This. ^^^^
Options for a 20yo NY'er looking to work with firearms
- Thread starter TMiller556
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Contact a school that offers gunsmith courses and ask for advice.
http://www.collegesanddegrees.com/college-results?pid=15295&st=-1
http://www.collegesanddegrees.com/college-results?pid=15295&st=-1
Thermactor
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A person only has so much mental capacity to learn stuff. He should learn what industry uses. Defense and weapons manufacturing industries use NX... IME
Autodesk gives Inventor away for three years to a .edu email address. Not sure how much each license costs commercially per year, I think they're negotiated on an ad-hoc basis. Getting a smurfed NX educational edition from Siemens costs $119 for one year, and that's like pulling teeth. I can't get it for the version I use professionally unfortunately. The commercial license at one place I worked cost more than $26,000/year/seat. But I still believe that a person getting into this should just learn once and do it right. I had to unlearn a lot of crap when I migrated from what I learned in school doing AutoCAD to when I went to a real industry working in Unigraphics.
Edit: All of my puerile CAD mudslinging aside, sorry about that, OP, if you are interested in this stuff, the very, VERY first thing you should do is to learn about geometric dimensioning and tolerancing.
Last edited:
wojownik
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I can see both sides of this. I could certainly see losing the joy of a hobby, if you were hands on fixing things all day, or dealing with the business side stresses of cash flow.
However, I think there are functional skills that that OP could acquire that could translate over any number of industries. For example, a good salesman can move that selling/closing expertise across industries. Or marketing, or other disciplines.
If possible, the OP should consider continuing or completing his education - that is his best defense in a vacillating job market - and try to get some training and background in skills that can translate where ever he may go. Get the skills, pay your dues, keep an eye open for opportunities in the industry and see if you can get there. It might not be immediate, you might even make a lateral move in from another industry.
Like I said, I have a squiggly career trajectory - up, down, back and forth, fortunately mostly up. And I am fortunate to be involved in a general area that I had a passion for in school, and at work, and even as a side project (call it an intellectual hobby).
It may be the case that the OP could get the skills and training in something (say for example BD/sales), start in one industry (assistant sales), move to another industry (up to sales manager), and get fat in yet another industry (sales VP). I've seen it done quite a few times, whether the individual had a community college degree or an ivy league sheepskin, if the person is hungry, smart, motivated ... and focused ... amazing things can happen.
Lycidas Janwor
Member
I'm not sure what software is best for learning how to actually make stuff. I do know the future is 3D printing. Learn that software and whatever base code it came from and you can do stuff like this:
http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mhl45ediih/the-liberator/
Oh, and CAD is used...
http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mhl45ediih/the-liberator/
Oh, and CAD is used...
oneounceload
member
Unless you are really, really good - no matter the profession. There is another expression that goes along the lines of:
Sunray
Member
"...If you really enjoy doing something, don't make it your job..." I completely disagree with this idea. You have to work to eat and live inside. Nothing is worse than working at something you don't want to do or don't like doing. Doing something you enjoy doing means it's not work. And you get paid to do the stuff you like doing.
"...what positions are out there..." There are virtually no entry level jobs anywhere, doing anything. Far fewer in gunsmith land. Those Community College grads(Colorado. 2 years.) that do find jobs are working for minimum wage, usually in the back of a store and on weekends. Nobody will give their pride and joy firearm to an FNG to do anything to either.
However, I can absolutely guarantee you will not find a decent job without some kind of post secondary education. Doesn't necessarily mean a degree(that will open doors).
"...the job doesn't..." A lot of jobs are like that. Had to do stuff in computer tech school that I still have no idea what it was about or why we were doing it. Passed anyway. And nobody has ever asked me to draw a divide anything circuit. And engineers dig holes. snicker.
"...what positions are out there..." There are virtually no entry level jobs anywhere, doing anything. Far fewer in gunsmith land. Those Community College grads(Colorado. 2 years.) that do find jobs are working for minimum wage, usually in the back of a store and on weekends. Nobody will give their pride and joy firearm to an FNG to do anything to either.
However, I can absolutely guarantee you will not find a decent job without some kind of post secondary education. Doesn't necessarily mean a degree(that will open doors).
"...the job doesn't..." A lot of jobs are like that. Had to do stuff in computer tech school that I still have no idea what it was about or why we were doing it. Passed anyway. And nobody has ever asked me to draw a divide anything circuit. And engineers dig holes. snicker.
Devonai
Member
To OP: Keep your eyes on Sig's HR page. If I were you I would jump all over a customer service position. Before I moved to CT (couldn't have anticipated how bad it would get here), that was my #1 dream job.
I don't think customer service will ruin your love of the hobby. I once did inside sales for a major firearms distributor in MA, and it was a great job for the gun hobbyist. The warehouse guys would always show us the new stuff they got in, and I took a lot of pleasure doing a "hand pick" order from a stack of police trade-ins.
I don't think customer service will ruin your love of the hobby. I once did inside sales for a major firearms distributor in MA, and it was a great job for the gun hobbyist. The warehouse guys would always show us the new stuff they got in, and I took a lot of pleasure doing a "hand pick" order from a stack of police trade-ins.
My suggestion would be to earn a firearms examiner certification and then continue your education. Here is a link to one from the national institute of justice:
https://firearms-examiner.training....ning.nij.gov/&retry=&disable_cookie_login__=1
I am in the middle of it myself and find it interesting. Education, particularly certified education always helps.
https://firearms-examiner.training....ning.nij.gov/&retry=&disable_cookie_login__=1
I am in the middle of it myself and find it interesting. Education, particularly certified education always helps.
As a forner teacher and counselor ...
I got my first job when I was 15. For the next 47 years straight, I was either in school, in the military or working a job ... or some combination of the three.
Stay in school, get an education (whatever that means to you personally) and get a job; make yourself valuable in your chosen field.
Once I went to work full time, my job enabled my real life which was NOT my job. If you can't make the money, you can't have a real life in my opinion, and that means you likely have to put off your dream for a while. Not forever, but I'd think your expectations here are a little bit on the unrealistic side.
I got my first job when I was 15. For the next 47 years straight, I was either in school, in the military or working a job ... or some combination of the three.
Stay in school, get an education (whatever that means to you personally) and get a job; make yourself valuable in your chosen field.
Once I went to work full time, my job enabled my real life which was NOT my job. If you can't make the money, you can't have a real life in my opinion, and that means you likely have to put off your dream for a while. Not forever, but I'd think your expectations here are a little bit on the unrealistic side.
They will, without a doubt, recommend you apply for grants and student loans and attend their program. They are in the business of supporting themselves.
1911 guy
Member
Learn a trade. Unless you degree in a field with high demand immediately upon graduation, you'll be stuck with debt and trying to live on a wage paid by Ronald McDonald.
Don't get me wrong, education is a good thing and you should get all you can. But you may need to realistically decide what kind of education you need first.
Don't get me wrong, education is a good thing and you should get all you can. But you may need to realistically decide what kind of education you need first.
Deaf Smith
Member
Yes,
Join the Army
See the world
Meet interesting people
And if they are jihad, kill them (and learn alot about firearms)
Or you could join the National Guard....
Join the National Guard
See the world
Meet interesting people
And if they are jihad, kill them (and learn alot about firearms.. part time!)
If not that, move to Texas and go to work at a gun shop.
Deaf
Tinpig
Member
You mentioned the possibility of moving to NH. That would be a great place to live. You may know that Sig Sauer is in NH.
Here's a link to jobs with Sig in Portsmouth, NH, and Exeter NH.
http://www.indeed.com/cmp/Sig-Sauer/jobs
You may not be interested in or qualified for any of them, but it might give you some idea of the direction you need to be going.
I seem to remember that you were hoping to enroll in the Marine Corps PLC program. I'm sorry that didn't work out.
Tinpig
Here's a link to jobs with Sig in Portsmouth, NH, and Exeter NH.
http://www.indeed.com/cmp/Sig-Sauer/jobs
You may not be interested in or qualified for any of them, but it might give you some idea of the direction you need to be going.
I seem to remember that you were hoping to enroll in the Marine Corps PLC program. I'm sorry that didn't work out.
Tinpig
Trying to make a career out of a hobby/interest you had as an adolescent is often a mistake. Consider the average salary of a gunsmith, its awful: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Gunsmith/Hourly_Rate
Thermactor
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Fixed that last bit for you.
I'm a Mechanical Engineer with 32 years as a Product Design Engineer (Gawd, I'm getting old...) primarily with power tool and defense companies. Yeah, the math requirements suck. I'm okay in math but I'm much stronger in English and History. Didn't stop me from becoming an Engineer with well over a dozen patents because I have a really good instinct for mechanical things, how they work, how they go together, and how to make them work even better. I just had to struggle through the math, in order to get through the actual Engineering classes Algebra and Trigonometry will need to be second nature and you'll need to understand the Calculus because the professors will expect you to.
One thing I would suggest is to plan on spending your first two years in a good Community College. You can get almost all your math out of the way there in (usually) smaller classes where it's easier to get help. Calc I at a large 4-year Engineering school will often be in a lecture theater with 150 of your fellow Freshmen and taught by a grad assistant for whom English is a second (or third) language. A side benefit is that Community College is a heck of a lot less expensive for those two years, just make sure your credits will transfer to wherever you plan to get your undergrad.
Second, unless things have changed a lot since I was a student Engineering school takes a LOT of time. It's truly a full-time job that requires 4-6 classroom hours per day and then another 5-8 hours of homework and studying just about every day and even more than that at times. Figure a typical weekend will also involve 10-12 hours of studying and homework. It's a grind, and it's designed that way to push out the people who don't want it very badly. That's why Engineers have the reputation for being loners and socially inept, it's part of the fallout from the grind. The vast majority of people who NEED a lot of social interaction tend to get pushed out because there's just not a lot of time for friends and having fun. Not all of them get out of Engineering, but it's still somewhat rare to run across a practicing Mechanical or Electrical Engineer who doesn't fit the stereotype. That's not to say you won't need friends, in my experience you'll want to cultivate a network of other Engineering students who share many of your classes. You will need that network to help you to understand the material and to keep up with the homework, I found it to be incredibly helpful to hike over to an empty classroom after dinner with one or two classmates (no more than that, or it deteriorates into a BS session) and work through the homework assignments on the board. It really does help with understanding the concepts to work through them together so that both of you end up with the same understanding of the material.
For what it's worth, I think I've used Calculus once since I graduated. I was working for a consumer product manufacturer and it was time for their annual inventory. One of the Purchasing ladies asked me if there was any way to estimate the linear footage of material left on a partially used roll of the material in the warehouse. I spent a couple of hours deriving and verifying an equation that would estimate the linear footage of material given the diameter of the roll's core, the outside diameter of the roll of material, and the thickness of the material. I was very proud of myself (I had been out of school for about five years at that time and I was glad I FINALLY got to use Calculus) so I showed it to the lady who had asked me about it. She looked at the formula and said, "That's too HARD!!!" and wouldn't use it. I even offered to program it into my calculator for her to use. Oh well, no good deed goes unpunished.
As others have said, learn to use a fairly high-end 3D CAD package. Solidworks at a minimum, most companies that manufacture consumer and defense products use Solidworks or CREO (used to be called Pro-Engineer) and a very few that produce very high-end defense products use CATIA. Nobody hires non-Engineers just to run CAD anymore, at least not in any numbers and the ones that do get hired don't get to do the fun stuff like evaluating the prototypes. Engineers do most of their own CAD work these days, the people who only run CAD mainly incorporate Engineering changes and create detail drawings of parts the Engineers designed.
Understanding geometric dimensioning and tolerancing is a great skill for an Engineer, so is knowing a little bit about machining. You won't do much machining on prototypes (the larger the company the less you'll get to do) but you need to understand how things will be made so that you can design parts and assemblies that are makeable. As someone else mentioned, there are degrees in Mechanical Engineering Technology that aren't quite as rigorous with the math requirements. Some companies like to hire ME Techs, some avoid them. It's certainly an option but the Mechanical Engineering degree opens more doors than the ME Tech degree does.
Good luck!
One thing I would suggest is to plan on spending your first two years in a good Community College. You can get almost all your math out of the way there in (usually) smaller classes where it's easier to get help. Calc I at a large 4-year Engineering school will often be in a lecture theater with 150 of your fellow Freshmen and taught by a grad assistant for whom English is a second (or third) language. A side benefit is that Community College is a heck of a lot less expensive for those two years, just make sure your credits will transfer to wherever you plan to get your undergrad.
Second, unless things have changed a lot since I was a student Engineering school takes a LOT of time. It's truly a full-time job that requires 4-6 classroom hours per day and then another 5-8 hours of homework and studying just about every day and even more than that at times. Figure a typical weekend will also involve 10-12 hours of studying and homework. It's a grind, and it's designed that way to push out the people who don't want it very badly. That's why Engineers have the reputation for being loners and socially inept, it's part of the fallout from the grind. The vast majority of people who NEED a lot of social interaction tend to get pushed out because there's just not a lot of time for friends and having fun. Not all of them get out of Engineering, but it's still somewhat rare to run across a practicing Mechanical or Electrical Engineer who doesn't fit the stereotype. That's not to say you won't need friends, in my experience you'll want to cultivate a network of other Engineering students who share many of your classes. You will need that network to help you to understand the material and to keep up with the homework, I found it to be incredibly helpful to hike over to an empty classroom after dinner with one or two classmates (no more than that, or it deteriorates into a BS session) and work through the homework assignments on the board. It really does help with understanding the concepts to work through them together so that both of you end up with the same understanding of the material.
For what it's worth, I think I've used Calculus once since I graduated. I was working for a consumer product manufacturer and it was time for their annual inventory. One of the Purchasing ladies asked me if there was any way to estimate the linear footage of material left on a partially used roll of the material in the warehouse. I spent a couple of hours deriving and verifying an equation that would estimate the linear footage of material given the diameter of the roll's core, the outside diameter of the roll of material, and the thickness of the material. I was very proud of myself (I had been out of school for about five years at that time and I was glad I FINALLY got to use Calculus) so I showed it to the lady who had asked me about it. She looked at the formula and said, "That's too HARD!!!" and wouldn't use it. I even offered to program it into my calculator for her to use. Oh well, no good deed goes unpunished.
As others have said, learn to use a fairly high-end 3D CAD package. Solidworks at a minimum, most companies that manufacture consumer and defense products use Solidworks or CREO (used to be called Pro-Engineer) and a very few that produce very high-end defense products use CATIA. Nobody hires non-Engineers just to run CAD anymore, at least not in any numbers and the ones that do get hired don't get to do the fun stuff like evaluating the prototypes. Engineers do most of their own CAD work these days, the people who only run CAD mainly incorporate Engineering changes and create detail drawings of parts the Engineers designed.
Understanding geometric dimensioning and tolerancing is a great skill for an Engineer, so is knowing a little bit about machining. You won't do much machining on prototypes (the larger the company the less you'll get to do) but you need to understand how things will be made so that you can design parts and assemblies that are makeable. As someone else mentioned, there are degrees in Mechanical Engineering Technology that aren't quite as rigorous with the math requirements. Some companies like to hire ME Techs, some avoid them. It's certainly an option but the Mechanical Engineering degree opens more doors than the ME Tech degree does.
Good luck!
jamesinalaska
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Very Good Advice from the Board
The advice from the individuals suggesting a machining program in a community college is exactly right. I have instructed part-time in a couple of community colleges and after graduation the people with the machining experience are out the door and into good paying jobs.
The funny thing is, from what I've observed, that the machining programs have a difficult time recruiting students. Most of the technical students tend to migrate into computers, networking, automotive repair or HVAC . . . all good trades but if you are mechanically minded and like to make things, I would encourage you to look into machining. You'd be a natural.
I would not recommend going to a gun smithing school. If yo were to learn the fundamentals of machining you could teach yourself the gun smithing aspect very quickly. And a two year associates degree from the right school would prepare you to go on to a four year degree in engineering if you were inclined to go that way.
Good for you to be thinking about your future in a responsible manner.
The advice from the individuals suggesting a machining program in a community college is exactly right. I have instructed part-time in a couple of community colleges and after graduation the people with the machining experience are out the door and into good paying jobs.
The funny thing is, from what I've observed, that the machining programs have a difficult time recruiting students. Most of the technical students tend to migrate into computers, networking, automotive repair or HVAC . . . all good trades but if you are mechanically minded and like to make things, I would encourage you to look into machining. You'd be a natural.
I would not recommend going to a gun smithing school. If yo were to learn the fundamentals of machining you could teach yourself the gun smithing aspect very quickly. And a two year associates degree from the right school would prepare you to go on to a four year degree in engineering if you were inclined to go that way.
Good for you to be thinking about your future in a responsible manner.
armedaccountant
Member
You said you aren't math oriented. Have you tried any applied math, especially as it relates to something you love such as firearms? I ask because math can take you far. My father in law says math didn't make sense to him until he became an electrician and had to apply it in real world applications. The man is a human calculator, I have seen him do basic trig in his head.
Discouraging someone to seek advice is ignorant, to say the least.
I agree completely. A good machinist will find work regardless of the industry. Cutting chips is cutting chips.
The same applies to 3D CAD programs. Once one understands the basic fundamentals of 3D CAD the program doesn't matter. The various programs just have different names for the same functions. I've worked in a variety of industries and companies. Each used a different CAD program but the fundamentals are the same. I've use IDEAS, Pro-E, NX, AutoCad, and Inventor over the years. I was only formally trained in Pro-E.
45_auto
Member
Gearhead, your post on is the best description of an engineering education for young people that I've ever read. Mirrors my experiences exactly (29 years as an ME).
I'm going to share it as part of a high school robotics program I'm involved in if you don't mind.
I'm going to share it as part of a high school robotics program I'm involved in if you don't mind.
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