Originally Posted by
Blackwater
I agree with shredder - the craftsmanship has gone from most "gunsmiths," just as it has from the field of car mechanics. A friend of mine can tell you just about what's wrong with an engine just by listening to it, and tell you what to do about it, to boot. Try asking one of our "young lion" mechanics, and you'll get that doe in the headlights look. Most of today's "gunsmiths" are, at best, one or two trick ponies. Nothing wrong with that, necessarily, but they're "specialists" in the gunsmithing world.
I have a friend from whom I just bought my first true custom rifle - for me the realization of a lifetime's aspirations. Stock is cut and chaped from a blank, has a beautiful deep oil finish, a Mauser action with side-swing safety, beautiful and deep blue job, and it handles like it was made for me, which it very nearly was. I wound up with it almost by accident, and at a price that reflects more than simple friendship. This guy did ALL the metal AND wood work, and did it all at a very high level of performance. I sometimes just sit it in front of me and just admire it, like an art lover admires a Davinci, Rembrant or whoever's work. It's that good. The subtlety of the stock's contours, and the way the lines flow is just plain beautiful, and exquisitely executed. THAT is what a REAL gunsmith can do.
Very few 'smiths are good at both wood and steel work. Engraving? That's alway been a bit of a specialty. I've worked as a "gunsmith" for a while when I first retired under the tutelage of my friend who sold me the custom rifle cited above, and I'm very proud that not a single gun I worked on came back. One of the neatest jobs I did was on an old 99 Savage that I e-nickeled the receiver on after removing pits and making sure all flats were truly flat, gave the barrel a very nice highly polished blue job that was reallly deep and lustrous (learned to REALLY polish on that one), and blued the lever and slicked up the action in the process. The guy had told us to spend whatever it took to make it "special," and when he got the bill, he at first went ballistic, but when he saw the gun, he just melted, paid the tariff, and walked out with a big smile on his face. We'd done the work at a significantly reduced price than he'd have had to pay elsewhere, and he was astute enough to know it.
In gunsmithing, NOBODY does it ALL - not really - but there are a few (ONLY a few!) who come darned close to it. My gunsmith buddy was supposed to have been dead 20 years ago, but as he puts it, "I fooled all my doctors and lived." He labors now under extreme duress, and it is absolutely amazing what he puts out despite the conditions he has to labor under. THAT, my friends, is a REAL gunsmith!
It's been said that if you WANT to be a musician, it's the worst experience you'll ever have if you go pro, but if you HAVE TO BE a musician, then it's the only thing that'll ever really bring you satisfaction, and it's pretty much that way for gunsmiths, too. All artists, and all REAL gunsmiths ARE artists, have to have something within them that separates them from the rest of us, and they're both blessed and cursed because of that. If you know a real 'smith, it'd be good for you to value him as you would a friendship with Divinci or Rembrandt. They're just as rare as those great old painters, and probably just as talented - just in a different field, and it's a field that's much more kinetic and multi-faceted than painting, though painting is much more involved than most would ever suspect, too.
Gun mechanics are what you see mostly today, and if you see one advertising very much, you can pretty surely bet that he's a mechanic, and not a "true gunsmith" who can be a jack-of-all-trades AND master of each one. Get your car fixed, and the mechanic will almost surely be a "parts changer" who goes by the book, and often without any real understanding of how the parts work or how they all work together, except in the most general sense.
A friend who has a very, very nice custom #1 Ruger once commented that even now, 20 years after he had it built, he still occasionally notices things, usually while cleaning it, that he'd not noticed for the 20 years prior - little things that only the most acute observer will notice, that make some little difference in the overall utility and/or beauty of the gun. REAL 'smiths can do things like that. Mechanics can't and don't.
Real 'smiths become known among a very exclusive "club" or clique and word gets around pretty well wihtout advertising very much at all. REAL craftsmanship still DOES matter, even if most shooters never recognize or notice it.
Oh yeah, and one more facet of REAL gunsmiths is that they're always humble. They may cop an attitude when dealing with stupidity. They HAVE to. It's a defensive mechanism to allow them to run off folks who'd just prevent them from doing what they love, and ensuring that they stay away so they don't cost him any more precious time. But beneath the gruff exterior that occasionally surfaces when provoked (like poking a tiger with a sharp stick), there'll be a man who's far too involved in learning to be haughty or conceited. If you see a person calling himself a "gunsmith" who shows haughtiness or conceit, run like hell and don't look back! He's a fake, and even if he does SOME good work, eventually he'll overstep his ability and much something up. Humility goes a LONG way in working with one's hands.
My buddy who made my rifle said Ackley always taught his students that if wood or metal needs to be removed, it didn't really matter HOW you did it as long as the method didn't create enough heat to affect the temper of the metal in critical areas. The time factor was a consideration, but not THE consideration. The only thing that really mattered is that it be done RIGHT, and that's a valuable principle for anyone who aspires to become a gunsmith to remember.
What really amazes me, though, is the old PA or KY makers who often worked with a bare minimum of tools and created some of the most marvelous works of art ever created by any set of gunsmiths anywhere. These guys often had to cut just the right trees at just the right time to make just the right charcoal to fire their forges with, and had to know, most often from experience, just how to "make do" with what they had to work with. Ever see some of the old wooden rifling fixtures they used? Get a copy of Dillin's book on the Kentucky Rifle from the NRA Classics Library, and you'll see what REAL gunsmithing was once all about. Now THAT is CRAFTSMANSHIP in the EXTREME!
As we've progressed, and technology has taken over what once was the province of the craftsman, we've also lost a lot of what made the craftsman a craftsman - his craftsmanship, which really is mostly just attention to detail and an innate or acquired ability to solve problems as they arise - and they almost always DO arrive. We've lost the ability, generally, to even appreciate those who sweat over the "small stuff" so the gun is better, more suitable or simply more beautiful than the stuff that's turned out by the factories today. Yes, guns ARE better, generally, in at least a technological sense, but they sure as hell ain't got the feel, personality or style that guns once more commonly had. And that's a dang shame, because it also gives rise to our failure, collectively at least, to appreciate many MORE of the finer things in life - even extending to family, friends, values, ethics, religion, and all the other things that make us humans more than merely another species of animal. We call ourselves the "thinking animal," but I surely see less of this with each passing year, and I'm not sure where it'll end, but I don't think I want to be around if it gets much worse. It simply can't lead us to anywhere that's good. That's the view from here, anyway, on a very complex and largely subjective subject.
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