[longrange08]

I do not claim to know everything about gunsmithing. But I know enough that Remington trusted me to be the head gunsmith for their east coast warranty center. That being said, before you buy a screwdriver,stone,file,hammer,bench block, punches or any other tools..... Buy BOOKS. They will as a beginner, and continue to be throughout your ENTIRE career the most important tool that you own.
When working on guns it is never what you know... it is what you do not know that will get your tail in a bind real quick. Feel free to ask any other professional gunsmiths, and im sure they will agree. When working on guns there are VERY RARELY any small, or minor mistakes. It would seem in my experience that when something goes wrong on a firearm. It goes very wrong. So the best thing you can do as a gunsmith is make sure you have taught yourself everything you need to know about a particular job before you go diving in head first, s that you do not get blind sided by some very small, very minor piece of information you did not know about before hand.
One small case in point. I had a local amateur gunsmith bring me a ORIGINAL 1886 Winchester deluxe grade rifle to "repair". One of his customers brought it to him to clean. He decided to disassemble it to clean it. He did not know AHEAD of time that the mag tube retaining ring is rotary cut. NOT a dovetail cut. These two cuts look very similar but disassemble VERY differently. One is turned, one is pushed. Long story short. He hammered it out. instead of twisted it out. he turned a 7000$ rifle into a 2000$ rifle because of one very, very tiny piece of information he didnt know ahead of time. Had he read the disassembly instructions in his BOOKS, ahead of time... well you get the point.