This a typical day of interaction between an instructor and his students at a gunsmith school. Gunsmithing schools basically train students to repair and refinish all types of firearms.

(Teacher) This is typical of firearms that come in and you can see that this gun has been out in a barn or out in a garage. Can you see the fungus that is actually growing into the finish onto the wood? You can see the rust pitting, you can see scratches. There’s some dents in the barrel that will need to be addressed right here where it’s been dropped. The bottom, that’s typical of the trigger guards that come in to the gunsmith school. You can see the amount of rust and wear where people have handled it for years and years. This is honest field wear, where people have used this firearm, carried it for years, you know hunting, or in the performance of their work.

This had been out in the barn. Firearm’s suffered a lot of neglect. So, he’s trying to restore it and get it looking back like it did when it left the factory, if not better. They’re (students) going to pick out and know all the flaws of the firearm that maybe the customer would not be aware of. You can see the rust pitting in the barrel, but the true crown, the area that affects the way the firearm performs, is right here, right where the edge of the bore comes out and meets the rounded surface of the crown. As I rotate it, and look at it in the light, I can see the flaws, and he (gunsmithing student) is learning to see them now too.

Needs a little bit of work right here Nathan. Ok, this little mark right here, see this mark and this mark? Those will come out. When he’s done with his final polish, it will be smooth and shiny. Then, with the bluing put back on it, it will look brand new. The gunsmithing students have to learn to take them apart, do all this tremendous work, refinish them completely, and put them back together without scratching them. If they scratch them badly enough, as a teacher, I won’t grade the work, I’ll have them totally take them apart again, and redo it and try it again.

(Student) One simple mishap, putting a pin back in, and the punch slides off the pin and scratches the receiver, now you’re back to square one on that receiver. You have to start it all over again. So you really, really have to take the time. When you tear down, you don’t want to lose parts, but you can be a little bit, a little bit more sloppy, But this, no room for error whatsoever, none.

(Teacher) Like I did earlier, we were looking at a barrel and I was showing them how to draw file and work around the lettering to get some of the extra pitting out of here, without destroying the lettering, which takes away the value from the firearm. And the interesting because the stampings on these barrels, is what makes the firearm what it is. If I remove it, then we no longer know that it’s a Stevens firearm, what the caliber is, where it was made. We want to leave that on there. Learning to do it so that it’s all intact, and it doesn’t look like it was destroyed. Because I want the gunsmithing students’ work to be of such quality, that people look at it and are impressed. When they’re done refinishing a firearm, and they give them back, a lot of people are tremendously pleased because when the firearm came in, it could’ve been literally rusting and showing definite signs of neglect. They get it back, and it looks better than they can ever remember it looking in their lifetime.

We’ll walk over here and take a look at one that just got finished today. The barrel was literally covered in rust. The entire barrel was rusted completely. Bright red, brown rust, rusting the entire surface of the barrel. I’m just teaching them now in semester one the metal preparation and the metal work, metal finishing. So what he had to learn to do was get all of the bad rust off of here, all the pitting, and then polish it, the entire barrel. This was all done by hand. This was not machine done. We take baby steps. If I can teach them to do this metal preparation by hand, when we move on to using power tools, the buffers and grinders, now they’re able to blend both handwork and the power tool work to get an even better finish. But now they understand the skills necessary to do that work. It doesn’t seem like much, but something as simple as a trigger guard like this, completely rusted and pitted, and to be polished by hand with all those irregular shapes.

(Student) I pulled it apart and cleaned it up and even after the initial clean-up, it looked tons better, and I didn’t even believe it’s the same gun, and I’m the one that did it, quite honestly. He’s been doing this I couldn’t tell you how many years so if you get a 4.0 off Barry, you’re in good shape. You don’t need any improvement on your work.

(Teacher) If I set the bar here, I want them to reach that bar and I’m gonna set that bar another notch higher. I want them to strive for the best that they can be. But if you can still take an old military Mauser, rip it down and just take the action, rebuild the action like a commercial Mauser, rebarrel it, restyle it, restock it and make it look like a $10,000 dollar gun. Still the success that goes into building something like that, it is immense. Yes there’s the monetary gain in just like in any profession, but there’s a lot of a sense of accomplishment and pride in the fact that gunsmithing is a unique job and when you’re one of the few that can do it, that sense of accomplishment is quite nice too. This is really enjoyable because I do enjoy coming in here everyday. I enjoy all the things that are going on. It’s always interesting, it’s always new and refreshing to teach at a gunsmithing school.

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