much non trade qualified that have taken the time and effort to produce highly results in what they do. I have always desired to give quality and if customers do not wish to pay for quality I do not wish to do work for them.
Just look at the crap that comes from Asia and other cheap labour countries, that was once quality produced in North America, Australia and Europe.

d. When you look at quality precision shooting components for Benchrest or other disciplines, most come from the custom shops of North America and its many highly skill and passionate precision manufactures.
It amazes me that their products are so hard to get and waiting times are out of control.

Thanks again for all your info - Regard Phill
 
I too am a carpenter and learned my trade probably the same way you did, an apprenticeship. Would it be possible for you to learn under one of the smiths at home with out having to come all the way to America? I know a lot of the guys here have learned from other good smiths, and gone out on there own when they thought they knew enough. Ive talked to some gunsmiths that got started in the army or the marine corps. Good luck and when you figure it out let me know.
 
Originally Posted by tired_me
I finished the Gunsmithing program at Lassen Community College. I didn't find a job since then, just my workshop, and a couple of side jobs, I wrote for gunsmithing blogs as a cheap essay writer and tech reporter, but I think I need some tech practice (internships perhaps) to indicate it in my resume later (if I want to find a high paid job). Should I consider an apprenticeship? What are your thoughts?
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I worked for NIOA last year. They are looking for an intern (only in Brisbane, though, if you're considering job offers abroad).
A couple of companies that may be interested in a certified gunsmith:
Spartan Arms
Agency Arms LLC
Magna Training Products
Addax Tactical
 
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