Since I started helping experienced shooters become certified instructors and build their businesses using high-tech marketing techniques, I’ve had so many people ask me about gunsmithing.
So, I reached out to the most prestigious gunsmithing school in the nation- American Gunsmithing Institute and spoke with Gene Kelly to help people understand what a gunsmith is and how to become one.
Gene Kelly is a serial entrepreneur, educator, published author, and licensed gunsmith.
I’m pleased to have you, Gene as a contributor to this webinar. Welcome.
Hey, thanks, Andy. I appreciate it. I’m always happy to share more about my passion, which has been gunsmithing and firearms since I was a teenager. Being a gunsmith offers a lot of freedom for an individual. While some people are doing it as a second income, some are doing it as a primary income. I’m pleased to discuss all the aspects of gunsmithing, such as business, training, etc.
Gene, I got to tell you, your book, “Becoming an American Gunsmith,” lays out everything about gunsmithing in a really productive manner, and I love it. One of the things that shocked me was my definition of a gunsmith. Interestingly, I’ve been in the gun world for 12 years, and I didn’t even understand what a gunsmith was.
Let’s get into it. What does it mean to be a gunsmith?
A gunsmith understands the design function of firearms such that they can repair parts, make parts from scratch, and even build firearms. The confusion often happens when some people at an honors level claim that they’re gunsmiths, but they don’t understand the complete firearm design function and repair.
Before you can identify broken or missing parts on a firearm, you need to understand its dimension, tolerances, operating rules, and every sub-system to know how to make the appropriate repair or create a missing piece from scratch. When it comes to customizing a firearm, a gunsmith understands what they’re doing in terms of adding elements like live widgets, among other things.
To become one, the core knowledge you must have is understanding all the systems and sub-systems within a firearm, how they are designed to work and function, and the interaction between those parts, since most things in a gun happen in a series.
An armor understands the core aspects of a particular firearm model and can easily replace parts but is not qualified to modify parts, fit parts, build custom parts, build firearms, etc.
We have a third category known as Whoppers. They are people just throwing parts at it, hoping to get it right. Maybe something’s out of tolerance, and you don’t understand what that part is doing and what it must do. Unfortunately, we have many of them out there; some call themselves gunsmiths.
Distinction. So to recap, a gunsmith is somebody who understands the functionality of every piece of a firearm such that they can design, manufacture, and repair it. In contrast, armor is a person that is factory trained so that they can replace parts. And then there’s the lowest tier, the guy with a corner store that says gunsmith on it, and he’ll buy a replacement part popping in and not really know if that’s going to solve the problem.
Yeah, and that’s the wrong way to operate because you can end up in really unsafe conditions. There are so many little sub-systems that you need to learn about. There’s a particular firing pin shape for centerfire, rifles, shotguns, and Rimfires, which is different for each. There’s also a firing pin protrusion and rules around that. There are rules around lockup, different systems of lockup, SEER systems, disconnectors, and so on. So you must understand the firearm’s design in the family categories, the sub-systems, and the rules they follow.
For our students, after going through the entire gunsmithing program at the American Gunsmithing Institute, they should be able to pick up a firearm they’ve never seen before and be able to analyze the systems it uses, and identify the breakdown point and make the appropriate repair. And that’s the most common form of true gunsmithing because most people these days are not building one-off firearms from scratch. The average gunsmith is working with factory-produced guns, and they’re either repairing them, maintaining them, customizing them, or refinishing them. I love every aspect of gunsmithing.
How did you get into the gunsmithing industry?
When I was a kid, I was fascinated with firearms. We moved to California when I was around 12 years old, where I got my first real exposure to firearms. I could read gun magazines and get into shooting. In high school, we did gun work and mocked it our way around. We didn’t understand everything as we should have. And that’s one of the number one things that I hear from students when they’re going through our program. They say, Gene, I thought I knew about guns, but now I realize I don’t.
As I graduated from high school, before junior college, a mentorship teacher told me about the gunsmithing program at Lassen college. So I checked it out, and at the time, there was a three-year waiting list to get in. I was encouraged by the head instructor to come during the summer and try and challenge the course. And that was a very eventful summer for me. I went to school with my best friend Mark Foster and Darryl Holland to challenge the course, and we were invited back during Fall. We’d be there when they opened the door in the morning until they kicked us out at night.
I equally learned from Master gunsmith Bob Dunlap for two and a half years, and it was amazing. Bob Dunlap was a very analytical guy with an engineering background and had access to many of the factories behind the scenes. I ended up getting hired to work for Bob. I later worked at some other shops before starting my own manufacturing company, which has seen me have an O seven license with the SOP.
So I can build machine guns, suppressors, and all kinds of stuff. I also did some training videos when I worked in security for 30 years with an Israeli company in a few different places.
I love how passionate you are, Gene. So, what kind of people would make a good gunsmith?
Well, I’m going to divide this into a couple of things. First, there’s a legal aspect of it; if you can possess firearms legally, you can be a gunsmith. But if you have a felon or you’re a prohibited person, you’re not going to be able to get a Federal Firearms License and, therefore, can’t be one.
The next aspect is your personality. You can’t always expect the easy button. Sometimes some problems are more complex, so you got to think about them. There is a patience component to becoming a gunsmith. There’s also a passion – beyond just liking the shoot, you need to appreciate what that gun represents, its system, built quality, etc. And there’s an honor system. To me, there’s nothing that represents freedom more than a gunsmith. Because if the firearms aren’t working, they’re just hunk steel, aluminum, or plastic, whatever they are. They’re not just a legacy of freedom, self-defense, and personal protection, but there are also all those days out in the field hunting, where memories are made. On that note, appreciation for history is also very important.
The third aspect is the willingness to learn. Most of the people I know are lifelong learners and are excited about learning. You have to be that because you’re going to come up against some things that you’ll have to noodle out what’s happening here. Understand that it should be this or what’s not happening here. You also need to have some mechanical ability.
I find experienced shooters out there who have thought about becoming instructors have the challenge of getting started. So, what would be the first step, especially for people who may not be ready to dive into a whole new career?
Well, without being excessively self-promoting, I would say that reading my book will give people an idea of many things, some of which we’ll talk about. Another thing would be to get started on your guns. So, at the very least, you’ll get more appreciation out of your firearms. If you go through an AGI armors course on a particular gun and get into the gun, you will have the confidence to tear it and strip it down, clean every part identifier, put every part back together, and have that baby operating correctly, again. And it’s a great starting point because the risk level is low. You’re not working on anybody else’s gun, and you can even start with something simple. You can start with 1020, 870, or 1911, which are all pretty simple guns to take apart and put back together.
What is the next path after grabbing an honors course from the American Gunsmithing Institute?
We have essentially two levels of our courses; we have what’s available at an honors level and an armors level. At the armors level, you’ll learn how to take it apart, and you could do some parts replacement too. This level is good for some people since that’s all they want. I think everybody should have that information for any guns they own. If they’re going to become a gunsmith, either part-time or full-time, to make an excellent retirement income, they can enroll as a student at the American Gunsmithing Institute.
We have multiple levels of instruction, where they start at the design function and repair of the core for handguns of all types: pistols, revolvers, straight blowback, love lock breach, single action revolvers, double action revolvers, etc. This also includes shotguns, centerfire rifles, and rimfires of all action types, basically what everybody needs to know at a baseline. All this takes about 168 hours of training.
Higher levels of instruction include how to machine everything, like a lathe and mills. How to set it up, and how to do all the procedures. You don’t necessarily need a laborer mill to do gunsmithing, but it gives you more options. The other aspect at the higher level is welding. Even though we teach all aspects of welding, gas stick, MIG, TIG, plasma cutting, etc., we use TIG welding, predominantly in gunsmithing, as it gives us the ability to put just a tiny amount of weld material metal right where we want without adversely affecting the heat used in the rest of the parts.
We teach many different levels and aspects based on our real-world experience. We cover heat treating, the business operations of being a gunsmith, restoration, custom rifle building, and custom pistol building. Each of them is taught by a master gunsmith, with many of them specializing in one area. You need to start with the base level and core design function repair at whatever level you’re enrolled in.
We teach through videos and pictures because if a picture’s worth 1000 words, then moving pictures with words, as instructed by the instructor, is worth 10s of 1000s of words, so fascinating.
What streams of income can a gunsmith make? Is it just all about repair?
Once you understand the design, function, and repair of firearms, there’s a lot of custom work that you can do, depending on your passion. You can do some restoration to earn significant cash, especially if you attract the correct type of customer who can pay. The same goes for modifying a carry gun. It’s all about your work quality and value. If I want my carry gun to be what I want it to be, I will pay whatever it is. The average charge will depend on several factors, such as your location in the country. I usually advise people to start at about half the price of what their local automotive shops are charging because you don’t have that kind of overhead that an auto shop has. But the idea is to get more organized and knowledgeable so that you can do the jobs faster.
If you run a special for Smith and Wesson double action trigger jobs to your email list or your customer list, and now you do a bunch of those together, you’re going to get faster on each one. So you’ll make more money. This can be a great primary income as long as you’re dedicated and willing to be innovative.
Great answers. When I approached you, Gene, I wanted to give this webinar a brilliant introduction to the world of gunsmithing and also get myself to understand it. You can get Gene’s book “Becoming an American Gunsmith” and a free professional gun cleaning secrets DVD course using the coupon code ATGG22.
If you’re sure this is for you, the American gunsmithing institute will walk you through this journey. They will transform you from what you are now to one of those master gunsmiths. And they’ve got the business side of things. Gene Kelly will answer a few questions.
Sure thing! You may want to look at the courses we offer for different families of guns. A common question I often get is, “Do I need a Federal Firearms License, and how tough is it to get one? An FFL is easy to get if you don’t have a felony or, for any reason, you’re prohibited from owning firearms. You can get that in as little as 90 days at the cost of a couple of 100 dollars, which is good for three years before renewal.
Another concern is about the tools. A lot of gunsmithing is done on a six-foot bench. Even when working with a shotgun with a long barrel, it’s usually less than four feet. So you don’t need a lot of space. Most guns are held together with screws and pins, so you need pin punches, proper hammers, and screwdrivers. If you want to go beyond that, we recommend a couple of power tools, such as a TIG welder. You can also have a gunsmith lathe and mill if you’re doing Bre barreling or site work. They are handy for retaping firing pins, setting back pistol barrels, etc. And all of those are not real expensive.
Another question is if they can raid your house if you’re a gunsmith. Nobody can just come into your home at random hours. They can only inspect you when you say you’re open, even if it’s only on weekends. That’s the only time they legally can come in. They’re not very interested in gunsmiths, but they’re worried about guys that sell guns out of the backdoor.
And I’ll attest to that, Gene. I’ve got a Federal Firearms License here at my house, and the ATF doesn’t raid my home in the middle of the night. They call you and say, “Hey, we’re going to be in your area on XYZ date, we see that you’re open on Fridays, are you good for one o’clock?” something like that. In the 12 years that I’ve been a Federal Firearms Licensed dealer, it’s happened twice. So it’s not a big deal at all.
So I have a couple of questions on here. Carl asks, Is it wiser to concentrate on a specific type of firearms, like just pistols or rifles, or is it better to be a generalist?
It depends upon your market area and your passions. So if you are interested in handguns, I’m going to say, focus on that. And by the way, if you could be a well-known custom, handgun builder, or shotgun builder, you can have guns shipped to you from all over the country. You do not just need to get your firearms from your local marketplace. We do that through the Gunsmith Club America. It’s an ongoing membership site for students and people in gunsmithing, and we share tips back and forth.
As far as specializing, again, it comes down to what you like to do, and even if you specialize, you do need broad knowledge. So yes, there’s generally more income in the specialization, but you can do great as a generalist.
Great! So, you used the word restoration a few times. What’s the difference between restoration and refurbishing?
Restoration is slightly different from just repair. So repair is to make it functional, kind of there’s a spring missing, series broken, firing pins broken, whatever. Restoration, on the other hand, is to try and bring it all back to some degree of originality. It’s got to look original with every aspect.
That’s fascinating. I’ve just got these ideas in my head of if I was going to go this path, what I’m going to be doing, and I love history and being part of that. Someone asks, “How do you do background checks for each purchase?”
I can answer this. So, you need an acquisition and disposition book. When a firearm comes in, you put it on one side, and when it goes out, you put it on the side where it went. And to do a background check, you basically have a form called your 4473, which is two pages.
You and the customer will fill it out and submit it to the National Instant Criminal Background or NIC system, then wait for their response for five minutes to three hours, depending on how busy they are. And that’s really what being a Federal Firearms License is. On top of that, you have access to distributors that can sell you guns at wholesale and make some profit that way. That besides just repairing and restoring, you can sell as well.
Yeah, a couple more points are, we include a complete step-by-step package for every one of our students, including the additional books to the gunsmithing repair logs for writing and tags for bringing the guns in. If a firearm stays overnight, you need to log in your books, and when they pick it up, you log it out. But if it comes in just for something you’re going to do in a short time, you don’t have to log it in and out. But you don’t have to do background checks because it’s presumed that the person legally owns the firearm.
That’s so helpful. Is an FFL required for the armors courses?
No, a federal firearms license is required if you’re doing a service for profit or taking in work to keep overnight. So if you were working on your firearms, you don’t need an FFL. If you’re working on your friend’s firearm, and you’re not charging them for it, and you’re not really keeping it more than a little while, you probably don’t need an FFL at all. But if you want access to things like wholesale resources, buying and selling guns, all that kind of stuff, an FFL is very useful.
Some people are worried about liability. Have you ever had law come to your gun shop because of a criminal purchase? How do you protect yourself from liability in this industry?
For starters, follow the rules and don’t be stupid and greedy. Don’t let money, ideology, compromise, or ego drive you. Liability-wise, If you understand design and function repair and follow the safety teachings, you will not have a problem. And in fact, you can get liability insurance which is not very expensive. Our students get a discount from the vendors because they know they are correctly taught. So it’s always wise to have some insurance, but I go into full depth in our master course on setting up your business and the holistic aspect of it.
I love it. The final question is, what type of FFL will I need?
Gunsmiths can choose between the O one license, your regular dealer’s license, or an O seven license, the manufacturer’s license. You would choose one or the other depending on what you envision your business doing. But I’d recommend that most people get a type one license as it is the easiest, with less reporting. As a manufacturer, you have to file a report of the firearms you’ve manufactured every year, and if you manufacture more than 49 firearms a year, you have to collect and pay an excise tax of 11% on the firearms. So for most people, it’s easier not to deal with that. But again, it’s a matter of what you want to do.
A couple of questions just did come in, is it necessary to have both O One and O seven to be safe?
I would go with one. You can have more than one license and more than one licensed location. But I would recommend if you think you’re going to be a manufacturer, and you understand what that means, then go with the O seven license because it supersedes an O one. With an O seven, you can still do all the same things as an O one. The difference is you can manufacture, but you have the responsibilities that go along with manufacturing, which are reporting excise tax and so on.
Got it. Are the AGI courses available in digital format or just physical like DVD and things like that?
Some of them are available in both since we’re moving more and more online. More of our students, even those enrolled in a digital format, decide they want the DVDs because they don’t want anybody choking off their knowledge. The DVDs are all indexed, and we have a master index for all of us. If you’re looking for a particular firearm and repair under that, go to that section. So, DVDs are the primary for particularly the more extensive courses. But we do have digital offerings like streaming.
Chris says he just bought the Glock course, and it came in blu ray, so he can’t watch it. Is that a common thing?
We only have a few courses in blu ray, and the Glock is one of them. And if there’s any problem, just let our customer service know, and we’ll replace it.
Great! Gene, thank you so much for being here. This was a phenomenal discussion. I wanted to get on and explain to people how to get started with gunsmithing. Because even if they don’t want to become a gunsmith, learning more about their firearms makes them safer shooters and more responsible for their guns. And it can save them money for repairing or upgrading and adding more to their gun.
You’re absolutely right. You have to get started in life. That’s how everything has worked for me. There are so many opportunities in this area, and it makes you a stronger and freer individual as you understand multiple traits.
Well, Gene, I appreciate it, and we’ll be in touch soon. Thanks, everybody. I appreciate it.
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