A User's Guide to Dealing with Gunsmiths

I notice on a bunch of the gun-specific forums that there are ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS "I got hosed by my gunsmiths" threads. In some of those cases, I actually the know the gunsmiths named pretty well, and I know that they'll walk across broken Pepsi bottle to keep from getting that kind of crappy press.

I do lots of custom gun stuff, much to the amusement of many of my friends ("God lord, Bane, if you want a .44 Special, just buy one for heaven's sake! It isn't necessary to gather up pieces like Easter eggs and then pour money on them!"). After semi-careful analysis, I realize that most of the bitching on the forums about gunsmiths is a classic "failure to communicate" situation, so I thought I'd whip together an IDIOT'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH GUNSMITHS, me being the idiot, of course. Since I've already made all these mistakes, you don't have to!

1) First and foremost, know what you want. A really good gunsmith can probably fabricate you a 4-inch deck gun for a destroyer that also fires .45 Colts and .410 shotgun shells. You will, however, be unhappy when the bill comes. Most of the disagreements I see are of the "I asked for X and damned if he didn't give me Y" sort. This is because "Slick up my smoke-pole" is subject to interpretation in gunsmithing as in life. Think of tuning as a continuum, from a simple trigger job to a wholesale reengineering of the gun. Your basic trigger job is going to cost you in the $100 vicinity, depending on the hardware. A "master tune" of the same gun will run in the $500-600 range, for which you will get essentially a blueprinting of the gun. If you need or want to replace parts, that's going to be extra. If you supply the replacement parts, it's going to cost you twice as much, because your gunsmth is going to have to grind the part that you purchased because of the great magazine article to fit, and, in general, zinc is hard to grind.

This is why god invented email!!! Everything is then in writing, so you don't do a Michael...gunsmith says, "It'll be expensive." Michael says, "No problemo." Michael has to sell sperm in order to survive the year, but he is theonly one on his block with a .50 caliber single shot pistol.

2) Do not send your gun to a gunsmith for work if you think you may have to shoot your brother-in-law next week. Gunsmithing takes time. Lots of time. Lots and lots and lots of time. Geologic era time. My record is 14 years. That YEARS, not months. I had actually forgotten that I'd left the gun with him. He said, "Remember that gun you won at that match in the mid-1980s? Well, I'm ready to start working on it." I said, "What gun?" "You know...you won it in a match and I said give it to me since you'll just screw it up." "I won a gun?" Etc. It is, however, an excellent gun, a 1911 if you must know. Ironically, I had to forego the checkering, since under the 14-years-later price list, I couldn't afford it.

3) Learn to speak GUNSMITHESE. When your gunsmith says, "That'd be nice," that translates into at least $100. "A different mainspring housing would be nice..." KA-ching! "Being able to shoot live ammunition would be nice... " KA-ching! there are other key phrases, such as, "It would look better [fill in the bank];" "I think you'd be happier with [fill in blank];" or the ever-popular "You know, Jack Bauer on 24 uses one of these..."

4) Understand the difference between a Real-World gun and a "project" gun. People like me and my pal Mike Daly are mentally unstable — we think spending perfectly good money on overhauling obscure guns is fun. It is not fun, unless you think collecting the stamps of the British Empire is fun, in which case there's nothing I can do for you. Gunsmiths like Hamilton Bowen, Dave Clements and Doug Turnbull thrive on project guns, which typically involve the exchange of a credit card number and/or a firstborn male child. Do NOT speak to these gunsmiths unless you understand "auction etiquette" — you scratch your nose at the wrong time and you've bought a vintage Maserati, a small Paul Klee and a house in Tuscany.

For example, I understand that should I say to such a gunsmith that I want a "really accurate" .44 Special single action, they are NOT going to give me reloading information. Instead, I know I'm in for line-boring a new cylinder, maybe a new barrel, recutting the forcing cone, Taylor-throating, recrowning the barrel and probably at least a goat sacrificed over the cylinder-barrel gap. You gotta watch out for stuff like that.

5) Memorize these words — What the hell are you talking about?