Gearing up, the tools of the trade, who has what and what do they do with it?

Johnny_Canuck

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Super GunNutz
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Edmonton mostly
Rampant Canadian Gun Nut Johnny Canuck here, beginning a mission. His mission, to build rifles, shotguns, pistols and weird combo's therof that come into his head in the middle of scotch whiskey soaked planning sessions with his loyal and trustworthy friends, who also happen to be firearm enthusiasts and whiskey drinkers.

I plan to preform full gunsmithing from action truing and bluepringting, rebarreling to recrowning and even the small things, like cleaning the gun till it works again. I also plan to build my own actions, mounts and eventually the barrels. Since it will be a small operation I believe I will do cut rifling barrels. If popularity ensues I may switch to buttoning, but that will be several years down the road methinks.

Now seeing as planning plus preperation prevents piss poor preformance I want to get a general survey out to the CGN community, the gunsmiths and garage tinkerers specifically. I want to know what you do, and what you use to do it, tricks, tips and past mistakes are also welcome, just because I didn't make a mistake doesn't mean I cannot learn aught from it.

Suggested reading and literature to the point of my goal, who has wrought knowledge onto paper so that I may use it to my own means and what did they title it?

A little background on me before I get calls of getting in way over my head; I am currently a 3rd year millwright with a fair bit of machining expirience and also plan to take machinist as a second trade. I am also a firearms enthusiast. To some this means occasionally going to the range, to others like me it means sitting up till 3 in the morning watching showcase and cleaning guns, taking them apart for the heck of it or reloading ammo while thinking about why i don't have a girlfriend.

So bring it on, Brands of machinery, styles of mills/lathes/drill presses used, sizes on said equipment, bed length, cross travel. Special tools you can buy to get the job done. Modifications made to tools to fill a niche, COSTS!!!, what did you spend, what has it taken for you to get where you are now in time and heartache? What have you worked your blood, sweat and tears into? Any deals on equipment that might perk your ears in the coffee room or the co-op would also be useful, i'll be looking for good condition used machines based on some primary estimates. Gonna try to bring this to fruition for 25000 over the next 4 years or so.

All information is worth knowing, if I am to do something it might as well be to excess. Hopefully the people of CGN may benefit from my mania when I feel I may produce and not dissapoint.
 
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First off, keep your day job. If you want to make a small fortune as a gunsmith, you will need to start off with a large fortune. Think CNC if you plan on making actions, it is not something you want to attempt on a Bridgeport and manual lathe. $25,000 isn't much, I likely have that much in tooling alone never mind machines.
Now that I have pissed on your parade there are many things you can do with manual mills and lathes. You can true up actions and recrown barrels and make small parts.
Barrels are another story and a huge investment in machinery is needed.

edit to add: I am not a gunsmith and don't claim to be, however I have my own machine shop with CNC equipment and have 25 years of machining experience.
 
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I just bought a great little beginners gunsmithing book called "Gunsmithing Made Easy" by Bryce Towsley. The projects in the book are very basic and more than likely you're beyond all that, but he does devote a chapter on how to set up your work station and what tools you will need in your smithing shop. It's a great little book for the hobby gunsmith or someone just starting up and it's full of colour photos which is a plus in my books. :D
 
I do a little home smithing.
I have a 12x36 lathe.
Bridgeport series one CNC converted to operate off of a PC.
Small shaper and smaller manual mill.
Plasma cutter, tig,mig stick, oxy welder heat treating forge aluminum forge and all the other smaller tools that go along with it.
Its too bad I have a real job that I make gobs of money at with little output.( read Alberta oil and gas is goooood).
That along with my young family, leaves me with little time to play in the shop.
I think with a good mill and lathe and the know how to operate them you can make just about anything including tooling.
You will have to decide if the money pays for the effort.
I slowly added toys to my collection over many years. Maybe some day I will retire early and do a little smithing just for fun and supplement cash for some more toys.
I recently made action/barrel vices. Bought a used 6mm heavy barrel and have re chambered it to 6mmBR. I am currently reverse engineering a Rem 700 stock. I am in the trial stages of cutting a new stock with a larger barrel channel on the CNC mill. FUN FUN
Another thing to think of is, when hobby's turn into a full blown job it sometimes looses its fun factor.
Whatever you do keep us posted on your progress.
Good luck.
 
"...why i don't have a girlfriend..." Whisky does that.
"...I plan to..." Got lots of money do you?
"...Suggested reading..." You can't learn smithing from a book, however, smithies spend more time reading than anything else. Start with the NRA's Gunsmithing Guides. Amazon.ca. They start at $118Cdn.
Gun shows are great places to find books. Prowl the shows for every smithing book you can find. It won't be cheap.
Oh and there's liitle money in being a gunsmith. Especially for an FNG.
 
Suggested reading:
"Gunsmith Kinks" there are several volumes in this set.
Writer, Bob Brownell.....
It's old school 'smithing, 1st publication about 1969 or so.

So it's older data, but much of this info still applies.

The Culnhausen series of books are GREAT too...45 1911, Semi-Automatic US Rifles etc etc...

These books, are not cheap for a good reason.

Cheers...
 
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