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A gunsmith is a person who designs, builds, repairs or modifies firearms to blueprint and customer specifications, using hand tools and machine tools such as grinders, lathes, and milling machines.
Responsibilities
Gunsmiths have many responsiblities:
- Fit action and barrel into stock and align parts.
- Install parts, such as metallic or optical sights, pistol grips, recoil pads, and decorative pieces of firearms, using screws and hand tools.
- Rebore barrels on boring machines to enlarge caliber of bore.
- Operate broaching machines to cut rifling into gun barrels.
- Install choke devices on shotguns to control shot pattern.
- Operate machines to grind and polish metal parts.
- Immerse metal parts in bluing salt bath to impart rust resistant surface and blue color to metal.
- Fire firearms with proof loads to determine strength characteristics, correct alignment, and assembly of pieces.
- Fabricate wooden stocks for guns according to customer specifications.
- Refinish wooden stocks for rifles and shotguns by hand sanding and rubbing with special finishing oil and quick-drying lacquer.
- Lay out plans on paper and calculate bullet flight arcs, sight positions, and other details to design new guns.
Specializations
While some gunsmiths are general practitioners in this trade, the more important specializations are:
Custom Builder/Designer - Builds guns to customer's specification, from raw materials and shelf parts. Called upon by professional target-shooters to create highly accurate custom rifles.
Refinisher - Applies various chemical and heat-treatment processes to the metal parts of guns to develop corrosion-resistance surfaces: browning, bluing, Parkerization, and others.
Stockmaker - Carves gun stocks from wood. Fits stocks to the metal parts of the gun (receiver and barrel), as well as to customer's body. Sanding, staining, oiling, and lacquering may be used to finish the wood surface.
Checkerer - Uses checkering tools to create an ornate pattern of small raised diamonds in the wood surfaces which are to be gripped. This specialization is frequently combined with that of the Stocker.
Gun Engraver - Uses hand-gravers or die-sinker's chisels to cut designs or pictures into the metal surfaces of the gun, usually limited to the receiver. Other metals (especially gold and silver) may be inlaid and engraved to further the design. Designs usually consist of elaborate scroll-work based upon Acanthus leaves or vines, or may be of purely abstract spirals. The pictures are usually of game animals or birds, and hunting dogs.
Legal Status
Since a gunsmith's livelihood revolves around the acquisition and disposition of firearms, gunsmiths in the United States must possess a Federal Firearms License pursuant to the Gun Control Act of 1968.
External links
"Gunsmith"