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Posted: 12/7/2010 9:27:54 AM EDT
| Hey, this seems to be the biggest website about guns, with a community to boot. Im new here, and i hope im typing this in the right place. Im 19, love guns, and want to design them. i memorized 70% of a small arms encyclopedia with guns from the years 1900-2000. i breathe guns. the point here is i do love to educate myself about them, and handle them. but i dont quite know where to start. i live in California, so anything with guns is already limited. is it best to start shadowing gunsmiths? or apprenticing? or go to get my general ed at college? i need to be pointed in a direction of where to go... |
Welcome to the forum.
There are some very knowledgeable people on this board. I'm sure one of them will be along shortly to answer your question better than I can. It seems to me that most of the gunsmiths here went to a tech college. Have you located one near you? Are you willing to travel to go to one? |
| i dont think we have very many tech colleges that will be helpful for my field of work, but i dont think i have the grades right now to get in anyway. its not that i lack the know-how, but the system of education just does not sit well with my ADHD brain. which is why i was hoping to shadow or do some apprenticing. and 2nd, i cant travel too far, i dont even have a job at the moment. im just at the end of a college semester at a community college. i will listen, pay attention, and dedicate my life to my work, i just need a person to teach me what to do, and why. i clean my guns regularly, so i have that easy stuff down but im trying to find a place to learn deeper into it, and to expand that knowledge into a career. but i can definitely do it. i already have a design i drew in 9th grade that im saving to show on my job application for gun design. this would be so much easier if i wasnt in California. screw you politics, screw you. |
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You have to teach yourself far beyond what you'll learn in gunsmithing school. Particularly if you want to "design" firearms; plan on an engineering education if you want anyone to take you seriously, or a very long apprenticeship if you don't. Either way, the physics is a hard master.
Start at your local library and bookstores. Use the interlibrary loan system if your local branch doesn't have what you want. Dig through the internet, guns, gunsmithing, and gun building is one topic that is covered in pretty good detail. You can find several useful books at www.archive.org, including The Modern Gunsmith by Howe, and United States Rifles and Machine Guns, by Colvin and Viall. This book goes through every step required to manufacture the 1903 rifle. http://www.archive.org/details/unitedstatesrifl00colvrich Study firearm assembly books. Buy some old crappy guns and work on them. Learn the difference between "craftsmanship", "workman like" (that is not derogatory], and "hack". Don't be a hack. Find some books about mechanisms. They don't need to be firearm mechanisms, because you want to learn how think about them, not simply follow in the tracks of designers that went before you. But you have to study firearm mechanisms, too, in order to understand all the different solutions that have been used over the years. There are too many books on the market to recommend. The Howe book I mentioned above is good, even if he was a ginormous plagiarist. There are at least 6 web sites with very good gunsmithing forums. Some custom gun builders such as Mike Bryant have excellent articles on their company web site. Dan Lilja is another. Next summer, go to the summer session sponsored by the NRA at Lassen. The costs are very low, and if it's like Trinidad, worth every cent. In fact, if you are patient, you can get a good grounding in gunsmithing at these summer sessions, but you'll have to attend as many courses as possible every summer if time is a factor (it should be). Lassen's schedule comes out about 1 February. You'll need a pile of special tools. Many of them you can make, but not all. Learn to shoot, and learn to hand load. Not reload, there's a difference. |
| Thank you so much. not as scared as i was before, being thrown out into life with no idea where to start after highschool. i know have a list of things to do, which is what i hoped to accomplish by doing this. more help would be awsome, but i got what i NEED. and thanks for putting up with my horrible spelling. |
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Quoted:
Hey, this seems to be the biggest website about guns, with a community to boot. Im new here, and i hope im typing this in the right place. Im 19, love guns, and want to design them. i memorized 70% of a small arms encyclopedia with guns from the years 1900-2000. i breathe guns. the point here is i do love to educate myself about them, and handle them. but i dont quite know where to start. i live in California, so anything with guns is already limited. is it best to start shadowing gunsmiths? or apprenticing? or go to get my general ed at college? i need to be pointed in a direction of where to go... Unless you want to design them for your OWN business, you will most likely need to have a Mechanical Engineering* degree to design them for a company. And learning the various subjects would only help anyway. Gunsmithing by itself is a different animal. So decide which way you want to go, as "getting an engineering degree" and embarking on that path is no small task, but its one you most likely CAN accomplish if you want to." Also remember that while you are only 19, what you decide to do right now in life will shape the rest of it greatly. Good luck *There may be a couple others that would work, but that is the main one (for sure NO Aero Engineering!   )
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Quoted:
Quoted:
Hey, this seems to be the biggest website about guns, with a community to boot. Im new here, and i hope im typing this in the right place. Im 19, love guns, and want to design them. i memorized 70% of a small arms encyclopedia with guns from the years 1900-2000. i breathe guns. the point here is i do love to educate myself about them, and handle them. but i dont quite know where to start. i live in California, so anything with guns is already limited. is it best to start shadowing gunsmiths? or apprenticing? or go to get my general ed at college? i need to be pointed in a direction of where to go... Unless you want to design them for your OWN business, you will most likely need to have a Mechanical Engineering* degree to design them for a company. And learning the various subjects would only help anyway. Gunsmithing by itself is a different animal. So decide which way you want to go, as "getting an engineering degree" and embarking on that path is no small task, but its one you most likely CAN accomplish if you want to." Also remember that while you are only 19, what you decide to do right now in life will shape the rest of it greatly. Good luck *There may be a couple others that would work, but that is the main one (for sure NO Aero Engineering! )Says the guy that had to get a bizness degree cause he's getting callouses on his delicate fingers from driving a tube. He'll need the callouses on his ass to be a manager. 
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Quoted:
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Quoted:
Hey, this seems to be the biggest website about guns, with a community to boot. Im new here, and i hope im typing this in the right place. Im 19, love guns, and want to design them. i memorized 70% of a small arms encyclopedia with guns from the years 1900-2000. i breathe guns. the point here is i do love to educate myself about them, and handle them. but i dont quite know where to start. i live in California, so anything with guns is already limited. is it best to start shadowing gunsmiths? or apprenticing? or go to get my general ed at college? i need to be pointed in a direction of where to go... Unless you want to design them for your OWN business, you will most likely need to have a Mechanical Engineering* degree to design them for a company. And learning the various subjects would only help anyway. Gunsmithing by itself is a different animal. So decide which way you want to go, as "getting an engineering degree" and embarking on that path is no small task, but its one you most likely CAN accomplish if you want to." Also remember that while you are only 19, what you decide to do right now in life will shape the rest of it greatly. Good luck *There may be a couple others that would work, but that is the main one (for sure NO Aero Engineering! )Says the guy that had to get a bizness degree cause he's getting callouses on his delicate fingers from driving a tube. He'll need the callouses on his ass to be a manager.
Hehe "where do I sign up!?!" |
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