Is it impossible to make it as a gunsmith?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Here is an update for my post last night. You can always do the same thing I did, which is go the community college route for an associates degree. Then I went to pick up the B.S. degree later, while working in the trade.

Make friends with people who are gunsmith or machinists. Take advantage of training and tools. Buy one or two tools at the time and learn to use them. I have a few hobbies that I learned the same way, make some friends and learn from them, while buying a few tools as I went. It is slow but it makes a better skilled person.
 
Engineer to be

Learning math requires a certain amount of abstract thinking. You may not have had this when you were younger, it is a developmental think that improves with age. The basics can be learned at a local Community College. Also there are many online resources. For example, Khan Academy can take almost any math concept and make it easy to understand. Many Universities are putting content online that is free and very high quality. MIT is doing this, check it out. Math requires a good teacher. Many of us had teachers that "taught" us that math is hard and scary. A good teacher can help you get away from that.
The economics of the gunsmithing business are very,very tough. You are working on a product that probably has a value of $250-500 using prices of used guns as a comparison. If the problem requires more than an hour or two to fix, and you get a decent hourly wage in your shop, it is easy to burn through enough time and materials to exceed the value of the gun. What you do once you exceed this amount is "charity" or a "freebie." This is why people don't fix really gnarly problems with old computers, if it takes more than two hours to fix something it is cheaper to buy a replacement.
No disrespect meant to any gunsmiths reading this, you guys keep 2A alive in reality for many of us.
 
Getting started in an established shop under somebody, even if only part-time, would be a better way to go than starting out from scratch on your own.

Besides whatever education you decide on, a typical COMPETENT gunsmith will have thousands invested in tools & equipment.

Not to mention premises rental, fixtures, utilities, local licensing, taxes, etc.

Not trying to discourage you, just saying I've seen what my 30-year gunsmith's gone through to build up his business, and despite being one of the best in the state, he's having a hard time of it under the current economy.

Denis
 
I had a gunsmith tell me a joke once.

"What's the difference between a gunsmith and a large pizza"?

"A large pizza can feed a family of four".
 
If you can, stay and finish your degree, opens a lot of doors out there. My son is a 5th year senior in a Mech Engineering program and has interned / co-op'd in the auto industry, aviation industry, hydraulic industry and consulting. This gives him a broad base to help decide what he wants to do to earn MONEY. While in school he also got certified in Arc / Tig and Mig welding and experience on laths and milling machines. Look around at the opportunities you have TODAY. It WILL open doors tomorrow.
GOOD LUCK
 
Was just looking at Rugers web site. They are looking for a Designer, requirements ? Must hold a MECHANICAL ENGINEERING DEGREE. Ruger use to offer internships and co-ops for college students. Might want to contact them.
 
OP, you have gotten lots of good advice here. Perhaps I can add to that.

Background: Electrical engineer with BS, MS, PhD. I grew up on a dairy farm. I'm 51 now. Besides EE courses, I took many not-required classes in ceramic engineering, physics (optics, astronomy), and geology. I had a BROAD education, and this is important. The "extras" I took were quite material and practical compared to the stereotypical "dry" EE classes. I have had career uses for ALL of this. As a philosophical approach, soak up ALL of the education you can get your hands on. No one can ever take it away from you.

Math, and math in engineering - there are kinds and levels. High school math (algebra, geometry, trig, basic calculus if you can get it) are highly useful in one's career. "College-level" math - it depends. Some engineers use hardly any math doing engineering; they may run software extensively. But the math gave them the knowledge of what the software is doing, and some notion of when it might be lying to them (as long as they don't trust it unquestioningly). Others use math extensively (I do in my current job) at the derivation and/or high calculus level. By the way: accounting is "just" arithmetic, but some knowledge there will be very helpful. Finally, I had a poor (not really taught; no teacher) math senior year in high school - still got a PhD in EE, in electromagnetics. LOTS of vector calculus.

Engineering and degrees - others have said this. The degree is a gate-keeping criterion. GET A BS (this will usually be better than a BA, at least in the beginning). There are lots of successful blue-collar folks, but it's complicated: it has a lot to do with where they live/work, the time they started, what they do, and the opportunities they had earlier in life. This ALSO holds true for the BS degreed person. There is a certain amount of right-place, right-time, carpe-diem stuff - no one has every jot and tittle planned out. Also there is no such thing as zero-risk. LIFE has risk, including the so-called "sure thing" or "sure path." Realize this and deal with it.

Working for a company vs self-employment - this is a personal choice, tightly coupled to risk. Lots of folks look at self-employment as freedom, but it's a tough row to hoe. It's harder economically (mostly due to tax structure). One person has to do everything - marketing, accounting, sales, plus the "actual work." Sure, you can outsource some of that - for a price. That leads into...

Non-work-related tasks - This is everything that's not your passion (not gunsmithing, in your example). I got very little training in those other tasks mentioned above, and had to learn some of it over the years the hard way; I work at a small business, but I worked most years at several different large businesses. You have to seek out knowledge in these other areas. You can take classes, or learn while apprenticing, or whatever - but ignore them at your peril.

Finally, regarding ME specifically - I've done many ME tasks in my career. There is a surprising amount of commonality shared amongst the engineering subdisciplines. In my current (small) company, everything is important - but I can see that machining/fabricating, 3D CAD, materials, thermal management, and manufacturability are all very important. I can do or contribute to some of these. People who can do some or all of these well, should always be able to make it. And "making it" may require being flexible with where you live (where the jobs are). As an example: my specialty is RF/microwave. I can't live just anywhere and do that, without substantial travel or building a consulting business from the ground up (using my network, of course), unlike someone who is a civil engineer, or accountant, or nurse, or...one of quite a few occupations that are used everywhere. Something else to consider.

I realize that this is long and contains many separate, often very different, topics. They are some of the things I think of when looking back on my career and asking myself what I lacked, or what I would have done differently (THAT would be a long post too :) ), or what I might do in the future. Best of luck to you. And you might want to consult some engineering and career fora as well.
 
I can't specifically speak to the use of math in engineering (I'm a programmer and my degree is in Computer Science), but I do know that I don't use hardly any of my college math in day to day work. I was actually a bit of a math whiz in high school (exempted my first Calc class in college), but college math hit me like a brick wall.

All I can say is struggle through it. My last calculus class I took at a local technical college over the summer (where it was a lot easier than my normal school) and transferred the credit.

Once I got out though - I use Algebra and Discrete Math constantly, but I haven't TOUCHED Calculus or Trig since school.

Just do your best and power through it. It might just be a piece of paper but a degree helps out a LOT in the job market.
 
Wonderful Advice Worth It's Weight In Gold

After reading all the posts about this topic I wanted to simply add one more thought please.

These folks have told you thoughts that they would no doubt only share with a son/brother.

When my own father (dead at 52) advised me he had a saying that I have not forgotten.

He told me that one has parents for the same reasons there are scouts that go ahead and report back their findings and observations to folks in the rear so to speak.

Their job is to warn and offer advice and alternatives of what is up ahead.

My father said that he was working himself out of such a job. He further stated that I must take what he (the scout) shared with me because one day he would not be the scout any longer. One day there would be no one to tell me what was up ahead-no one.


So really take to heart what these other folks have been generous enough to offer you for free.:)

The thoughts they have shared with you really are worth their weight in gold...
 
Last edited:
Early in life I always heard about people who were lucky and as I aged I figured out what luck was.
After thinking about it I'll offer you the bit of advice I offered my three kids in life. Two daughters are college grads successful in their occupations and my son has positioned himself to be VERY marketable upon graduation after his Masters degree.

LUCK IS, the crossroads of opportunity and preparation.
 
I'd stick in engineering. Math..... work harder. There is something basic that is missing and you have to find it. It will open the doors to learning and understanding. Math is one of those things where the foundation is all important and without the foundation, you are lost memorizing methods but not understanding "why". The "why" is important and allows you to think for yourself.

If you can't do the math thing, I'd look for something more mechanical and I doubt gunsmithing will generate sufficient earnings.
 
As I said in my first post, I've been privileged to know several very good gunsmiths. None of them had a college degree in engineering. They did not manufacture custom firearms, they just fixed and rebuilt thousands of common firearms in their lifetime. Some specialized in repair of a particular platform(such as revolvers or 1911s) but all repaired almost anything brought to their shop. They did not have a CNC machine, just a lathe and a drill press. They always were months behind in their work, and most folks were happy to wait. This is what the average local gunsmith is.
 
It's possible, but not likely. It's a rapidly dying profession, IMHO. Youtube has killed the mystery of working on guns, Glock has eliminated the need for skill, and our disposable culture doesn't value repairing when new is cheaper.
 
My best friend is a gunsmith and has been one for 40 years. He started as an apprentice to an old German gunsmith and worked for him for about 8 years for no pay. He had a full time job as a LEO and spent most of his off days in the shop. He became well known for building competition 1911's and garnered a number of trophies on the IPSC circuit shooting what he built. He built a couple for me. He eventually reached a crossroad where he had to decide between a LEO career or maintaining his business. He resigned from the department after 14 years. He eventually stopped building custom pistols except on rare occasions and does general gunsmithing in his own shop. He has simple needs and works about 30 hours a week but he is also drawing SS. Can you make a good living at it? Maybe. He makes as much as he needs but he's not feeding anyone other than himself.
 
I'm a mechanical engineer. As others have said, you will never use the math you will learn in school in real life unless you are in some very specialized fields. However, you don't need to waste your time on math that you will never use. A friend of mine has a 4 year Engineering Technology degree and he didn't take a single Calculus class. Instead of the useless math classes he took more business and industrial related classes. He works for Honda today and makes as much as anyone with a BS in Mechanical Engineering.

However, if you want to be a gunsmith, engineering isn't the correct field, you want to become a machinist. Good machinists are in high demand and once you learn the fundamentals you can apply that knowledge to firearms.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top