Which Gunsmith Course

O

oneeyedmac

Guest
Hello gentlemen, and any ladies present as well. I'm in my forties and interested in a career change. If I decided to take gunsmith corespondance coursed which ones are worth the money and which ones aren't? I'd also be interested in any suggestiones you folks may have about breaking in to the field.

Thanks in advance.
 
Any correspondence course has, in my opinion, limited value. You're not going to learn to operate machinery by reading a book. You can learn much but not all. You can read a book (articles) and learn to disassemble/reassemble firearms but much must be learned by doing. Take some machine shop courses at a community college along with the correspondence work.
 
I agree, I often tell people that reading about swimming is a lot different than jumping in the pool, but it's what I have time for. It seems our local community college and career center have courses for welding but not machining. I keep checking around to see what I can find.

Thanks for the input.
 
A good way to get your feet wet would be the NRA short gunsmithing courses offered at various gunsmithing schools nationwide. I took a rifle rebarreling class at Murray State College 6 or so years ago and it was well worth the $250 and the drive down there. They also offered a machining for gunsmiths the week prior to the course and all of the students of the rebarreling class (minus myself) had taken that also.

A friend of mine has the complete metalworking video set from AGI and that has a lot of very good information as well, but it WILL put you to sleep. I believe the courses are all taught by Darryl Holland. I viewed part of one tape just to get an idea of content and it was very professional and thorough. For anyone with machining experience they are a little slow, but there are very good nuggets of information throughout the material....just seems like a long time between them. For someone with no experience it would a good option, especially if you had a lathe and mill nearby where you could duplicate the course as it is offered.
 
I learned to be a Gunsmith through a very circuitous route. My father shot on the all Air Force Pistol Team for a great many years when I was a kid so I got to hang out with the armorers and ask questions. In high school I took Machine Shop classes and worked after school in my teachers Machine Shop in town. I worked as a Machinist through college. After college I went into the Pipe Trades and continued to work as a Machinist when I was laid off from Pipe Trades work. This was in old school days of job shops and the verity of machinist they needed could work in the shop on manual machines performing what ever tasked came through the door. I learned to be a Gunsmith by working for free for a Gunsmith doing machine work in his shop. I practiced on my own guns and ruined my own parts on the way and trashed some tooling too. Thirty years later here I am working towards my goal of having just one job, a Gunsmith in my own shop that I hung out the shingle on six years ago. I encourage everyone that wants to get into the business to do so. I see my fellow Gunsmiths as Compatriots not Competitors because together we can survive the perils of regulation and the economy. If you do not have he time to go to night school or community college, get one of those machine shop classes from The AGA or Don Holland. It is a start and will demonstrate to you some of the skills that you will need. Get the Gordy Gritters Chambering DVD to see where you need to get with your machining ability. There is little chance in this world that you can get the same opportunity that I did as an “apprentice gunsmith” the legal and economic risks are way too high today. I have to turn folks away who sincerely want to learn, I can not afford the risk of having an apprentice.

Good Luck!
Nic.
 
As others have said most correspondence courses won't give you the training to go into the business of gunsmithing, they mainly teach you to be a parts changer, which I know a few guys who make a fair living do just that. Their is an apprenticeship program available for gunsmithing www.taogart.org has more info. Which ever way you choose to go make sure you take business classes and keep your log books in order. treat it as a business not a hobby and you can have success.
Good Luck

Niccolo, M
if you are worried about legal or economic risks contact www.taogart.org as well they have some info on how to handle those concerns.
 
I really appreciate the input and guidance. I agree it should be treated as a business too. Fortunately one of the things I happen to be good at is managing business.

I'm going to look into the NRA courses and try to start there along with ordering some videos. There is also a local 'smith who happens to be a buddy and he may let me watch him on occasion.
 
I've had a couple of people want me to 'teach' them to be a gunsmith. The problem with that is they want to use my equipment and tools and me stop what I'm doing and show them how to eventually become a competitor of mine. Meanwhile, every time they do something they expect to be paid for it, especially young guys.

When you 'hire' the typical young person here's what will happen: he will tell his buds that he's learning to be a gunsmith. Then, when they have an off day they'll want to come to the shop and BS with him and try to figure out how they can get him to build them a real, live, custom rifle.....at little or no cost, of course. The hired hand fully expects a paycheck every Friday even though he's ruined no telling how many tools and stuff that week.

It's a gloomy picture.

I wish there were someone on the horizon who would take my place when I decide to quit. I have a steady influx of customers, both new and repeat, and hate to see it all dry up.
 
Many young folks don't know what WORK means either, and have no grasp of the cost of doing business. Like you said, for many it's all about the paycheck not about ambition or hard work.

My oldest (19) was this way in high school, the United States Marine Corp has modified his attitude for the better. Thank god for the USMC.

Most of the NRA classes in NC are filled already. I'm in the midwest and getting to and from Colorado or California would be cost prohibitive.
 
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Midwest?

Hey Oneeye,

Great to see your enthusiasm. Many guys here are really supportive.
Pick a specialty and do it well.
Where are you located? What area?
Midway catalog lists the many schools.
Many of the Good competition shooters know where the good Gunsmiths are.
There are a bunch of Books. I think I'll be getting the Roy Dunlap book next.
Plenty of reading is always helpful but like Mickey says doing is a whole lot better. If you have a topic you want to learn about then do a search for it on this gunsmithing forum. Also there is 6mmmbr.com and Practical Machinist has a Gunsmithing section.

Have fun.

:D
 
Get some books

Spott3r said:
Hey Oneeye,

a bunch of Books. I think I'll be getting the Roy Dunlap book next.
Plenty of reading is always helpful but like Mickey says doing is a whole lot better. .

Have fun.

:D
Click to expand...
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

as I think that you really need them.

Shoot well
Peter
 
I'm in Central Ohio, just north of Columbus. I've ordered a few books from Amazon. Any suggestions as to what books are worth reading would be great!
 
Learning to machine..

http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Shop-Essentials-Questions-Answers/dp/0975996304

Hey Oneeyemac,

Parallel to your learning of gunsmithing if you are like me you need to start feeding your Machining Beastie.

The above link is an excellent book for starting machinists.
If you already know this then please ignore this.

There are other books...http://www.amazon.com/Gunsmithing-s...bs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206221687&sr=1-1

I don't think there are many Gunsmith's who will disagree with this text. It should be a great starting point.

Spot
:D:D:D
 
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thanks, I actuallu have the Dunlap text. I haven't started reading it yet but it's here!
 
Good to see you are so helpful Peter

Just goes to show that you dont have to have a long neck to be a goose.

Rob.
 
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MColeman said:
I've had a couple of people want me to 'teach' them to be a gunsmith. The problem with that is they want to use my equipment and tools and me stop what I'm doing and show them how to eventually become a competitor of mine. Meanwhile, every time they do something they expect to be paid for it, especially young guys.

When you 'hire' the typical young person here's what will happen: he will tell his buds that he's learning to be a gunsmith. Then, when they have an off day they'll want to come to the shop and BS with him and try to figure out how they can get him to build them a real, live, custom rifle.....at little or no cost, of course. The hired hand fully expects a paycheck every Friday even though he's ruined no telling how many tools and stuff that week.

It's a gloomy picture.

I wish there were someone on the horizon who would take my place when I decide to quit. I have a steady influx of customers, both new and repeat, and hate to see it all dry up.
Click to expand...

I wish there was some way to take your place when you decide to lighten the work load or hang it up comletely.
 
I have a youngster (young to me, probably early 30's) who has been coming over to the shop two afternoons a week and learning to gunsmith by working on his own rifles. He is a former Marine Sgt who builds motorcycle racing engines by trade and is very sharp with a pretty good understanding of machine tool operations. So far, he has fitted a Krieger barrel to his Win 70 chambered in 30-06 using range rods to set it up through the headstock and chambering using the pressure barrel flush system. He fitted the barrel to min headspace on the go gauge and managed a very nice crown after setting up the muzzle with a range rod. He did a nice job of taking the stock trigger down to .010" sear engagement, polishing the surfaces and setting it to a crisp 2 1/2#. Next, I'll take him through the pillar bedding job and checking the results with a dial indicator. I doubt that he'll become a full time gunsmith, he makes way more money building engines, but his aptitude and intellect makes teaching him worthwhile. He is planning a Lawton actioned 338 Lapua mag elk rifle as his next project.

Some years ago, I was mentored by a crusty old benchrest gunsmith by the name of Harvey Miller who took his time to show me the right way to do things and at this stage of life, it's nice to pass it along to the younger generation. There are worse things a guy can do with his time.
 
Gunsmithing!

Too darn bad the %%^& tort lawyers and regulatory agencies [OSHA ETC ETC ETC]have made it impossible to get an "apprentice" program like in the old days. They still do it in Europe and that is why we still see some of the finest stuff coming out of there and S.A!
Aloha, Mark
 
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