Gun Smithing Course

[260guy]

Hi Everyone

Was wondering if there is a good gunsmithing course out there. Preferably a correspondence course if at all possible. Gunsmiths are few and far between here and would like to increase my knowledge. Any you would recomend?

Thanks

 

[tightneck]

I believe AGI offers correspondence courses and others I'm sure do also. I cant reccomend them cause I haven't done them though. If your are interested in bolt action rifles I can recommend some videos that have helped me. Richard Franklin,richards custom rifles) and Greg Tannel,gre-tan rifles) both have made videos that are very helpful. Good stuff for lathe setup, blueprinting, rebarreling, pillar bedding and more.

 

[cntryboy1289]

I have the AGI courses and recommend them highly to folks that ask about them. If you are after a true gunsmithing course, it is very hard to beat the job that Bob Dunlap does. Darrel Holland teaches the rifle building videos though and he does an excellent job with them as well. They are not built to benchrest standards and he will tell you so in the beginning, but they are about as good as it gets for getting you into the ballpark

I also have both Greg's and Richard's videos as well and recommend them both as well. They are the next step up in learning about blueprinting an action, but they are not a complete gunsmithing video. I say gather as much inforamtion as you possibly can in your search and go from there.

Here is a link to AGI:

http://www.americangunsmith.com/

Don't know how serious you are about learning, but you won't go wrong with their courses when it comes to actually knowing how to break the gun down and repair it using their courses. When you want to step up with it to the next level, check out Greg's and Richard's websites and get their videos as well. Best of luck with it

 

[kaferhaus]

Correspondence, and or videos will of course increase your knowledge... BUT they will not make you a gunsmith.

There are several gunsmithing schools around the country that are excellent, although fairly expensive.

The AGI videos that I've seen are "good" but everyone that I've seen leaves things out...

You can't "learn" how to rebarrel a rifle in a 2 hour video tape.... you can see how it's done, but that's miles from being able to do it.

I've had the occaision to "fix" several rifles that were "smithed" by folks who watched a tape or read a book and then tried to work on their rifle.

The exception would be if you were already a machinist with experience working to very close tolerances.

And you'd be surprised how many machinists never have to get something within a .001, much less .0005 or better.

It's not secret rocket science either. But it requires a lot of metal working skill and knowledge of precision set ups..