The Firing Line Forums - View Single Post - Smithing for noobies? Where did you start?

wyop · July 15, 2012, 04:58 PM

Doyle, as to your question earlier: "how much of your business...?"

That's a difficult question to answer, because sometimes, the inspection leads to far bigger things. This is why I think there's a shortage of these types of smiths:

Let's take an example of someone who brings in Grandad's old side-by shotgun. It needs to be cleaned, lubed, inspected, etc. That's very fine and straightforward... but the inspection uncovered evidence that the barrels have some pitting and need to be honed. Or the barrels' bottom rib is coming loose and it needs to be re-laid.

Now both of these jobs might be well within the "gun technician's" abilities and tooling capacity, but as soon as you start messing with the barrels on a shotgun, you'd really like to have a guy who has some double gun experience there to help gage the barrels before honing, making an evaluation as to what's wrong with the rib, etc. Oh, and when you re-lay the rib, that means the barrels will need to be polished out and re-blued, and because old double guns were soldered together... you can't hot blue, you need to rust blue. You're not only into much bigger money, you're into serious time and experience.

Suddenly this clean/inspect/lube job has blown up to a much larger issue. The gun, brought in for a $50 C/I/L job, now still isn't in service, and the customer isn't happy about hearing "We don't do that here, you need to find someone else to do that work."

I think (and this is only my opinion, which like some bodily orifices, are in much higher supply than demand) that a gun tech really needs to have the services of a in-depth repair shop on which he can call when the inspection turns up something more than the gun tech is equipped to handle. It could be more than one back-up shop - it could be a group of specialists with whom the gun-tech has an ongoing business relationship, referring business back and forth. That way, the gun tech has a solution to offer the customer, rather than more problems than the customer came in with, and the guys who are specialists in a narrow part of the gun field (eg, someone who does only revolver work, or only side-by shotgun work) can send the general repair issues over to the gun tech.

July 15, 2012, 04:58 PM	#12
wyop Senior Member Join Date: July 15, 2012 Location: Wonderful, Windy Wyoming Posts: 133	Doyle, as to your question earlier: "how much of your business...?" That's a difficult question to answer, because sometimes, the inspection leads to far bigger things. This is why I think there's a shortage of these types of smiths: Let's take an example of someone who brings in Grandad's old side-by shotgun. It needs to be cleaned, lubed, inspected, etc. That's very fine and straightforward... but the inspection uncovered evidence that the barrels have some pitting and need to be honed. Or the barrels' bottom rib is coming loose and it needs to be re-laid. Now both of these jobs might be well within the "gun technician's" abilities and tooling capacity, but as soon as you start messing with the barrels on a shotgun, you'd really like to have a guy who has some double gun experience there to help gage the barrels before honing, making an evaluation as to what's wrong with the rib, etc. Oh, and when you re-lay the rib, that means the barrels will need to be polished out and re-blued, and because old double guns were soldered together... you can't hot blue, you need to rust blue. You're not only into much bigger money, you're into serious time and experience. Suddenly this clean/inspect/lube job has blown up to a much larger issue. The gun, brought in for a $50 C/I/L job, now still isn't in service, and the customer isn't happy about hearing "We don't do that here, you need to find someone else to do that work." I think (and this is only my opinion, which like some bodily orifices, are in much higher supply than demand) that a gun tech really needs to have the services of a in-depth repair shop on which he can call when the inspection turns up something more than the gun tech is equipped to handle. It could be more than one back-up shop - it could be a group of specialists with whom the gun-tech has an ongoing business relationship, referring business back and forth. That way, the gun tech has a solution to offer the customer, rather than more problems than the customer came in with, and the guys who are specialists in a narrow part of the gun field (eg, someone who does only revolver work, or only side-by shotgun work) can send the general repair issues over to the gun tech.