Anyone have any input on the home study courses for gunsmithing? I was seriously thinking about doing it for extra cash and to learn more for doing it myself and saw two adds in a magazine for two different courses. Anyone ever use them?

If you are seriously interested in learning gunsmithing, enroll in a machine shop course at your local community college or technical vocational institute. After you complete a year of machine shop work including lathe and milling machine operations you will then be ready to learn gunsmithing. The correspondence and video courses teach very little that is useful. They mainly want you to send them money, not to succeed at learning a useful skill. A gunsmith.

Quoted: If you are seriously interested in learning gunsmithing, enroll in a machine shop course at your local community college or technical vocational institute. After you complete a year of machine shop work including lathe and milling machine operations you will then be ready to learn gunsmithing. The correspondence and video courses teach very little that is useful. They mainly want you to send them money, not to succeed at learning a useful skill. A gunsmith.

Learn gunsmithing from a local gunsmith or a course? Around here practically all the dealers send stuff out to be done. It seems like a void that needs filling.

A year of machine operations will give you the skills needed later as a gunsmith.  I've always taken classes at a school and can't comment of video instruction.

Gunner-1 a question for you.

Suppose you are trying to be a gunsmith and a customer comes in and says 'I want you to turn a barrel for me from a Krieger barrel blank and I want the contour to be 0.012 inches per inch, an 11 degree traget recessed crown, headspaced for 7.62 NATO, not,  308 Win, and I want the Rem 700 action blueprinted and lapped.' Also please install a SAKO type extractor in the bolt.

What are you going to say if you don't know how to run a lathe, offset the tailstock or calculate the taper? Can't set up the milling machine? Gee, I have to look at my video tape or I have to send off my lesson to my instructor?

Come on man I spent years learning these skills and I am trying to tell you how it is. Not trying to tell you what you may want to hear. Take care. Charles the Gunsmith.

Is there good money in gunsmithing?  In general... I realize alot of it depends on the skill of the smith.

There is good money for people that can do quality work. Gunsmithing is NOT reading a book, changing springs and/or parts till the gun works. Creative custom gunsmithing is very satisfying and there are not many people who are truly good at the profession. Many self proclaimed gunsmiths are nothing more than hacks.

Thats about what I figured.  Thanks for the info.  This is just one of the fields I thought about studying when I'm out of the Army in 2 years.