Ditto, you need to break your training down to something like an armorer parts changer on one side of the coin, then on the other side of the coin, trained to build a firearm from scratch instead (hence have the needed machine proven skills to start with to be hired into a shop to begin with).

With the later, this will get you into a full shop that does more than just changes parts, and you will learn the ins and out of the specialty of what the shop mostly focus on for firearms, and this will start to build you a reputation for when you venture out on your own instead.

Hence take someone like Dave Dawson, who was with STI to begin with, then ventured out on his own to create Dawson precision.
Also would be, Giacomo Arrighini, who  became a Perazzi factory trained gunsmith to begin with, then started GIACOMO sporting USA afterwards.

Short of such factory training to begin with as part of your reputation, then you have a hard road ahead of you trying to open up your own shop from the start, and will be a much longer/harder road trying to gain a reputation instead.  Such as Bill Wilson from Wilson combat, and how just happened to have family money behind him to carry him through the lean time, and to help him once he did want to venture out on his own.

Hence there are thousand of Bill Wilson type smiths that are very, very good at the firearms that they can produce, but without out the the needed money/backing to carry them until they have built a reputation through the lean times to establish a client base, all have pretty much folded up shop instead.

So get the needed gun smiting machining skills needed that will get in the door of a shop/company to begin with to refine your skills and build the needed reputation to learn that end of the business, then you need to learn the financial end of the business as well; and once you have both and the needed funds/backing, then it time to venture out on your own with a demand for your specialty.

I think you would do well to take the course work at Montgomery CC, TSJC, or Murray State.

I have taken classes at two of them and know one of the instructors at Murray, have taken a tour of the classrooms there, and met several of the staff.

The summer program is a bargain, especially at Trinidad if you stay in the dorm.  (Take a big roll of duct tape to fix the screens on the room.  I didn't say it was luxurious, it's cheap.)

The moderator hates tacked threads.  Did you read those that are tacked?

It's a good thing I didn't bet that there was a list of schools and contacts in the top thread.  I would have sworn there was one in there.  There is nothing held out of the archive at the end of the forum, either.
Something to work on, but not with a phone.

There are at least two good forums to help with learning engraving, and two books, although one is out of print.

Courses are taught at the schools in the NRA summer program, at Connor Prairie, at GRS, and at Western Kentucky U.