If you want to be a real professional, go to a professional school.
The two with the best industry wide reputation are Colorado School of Trades and Trinidad Junior College.
A degree or certificate from either will get you an interview anywhere.
Some of the others are also good.
Cost will be in the thousands, time is usually at least two years. These are serious schools, so the student better be serious.
The internet and mail schools are not serious and are worthless when trying to get a job in the trade.
Here's something I wrote on another forum that sums up:
The only gunsmith "certification" or "diploma" that has any value at all is one from a top gunsmithing school like Colorado School of Trades or Trinidad Junior College.
There are others.
A diploma or certificate from a top school will get you a job interview anywhere, because these schools have industry wide reputations for turning out real pros.
The real schools are attendance schools that typically take at least two years and cost a lot of money.
In those schools you're trained by Master gunsmith/teachers who are looking over your shoulder and telling you if you're doing it right or wrong, and how to do it faster and better.
To be clear: An internet or mail order "school" is good only to teach you enough to do hobby work on your OWN guns. They will not qualify you to work on customers guns.
A certificate of diploma from the internet and mail order schools is worth no more then one you print up on your own printer.
Paying the high amount of money these places charge is a waste of the money if you want to be a true pro.
Apply for a job with a certificate from these places and your resume goes straight into the trash can. If you're lucky they won't actually laugh in your face.
Look at it this way: If you owned a very expensive sports car and it needed work, would you allow a mechanic work on it who learned what he knows over the internet or from a mail order course?
We NEED good gunsmiths. There aren't enough good ones and there are too many with these "certificates" hanging on the wall who are little better then gun butchers.
If you really want to be a professional gunsmith, go to one of the top schools or pick another trade.
While you're at it, take some business courses. Many very good gunsmiths go broke in less then a year because while they're good gunsmiths, they know nothing about running a business.
Here's the available schools:
Colorado School of Trades
1575 Hoyt Street
Lakewood, CO 80215
Phone: 800-234-4594
Lassen Community College
P.O. Box 3000
Susanville, CA 96130
Phone: 530-257-4211
Modern Gun School
80 North Main Street, P.O. Box 846
St. Albans, VT 05478
Phone: 800-493-4114
Montgomery Community College
1011 Page Street
P.O. Box 787
Troy, NC 27371
Phone: 800-839-6222
Murray State College
One Murray Campus
Tishomingo, OK 73460
Phone: 580-371-2371
Pennsylvania Gunsmith School
812 Ohio River Blvd.
Avalon
Pittsburgh, PA 15202
Phone: 412-766-1812
Piedmont Community College
1715 College Drive
P.O. Box 1197
Roxboro, NC 27573
Phone: 336-599-1181
Pine Technical Institute
900 4th Street
Pine City, MN 55063
Phone: 800-521-7463
Trinidad State Jr. College
600 Prospect
Trinidad, CO 81082
Phone: 800-621-8752
Yavapai College
1100 East Sheldon Street
Prescott, AZ 86301
Phone: 520-776-2150
