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This is it.

For the gun smiths who are more than just gun assemblers, it seems like most follow an arc.

 

step 1. Enthusiastic amateur.

#2 Pro offering a lot of work for not enough money. Stuff looks pretty good, but some weird decisions are made.

#3 outa bizniss

#3 alternate. Starts doing just the bolt on stuff, but always advertises elaborate custom work that he seldom gets, at prices that are high.

#4 gets a stable base of customers for the custom work, usually specializing in some niche. These keep him busy enough that he eschews most other work.

he becomes -that guy who does really nice work on browning auto 5 variants. That H&K guy... The guy who fixes stocks on heirlooms with high end wood.There are a lot of them who are -the guy that for $1500 or so can build you a custom bolt action rifle that shoots about as good as a $500 savage. I think (but don't know ) that there is an oversupply of that guy relative to present demand. A lot of them have to build a cult of personality to sustain the illusion among their long time customers that they possess the only true secret sauce for how to mount a scope, or ream a chamber.

The thing is, what most people need isn't smithing. It's installing drop in parts, cleaning, and stuff like undoing stupid mistakes/ telling the customer whether a gun CAN be fixed. Most of that can really be done by a salesman at the gun store.

So full smiths are not plentiful.

 

 

ps re the guy who can build a $500 rifle into a savage 110 equivalent for only $1500, and if it doesn't shoot that well, it's the customer's fault... (it might be, but now it's pretty much industry standard to offer a rifle with a 1moa guarantee with particular ammo from a vice.)

There's a guy on youtube that exemplifies this to me. His handle is "the real gunsmith." I don't doubt that he knows a lot and can really shoot and does good work, but the tone of condescension just isn't supportable. I think you could learn a lot from guys like him, but I also can't help but notice people like Kenny (eagleeyeshooting on youtube) who manages to get consistent hits at 1k+ with an old mossberg rifle and a $32 chinese scope, and he can humbly show and tell what it takes to make it work. - And what doesn't work. Shooter and ammo tend to play a lot bigger factor than rifle, a lot of the time.

Like Evl, I'm not motivated to put the time and money into really mastering the long range stuff, but it takes not too much to get half way there. 

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There's a bit of both, but it seems like if we want to stretch the analogy... In this case a good musician is the one who figures out what tunes his instrument likes to play, and practices a lot.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On ‎7‎/‎24‎/‎2018 at 2:57 PM, netpackrat said:

Part of the reason those guys can blow away the average gunsmith, is the average gunsmith is trying to make a living at it, and can't afford to play perfection games.  But I'm sure you know that!

I perform at the level my customers are willing to spend.  I make Egg McMuffins for the Egg McMuffin customer and I make Faberge Eggs for the Faberge Egg customer. Not a lot of people in this industry do it that way. They usually just want to be exclusively production or exclusively custom. Many want to appear to be custom and they are really just a production shop. All of it has its benefits from a business perspective, so I try to be multi-dimensional in what I will do.

 

A lot of average gunsmiths are not really wired for it. It can be forced, unnatural, and very narrowly focused. Their desire to do it is often far deeper than their well of natural talent. That's why lots of talented DIYers blow them away. They actually have talent.

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On ‎7‎/‎25‎/‎2018 at 3:54 PM, gunfun said:

This is it.

For the gun smiths who are more than just gun assemblers, it seems like most follow an arc.

 

step 1. Enthusiastic amateur.

#2 Pro offering a lot of work for not enough money. Stuff looks pretty good, but some weird decisions are made.

#3 outa bizniss

#3 alternate. Starts doing just the bolt on stuff, but always advertises elaborate custom work that he seldom gets, at prices that are high.

#4 gets a stable base of customers for the custom work, usually specializing in some niche. These keep him busy enough that he eschews most other work.

he becomes -that guy who does really nice work on browning auto 5 variants. That H&K guy... The guy who fixes stocks on heirlooms with high end wood.There are a lot of them who are -the guy that for $1500 or so can build you a custom bolt action rifle that shoots about as good as a $500 savage. I think (but don't know ) that there is an oversupply of that guy relative to present demand. A lot of them have to build a cult of personality to sustain the illusion among their long time customers that they possess the only true secret sauce for how to mount a scope, or ream a chamber.

The thing is, what most people need isn't smithing. It's installing drop in parts, cleaning, and stuff like undoing stupid mistakes/ telling the customer whether a gun CAN be fixed. Most of that can really be done by a salesman at the gun store.

So full smiths are not plentiful.

 

 

ps re the guy who can build a $500 rifle into a savage 110 equivalent for only $1500, and if it doesn't shoot that well, it's the customer's fault... (it might be, but now it's pretty much industry standard to offer a rifle with a 1moa guarantee with particular ammo from a vice.)

There's a guy on youtube that exemplifies this to me. His handle is "the real gunsmith." I don't doubt that he knows a lot and can really shoot and does good work, but the tone of condescension just isn't supportable. I think you could learn a lot from guys like him, but I also can't help but notice people like Kenny (eagleeyeshooting on youtube) who manages to get consistent hits at 1k+ with an old mossberg rifle and a $32 chinese scope, and he can humbly show and tell what it takes to make it work. - And what doesn't work. Shooter and ammo tend to play a lot bigger factor than rifle, a lot of the time.

Like Evl, I'm not motivated to put the time and money into really mastering the long range stuff, but it takes not too much to get half way there. 

I like that downeastgunworks guy on youtube. It is hard to not learn something while watching him. He is extremely well rounded.

To seriously get into the long range game takes a lot of very expensive specialized tooling. Getting good at it takes a lot of time, both studying and practicing. I don't have the time or money for either. I also lack the passion for long range shooting. If I could do it regularly it might catch fire in me, but it isn't in the cards. Where I am it almost makes no sense to have more than a Savage due to there being so few places to shoot beyond 200 yards unless you are on a hunting lease with a long straight road.

I never considered the Savage vs $1500 custom rifle that barely matches it, but it is so true. I have done some troubleshooting and repair on a couple of fully custom bolt rifles for different customers who had them built by different smiths, one in Germany. They were both kind of funky and had odd issues. One would even fire when the safety was disengaged and had the wrong scope mounts drilled and tapped in the receiver. I didn't see the point. Looks nice, but do you really have to keep throwing money at it? Keep the funky custom builds, I'll take a Savage.

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