Starting up a Gunsmithing Shop?

[48REO]

Gunstock Making from a blank

"Exactly WHO offers custom stockwork these days, by THIS I mean a stock made from a BLANK"
I have a friend who is a gunsmith and he has one of these machines:
www.radarcarve.net He swears by it, so much so that I am considering buying one of their machines and setting up a small stockmaking business. First, for some of my old rifles, then for others. JTP

 

[Jim Watson]

A friend set up in part time repair gunsmithing in the 1970s. Parts were reasonably available; Stoegers had a large parts catalog at the time.

Model 12 Winchesters and Browning A5s were the Gunsmith's Friends.
For all the M12 fan club, it is possible to wear one to the point of failure and they are a bit tedious to work on. Nobody ever cleaned an A5 or remembered how to orient the friction rings, so there were plenty of them to get running. Mr Browning did not design his commercial guns for easy dismantling and reassembly, so he frequently got Brownings with the actions in cigar boxes.
Polishing rusty Remington 742 chambers was a regular item, too.
Remington Models 10 and 29 were losers that took way more attention than they were worth.
His personal shotguns were Remington Model 31 and Ithaca Model 37 that he considered more reliable than others. He did shoot a Browning but knew how to maintain it.

The press of his regular job caused him to get out of gunsmithing for some time.
When he retired, he opened back up but found the good old guns were even more worn, the cheap ones more common, and parts availability poor. He did not stay with it long.