So just what does a person need to be able to open shop as a Gunsmith in Canada?
A work bench, some tools and a few magazines? One of those courses we see advertised on a match card ?
Is there any trade school that has a Gunsmith program?
A craft with such a possible danger from poor workmanship should be a recognised trade with interprovincial status.
Some formal teaching is not a bad thing.
That would work well in a world where the whole gun industry was not the poor second cousin, essentially unwanted. IIRC the CFO's want some proof of formal training to issue a license, but apparently that includes the mail order education off a matchbook cover (Remember those?) or similar. Not useful.
There is only one school that offers any formal training in the way of a program, in Canada. If you don't speak fluent French, you are SOL. Unless you travel to the US, where you will be out of pocket for your cost of living as well as your training for the time you spend there, you are out of luck. As a low margin, not reliable income, kind of job, gunsmithing does not exactly attract a stream of folks willing to run up huge student loans to get in the door.
And all that gets you is paper, not workmanship. Paper on the wall says you should know better, not that you will act accordingly.
Trying to drag the government in to deal with accreditation, is a fools game at this point. There are no sources for the training, and no sources for the apprenticeships that would be required to pull it off.
Back to the original story... With all this talk of Heat, Hardness and Temper, has anyone actually hardness tested the action? THAT is the final arbiter of whether the action was damaged by heat (beyond the physical damage from too much torch, like scaling and pits), not just that heat was used to remove it.
Cheers
Trev
