5 Common Firearm Customizations Whether you’re looking to broaden your skillset or make a dusty firearm into a well-loved tool, there’s no shortage of customizations available. Granted, it’s much easier to customize an AR-15 than it is to change a vintage hunting rifle, but both can be made to feel like an entirely new firearm…
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Prefab Stocks: What Are the Different Types? From an aesthetic point of view, the stock is the first thing you notice about a gun. It is a beautiful piece of any gun and is essential to its operation. A gun stock is essentially nothing more than a piece of wood, plastic, fiberglass, or another material…
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How to Hydro-dip Your Firearms Cerakoting, bluing, chrome-plating, and others are all great finishes, but they always don’t work with wood or plastic stocks. They also take considerable time to apply, and not a little bit of care with heat and/or chemical mixes. Hydro-dipping is a fairly recent refinishing method that permits quick and relatively…
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How to Rebarrel a Firearm This month our discussion will cover the steps, tools, machines, and measuring devices you will need to rebarrel and chamber a rifle. Hopefully, I can explain it in a way that is easily understood and as detailed as possible. For my discussion, I will be referencing the Remington 700 action.…
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Gunsmithing Horror Stories If you have been Gunsmithing for any length of time you will definitely have some stories to tell. Every once in a while, the story may be a bad one. Learning from those horror stories will make you a better, more seasoned Gunsmith. Hopefully you can look back and laugh at some…
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Education: Learn to Become a Gunsmith The average person might not think twice about hiring a handyman or mobile mechanic off of Craigslist, but the same can’t be said of a gunsmith. The amount of implicit trust that’s required to hand over a firearm to someone cannot be understated. But if you’re trying to cut…
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Gunsmithing Career History Gunsmiths have been around much longer than armorers. First gunsmiths evolved from bellmakers, later they overlapped with watchmakers — wheel locks had much in common with watch mainsprings and escapements, and with furniture makers. The same person didn’t usually work in both fields, but the skill sets overlapped considerably. Armorers, people who…
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Armorer and Gunsmith: What is the Difference? When it comes to repairing your gun, many have the skills to complete minor repairs at home, especially if Gunsmithing is your main hobby. But for people who do not like to repair their guns themselves or if their firearm has a more complicated issue, Armorers and Gunsmiths…
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What Could Disqualify You from Having an FFL? In this month’s blog discussion, I will identify some of the reasons how you can be denied a Federal Firearms License (FFL). In a past blog, I discussed the application and approval process concerning how to get an FFL. In that blog, I stated that it is…
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Metal Finishes: Bluing, Electroplating, and Spray-Coats Weather isn’t always kind to steel: rust never sleeps. For the first six centuries of its existence, guns also had to deal with corrosive residues, first from black powder residue forming sulphuric acid, then from salts from mercury-based primers. First gun finish was bluing, a form of carefully controlled surface oxidation.…
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