Would I trust an AGI student to repair my gun? NO.
I was trained as a watchmaker and also became a gunsmith specializing in Colt double action revolvers like the Python.
The AGI courses are better then nothing, but for training a real professional gunsmith it's not good enough...... UNLESS you have a high order of natural talent, in which about all you need to learn are the actual techniques, not the hand-eye skills that most people have to learn.
Question: If you were a pilot about to take an aircraft into the air for aggressive maneuvers, who would you trust to be the mechanic:
1. A professionally trained aircraft mechanic who was trained in a school that has a top reputation for turning out experts and was taught by instructors with years of experience?
2. Some guy who learned how to repair aircraft by a mail order training course and who a professional trainer never laid eyes on?
Here's an old "Dutch Uncle" post I made on another forum years ago.
These are the cold hard facts........................
If you're planning on being in the business as a pro, you're not going to get there with a correspondence or some kind of online course.
Businesses that hire gunsmiths want people who they KNOW have learned the job and can do the work.
That means a diploma from a good attendance school like Colorado School of Trades, Trinidad College, Lassen College, or one of the others.
Show up looking for a job as a gunsmith with a correspondence course diploma, and they'll file your application in the waste can.
If you're lucky they'll wait until you're out the door before breaking into laughter.
This is just the way it IS.
They need proven skills and knowledge, and you don't get that by mail or online.
A gun business can't afford to have you learning your trade on their customers guns. You have to be able to to quality, professional level work right from the get-go.
You can get a correspondence course and start your own business, but I'll take any amount of money that you'll bust out in less than a year.
Even trained professionals often fail upon opening their own business.
They may be master gunsmiths but they often know nothing about running a business.
A machine shop course to teach you how to run a lathe and milling machine is very good to have, but DO NOT think that being a good machinist makes you a good gunsmith.
Most good gunsmiths are good machinist, but most good machinist's are not qualified to be gunsmiths, and often are terrible at it.
There's this picture of a gunsmith standing over a lathe or milling machine making some intricate part.
Truth is, almost all of a gunsmiths time is spent sitting at a bench with screwdrivers and stones working on some small assembly.
Some top gunsmiths have little to no machine tools. because they don't do things that require heavy tooling.
Military armorers are not gunsmith's.
For the most part, they're parts switchers. They remove defective parts and drop in new parts.
If a gun needs more involved repairs, they're sent to a higher level to the real gunsmiths.
True military gunsmith's have a much higher level of training, and are almost always career military personnel. Getting into this level isn't easy.
At the very top are the true gunsmiths working for military marksmanship or special operations units.
There are very few of these people and they're the absolute cream of the crop with many years of training and experience.
Some people recommend learning as an apprentice.
This can be a good way to start, BUT... It all depends on who the teacher is.
The person you apprentice with may himself be a hack, and may be teaching you to be a hack too.
You'll have no real way to judge.
Plus, unless the teacher is a nationally know gunsmith and is known for turning out qualified students, his training is also worthless when it comes to getting hired because no one has heard of him or his reputation.
Again, employers hire people with good credentials, and the word of an unknown gunsmith isn't good enough.
Starting up a gunsmith business takes big bucks for tools, a business space, licenses, insurance, etc.
You'd be starting off cold with no customer base, and you'll starve out quickly for simple lack of paying customers.
Remember, something like 40% of all business's bust out, no matter WHAT they are or who's running them.
That's simply new business attrition.
Also, remember as a self-employed gunsmith, you're NOT a gunsmith.....You're really a business man who gets to spend a few hours a day doing gunsmithing.
MOST of your day is spent doing business man things like filling out forms for the government, talking to potential customers, ordering materials and parts, and dealing with unreasonable customers.
If you're lucky, you'll get to do a little gun work somewhere in there.
The only way to make it starting out on your own is to have a "day job" and gunsmith on the side.
Still, very few make it this way either.
It's tough to put in 8 hours on the main job, then come home and do a little gunsmithing, and still have to do all the business man stuff.
If you're really serious about this, bite the bullet and go to the best attendance school you can.
At least 6 months to a year before you graduate, start looking for a job.
By graduation day, you should have a firm job offer.
Go to work for a company like one of the gun makers, a custom gun maker, the government, or for one of the industries who employ gunsmiths for research projects.
Spend some time working for the other guys. They'll be doing all the business man stuff while you put in a solid 8 hours gunsmithing and really learning the trade.
After you've built up your skills, established your reputation as a known quantity in the industry, built up a customer contact base, and bought the equipment a little at a time, then you can go out on your own.
However, you're still subject to that 40% bust-out rate for new businesses.
Last, DO NOT expect to make a lot of money as a gunsmith.
If you figure it by the hour, most self-employed gunsmiths are making not much more than minimum wage.
Few if any of them are working only 40 hour weeks.
There's also this idea of taking an AGI course and working at home at night and on weekends to get started or as a money making hobby.
It's possible, BUT, you better understand that you're running a BUSINESS.
You BETTER have all your insurance ducks in a row because one mistake or what someone THINKS is a mistake and you get sued.
DO NOT think that your best buddy in the world won't come after you if he thinks you botched up his gun.
They can and will.
A cheap used gun suddenly becomes a extremely valuable heirloom worth huge amounts and the friend since childhood is hiring a lawyer.
If someone drops dead of a heart attack and the gun is nearby, expect to get sued by relatives of his you never heard of because YOU were the last person to work on the gun so it's your fault, somehow.
All this requires heavy duty insurance so you need to figure out how you're going to make the payments on the policies.
You might take the AGI course and be the next Armand Swenson, but the people who can do that are super rare.
Working it as a money making hobby is tough to justify considering that you still have to have the FFL license, state and local business licenses, and the insurance.
I'm not trying to drive you away from the trade, but you really need to know the truth about it.
Of the people I went to watchmaking school with, 5 years later only a couple were still in the trade, and all but TWO were people who's family owned a jewelry store.
The same thing holds for people getting into gunsmithing. In a few years they've left the trade because they couldn't make a living at it, or opened up a business and went bankrupt.
There's an old joke: "How are a gunsmith and a large pizza the same?
Neither can feed a family of four".
That's NOT a joke.
We need more good gunsmiths, but we need professionals.
If you're an average guy and not the next Swenson you need to consider biting the bullet and going to a real attendance school where professional gunsmiths will teach you how to be a pro.
In most cases the AGI course will be money wasted and you'll only use it for your own guns.
And that's the Dutch Uncle truth about gunsmithing.
