Alphecca

Jeff,

For what it's worth, I've been reading elsewhere about the BATF harrassing gunsmiths of any sort that don't have a manufacture's license. You may want to check on this further before pursueing any gunsmithing. I know it's all BS, but forewarned is forearmed. Good luck, let us know what you find out.

Peter

Yeah, I'd like to know too. Thanks for putting the question out there.

One path you might consider is working part time as a helper for a local gunsmith. For several years while I was a college student and a graduate student I worked part time for a gunsmith in his shop. Before working for him, I had read a great many books on gunsmithing and tinkered on my own sorry collection of guns. But none of that compared to the education I received from my gunsmith friend, mostly by just picking his brain with questions. This was a small shop (now closed) and my friend worked on his own. He didn't need another gunsmith working there but he did need someone willing to clean the place once a week and to sand stocks and polish metal for refinishing. Being in VT, a gun friendly sate, real gunsmiths might be more plentiful than down here in NJ.

Mike Gordon

I too have read about the ATF going after gunsmiths as "manufacturers" but my impression is that it's aimed at those in the business of being gunsmiths. You know, put a new barrel on a guy's action and the government says you just "manufactured" a rifle, where's your license?

But I understand it is permissible for you to "manufacture" a gun for your own use as long as you don't make 'em to sell. (I've been exploring the "80% completed" AR-15 lower receivers. Finished, the lower receiver is the "firearm" for purposes of federal law and which must be bought through an FFL, at least by the first purchaser. But an "80% completed" lower is somethihg which you can legally buy through the mail, finish in your basement and then add the rest of the parts to make a fully functioning weapon.) I do know that LOTS of folks assemble AR-15s from parts that they buy, and I've never seen a hint that our overseers think this is a violation of any current law as long as it's done for personal use.

It sounds like Jeff is just interested in being better (and more capable) at working on his own guns, so I doubt that the ATF has any basis for taking an interest in that activity. Not that that has ever stopped them in the past, but I do believe their focus is elsewhere.

get yourself a Brownell's catalog and go to it.
www.brownells.com

I was offered an "apprenticeship" when I was 16, and fortunately never took it (the guy went bust within a year), but i've stayed interested.

I can't comment on the US courses, but have to say that the adverts strike me as BS.

Over the years, I've spent a fortune on 'smithing books, and have to say that almost all are a disappointment, I see the same statements and same pictures trotted out time and again. I'm assuming that the good smiths were busy keeping the family fed, while the garage based walter mitties and destroyers of decent guns, pulled their scrap books together and published them. Particular stuff to avoid is Harold Hoffman. I've wasted too much money on his rubbish.

It is not all doom and gloom.

For machining, the guys who make working model steam trains and the like are really good, there magazines: Home shop Engineer & Home shop engineers workshop in the US and Model Engineer, Model Engineers Workshop and Engineering in Minature in the UK are really good. There are a lot of ideas and old machining skills in them.

I was lucky to find a "model Engineering" evening class at a college near where I lived in the UK, that tought me some lathe work. more to come:

There's quite a good literature of home shop machining books. Especially good are the "engineering practice" series published by Nexus special interests (A TV/TS friend tells me they also publish in his special interest...)

I think lindsy books handles them in the US. Camden minature steam services in the UK has a good selection as well as selling lots of lindsy's stuff.

for getting started. don't necessarily find a gun smith, if you can find an old fashioned jobbing machine shop, the sort of place that gets one off or short runs of machining jobs that are too small to justify programming a cnc machine for.

The old guys in there will have a huge knowledge of machining, and when you come to get your own lathe or milling machine, they will know how to check it out to ensure you don't get a heap of worn out scrap (like I did first time I bought a lathe).

For lathe work, my favourite is Sparey; The Amateur's Lathe. It is about 60 years old and still in copy, although the photos are getting muddy in the more recent ones.

Put simply, a lathe can be used for almost all machining operations, other machines are more convenient and quicker for some operations but a lathe can do them too, and sparey explains most of these.

Once the machining side is de mystified, the application to guns becomes much simpler.

I'll see if I can get some links and refs together over the next few days

For trigger jobs, have you seen the "bolt action" vols 1 &2 and "Bench rest actions and Triggers" by Stuart Otteson. These explain a lot of the design principles for triggers, I think he also shows how to work out the force vectors for a trigger.

Be very careful if you do work on a trigger, as it is essential that a trigger actually draws back the striker a little as it is squeezed.

This is so if you release the trigger, part squeezed, the striker will help return it to full engagement. If you get those angles wrong, the striker will be trying to force the trigger to release... :-0

Before focusing on machining skills the first thing any novice gunsmith needs to master are bench skills with basic hand tools. The recommendation to get the Brownells catalog is a good one, but some other books you might want to consider is Roy Dunlap's Gunsmithing and the Wolfe Publications "Gunsmith Tips & Projects".

While it's beyond the scope of these comments, gunsmithing has changed over the years as a comparison of Brownells catalog from 2006 and one 25 years ago will tell. So much of what is considered gunsmithing today is merely bolting new parts one. Years ago gunsmiths made their living by doing such things as making new parts for a myriad of .22 rifles (often by hand), converting all sorts of rifles to all sorts of cartridges (like an M1 carbine to .357 mag and reblueing, reblueing and reblueing. And while they made very little money customers would still complain about being charged too much. One skill often lacking in today's smiths is the ability to disemble a gun without buggering up every screw (something that when I worked ina gunsmith shop would result in a stream of german obsenities hurled at me).

Thanks very much for all of your comments. Keep them coming.

Mike, U'r better qualified than me on this (Ican ruin work faster on a lathe than with a file...) do you know of any good adult texts on filing, scraping etc? most of what I've found (outside the engineering practice series) seems to be geared up to keeping an apprentice out of trouble for a long time, things like turning 1 inch square into 1 inch round and then to 3/4 square, or scraping 3 surface plates flat....

Got to admit, for those who can do it, a file, a scraper and a chisel can work wonders, and working on old, largely hand fitted stuff, they're the only way.

Buggered screws, now there is a sign of incopetence.... I use interchangeable hex blades, so I can grind or (Ouch!)file to get a perfect fit in the slot and put my whole upper body weight over the screw... I buggered plenty before I learned that.

Oh yeah, don't know wher I saw it, but someone said:

"there are few problems that can't be made worse with a Dremel"

www.Brownells.com ... in the Lower-Left, their "Contents" has a link to 'GunSmithing Schools'. also, "sign up" on their website, they will eMail you monthly WebBench articles (archive is online).

Check eBay for some of the old Audel's books,
the machinists/welders books will have tooling
techniques, anealing, brazing, bits, taps/dies,
grinding, sanding, filing, polishing, engraving,
sharpening... and use of FLAT surfaces, micrometers,
calipers and dial-indicators ...

also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinery's_Handbook
http://www.realguns.com/books/revsum.htm

it seems a lot of stuff from between WWI and WWII
were more Skill-oriented, (except for that new-fangled
Electricity and Radio stuff).
Since WWII, it's too much on "replacement".
best of luck...

I love Steve Acker's Gunsmith Machinist column in the Machinist's Workshop magazine. His latest, on reworking the rear sight on a 1911 addresses the entire issue of vision and sight picture. A recent one addressed fixing buggered screws. His early entries are available as a book, and the publisher also offers one on building a single shot rifle.

Seeing the direction that comments are evolving, I think that the change in smithing projects and methods reflect a changing market.

"sporterising" an old military rifle is now a waste of time, gun and money when you can buy any amount of excellent new and used factory made sporters.

Truing up and putting an aluminium sleeve on a rem 700 and lapping the lugs in to make a bench rest action is hardly worth the effort, when you can buy a Stolle or a hall action that was ready made true and stiff.

Naturally ramline et al are going to produce all of the add ons that the market will sustain and the gunzines are going to feature their advertiser's products.

Hell, we might as well use them when they're there. Filing up a foresight out of scrap is hardly worth it if we can tweek an off the shelf one to suit.

Tools have also advanced, even a taig / peatol lathe or mill is a lot faster and neater than all but the best craftsman's filing, and a 20 buck coordinate table on a drill press makes drilling and tapping a series of holes in a straight line relatively simple (if you do your part with setting up measuring and checking, then measuring and checking twice more).

Put simply, an average home shop machinist is probably better set up equipment wise than the young John Moses Browning was!

I think where the real satisfaction in home smithing comes in is being able to do a job with more care and attention than we could afford to pay someone else to do it, and to know that if a disaster came, we could keep our favourite guns going, or even make new ones.

Take a look at Varmint Al's links down below the commercial ones, this one caught my eye: http://journals.aol.com/johnstranahanb/RebarrelingandHome-ShopMachining/

another place to have a read is Norman Yarvin's "yarchive" the metal working stuff is better on guns than the guns section, but that often seems to be the case.

Don't speculate. Do it right. Get a copy of the federal firearms regulations reference guide and study it. Then get the 07 FFL. Play by the rules and you won't have any problems. Also study the VT gun laws which are not complicated. Jack

Well, I read every comment wanting the same info as jeff as to any good courses or reading for the home hobyist. But, they tended to go in the direction of machining work. I would only like to be able to totally break my guns down for thorough cleaning, smoothing out actions, replacing broken parts & basically just keeping them operating the best they can. At prersent I am reading American Gunsmithing and a couple of AGI & Larry Crow DVD's. They are somewhat helpful seeing that I have absolutely no knowledge of smithing at all.
Mark B.

The "manufacturing" question is of interest to me too because three times this year I have bought receivers with the intention of building guns to recycle leftover parts and just for the sake of building them but not keeping them. I have heard that there is a particular quantity one may stay safely within without being considered a manufacturer (but not _what_ quantity). On the other hand, a pro gunsmith assures me that it matters not how many you build as long as you don't turn a profit. Well, I hardly ever do that anyway. YTD I have put together two AR-15s and sold one and will get around to finishing a 1911 by and by. I'm kind of tempted to keep the AR anyway; I found a barely-used FNMI barreled upper and now have pretty much the closest thing to a surplus M16A2 one could get.

Again, READ ALL THE REGS YOURSELF. All the personal opinions you get won't help you in court. You can do just about anything you want with the proper licenses. There is a lot you can do as an individual also. It's not that difficult to do it right and you won't be looking over your shoulder all the time. Jack.

There is an extensive 'build it yourself' community for AKs, ARs, FALs, 10/22s and 1911s. Visit ar15.com, Falfiles, muzzleloadingforum.com - there are some very busy people around.

Most of all, visit and subscribe to www.homegunsmith.com who have some terrific and knowledgable members!