I've heard gunsmithing is bad as a career, but is it a decent source of side income?
I've got a job that gets me decent money working about 30 hours a week on mostly my own schedule. I'm looking for something else to do part-time on the side. Preferably something that is both enjoyable and can earn some extra cash. Gunsmithing certainly sounds like fun and it's a skillset I wouldn't mind developing. But is there any money in it at all?
It is not a good profession to make money. It's only worthwhile for personal enjoyment and access to wholesale gun prices. You constantly deal with whiny, entitled, jackasses that won't listen to why their ideas are dumb. I just do minor bullshit loke cleanings and parts install, but every actual gunsmith I interact with says the same thing.
that better not be what i think it is.
It's moly assembly oil, sicko
moly is Black person!
Found you!
Are you painting the steel?
> first post is the elusive cum anon
> provides solid advice and quality nut
Frankly I'm at a loss for words.
>quality nut
IMAO! Arginine, carnitine, lysine and zinc thread
Become a machinist first. Thats where you make the real money. Then if you want to get into gunsmithing you'll have a huge leg up on the typical bubba's and offer a better service.
This
Good money to be made in aerospace manufacturing. A loss of manufacturing skill is why we couldn't produce new Saturn rockets a few decades ago. It has changed a bit but it's still in demand.
>Inb4 auto cnc
>Inb4 3d printing
Manual machining will always has a place in prototyping and small scale manufacturing
>machinist
>making real money
T. Machinist
Depends on both your business sense and who your customer base is. Both are decided by area demographics and what you want/can put up with.. Of course how skilled you are greatly affects your particular reality. Just leaving and a green gunsmith, you're mostly stuck putting up with Fudds and mall ninjas that will give you moronic headaches followed by talking to a dumbass who obviously knows nothing but thinks they're a fricking expert. It takes years for your skills to be worthy of shooters that actually know their shit and have the pockets to make it worth your while. The high end gunsmith space is oversaturated after the war on terror. The contractors are all gone, nobody has that kind of mindless money throwing budgeting anymore. Those who do are arrogant dumbfrick rich guys wanting "da best uh da best what opermuhrators cool guy stuff an sheeeiieet".. So they pay for shit they don't need, get mad they can't shoot worth a frick, b***h about what you sold them despite everything they're b***hing about is every fricking thing you warned them about. So no, starting as gunsmith now and making it a primary income source, absolutely freaking not. But as a side thing that you don't care if it makes much, absolutely, because if nothing else how much it saves you and opens up your shooting to more exploration and experimenting.
It’s something that I’m sure is fun to do, however if you run ANY repair business you will at some point get swamped by two or three impossible jobs that will ruin your workflow and cashflow. This is especially true if you are a one man job.
Sure you can just give up on a hard job, but then people will think you don’t know what the frick you are doing and stop bringing things to you.
So you are finally stuck with the impossible choice of dumping 6 weeks on one repair, or giving up and losing customers.
>t. Amplifier tech who just quit after 5 years
>people will think you don’t know what the frick you are doing and stop bringing things to you
Because a few customers influncing the whole town 🙂 Nice reddit gayin
Have you ever worked a job outside of retail kid?
>working for money
Its not 1890, grow up!
But I enjoy doing stuff for money to spend on more fun stuff.
A few customers can influence your whole business
Lose 10 people who gave you an average of $200/mo of business and now you can’t pay rent. Doesn’t matter if they never say anything about you to anyone.
Have you ever run a business? A few bad apples spoils the bunch and that's especially true in PR.
I need my vp9sk and my glock gen 2 with optics cut, and while I have had the money, I just can't trust people with my stuff. My local in state people suck ass and the best in the business are out of state, meaning I have to ship firearms, pay FFL fees, pay for weight, pay for insurance and they could STILL lose my stuff without recompense.
>bad as a career, but is it a decent source of side income?
No one is going to trust you if you don't work with a reputable shop. I don't even trust UPS and Fedex enough to send out my $800+ guns for vanity work. UPS has been cracking down on gun part transfers and Fedex has ammo go missing regularly.
Don't throw all your eggs in the gunsmithing basket. Guns are trending towards everything being manufactured to tight enough tolerances that every part is a drop-in replacement. This is true for barrels and trigger mechanisms which is 99% of what gunsmiths work on. You surely do not have a big enough war chest to enter the prefit barrel or aftermarket trigger space.
The smiths in my area get most of their business in the form of
>slide milling
>gas block drilling & pinning
>refinishing and cerakote
>and a shitton of armorer-level mug work like headspacing, gauging, and parts replacement
Honestly even as an armorer most of the shit I deal with is from customers who are too stupid or lack the tools to do basic stuff themselves like changing pistol sights, mounting optics, working on ARs, etc.
t. work as an armorer on the civilian side
Don't get into gunsmithing because you think it's a good source of income; it's not. Get into gunsmithing because it's your passion and because you want to build your skills and turn your hobby into a little bit of money. Go to a trade school and become a machinist; those skills transfer really well and let you do better work in less time (and charge more for it).