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| one of us |
Short rant here... Why does it seem that in the "gun business", estimates of turnaround time have no relationship with reality? I have had a barreled action at a local smith since November, waiting to be reamed to 7mm Rem Mag. When I took it in, I was told "it'll be about a month." I guess I should have asked "Which month?" Having experienced delays with my local smith before, I thought maybe it was a regional thing so I tried sending work away. My Siamese Mauser job at E.R.Shaw was quoted at 8-10 weeks before I sent the action. I just got off the phone with someone there and they said "3 more weeks". That'll make it a total of 19 weeks, if they can even meet that estimate! In my business, if it takes me twice as long to do something than I said it would, I'll be out of business very quickly! Arrgh! I just need to keep telling myself "It's only a hobby, only a hobby..." | ||
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| one of us |
I agree fully but in my neck of the woods this is truly a supply and demand thing. You can become at the mercy of good smiths.Some up here close their doors to new work for months others become " artists" for lack of a better term and only work with certain makes, calibers etc. Not to knock these guys. The guy I use is a true craftsman, does impeccable work and takes each job personally and supplies a personal warrantee of his work. Probably why the turn around is the quoted x2+3wks. But waiting for a new rifle is like waiting for Christmas day when I was 6 years old. ------------------ | |||
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| one of us |
A view from the inside here. I used to be a custom rifle smith. I packed it in after 20 years of not being able to meet delivery times at least half the time. There are two problems that I could never solve. How do you predict what your workload is going to be six months or a year down the line? How do you predict how long each job is going to take if you have 30 or 40 or a hundred lined up. I could also never figure out why no one ever bitched about the fact that I delivered on time or ahead of time. The fact that this is a problem that spans the globe leads me to believe that it is not easy to solve. One thing I did observe was that I did many repairs on botched jobs by gunsmiths that never had a waiting list, but never had to repair a job done by a man with a waiting list of a year or so. ------------------ | |||
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| <Doc Garnett> |
I'm not a riflesmith so get out your salt bottles, 'cause I have some suggestions for those in the trade: (1) Limit the number of jobs (rifles ) in the shop to a number you can handle. One very good 'smith I knew kept no more than 5 customers' rifles in the shop at a time. Keep a waiting list. When one job goes out the door, call the first guy on the waiting list and tell him to send in his rifle. Then, go to work on the next rifle in the shop.(2) Check your prices. There is a point where supply meets demand.That point is your price. Having more work than you can do is often a sign that you can safely raise your prices and the market will bear it, rewarding you with a busy, manageable and more profitable workload. (3) Decide what is is you want to do. You just can't be all things to all people. Pick one or two or howevermany specialties and stick to them. (4) Keep good records on every deal. It's the ONLY way to gage profitability. (5) Learn how to factor in a proportionate share of your overhead for every deal. (6)Be scrupulously honest with your customers. Don't B.S.'em about anything, especially accuracy guarantees and delivery dates.(7)Offer an unconditional (short of fraud and other ridiculous exceptions) money back guarantee. If the customer's wrong and the gun is good - no problem -you can sell it at at least break even. (8) Here's a hard one: Don't spend the money received from a job until you know the customer is satified and you won't have to buy it back. This is a cashflow issue. See your local banker about a working line of credit.(9) Remember who pays your bills: your customers. (10) Finally, guard your reputation for honesty, straight dealing, fairness and quality work with whatever it takes. Your reputation is your single most important asset. There you have it, my 2 cents worth. Put your money away. No charge. -- Doc | ||
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| one of us |
This is all good advice Doc and I have heard it several times in the past two decades, but there are a couple of practicalities that makes much of it unworkable. The average gunsmith I know, myself included, is not a businessman capable of that level of administrative skill. Remember that we are not trained in business systems that may be as natural as breathing to you. One might say: Let's see you chequer a wraparound fleur de lis. You would probably be as lost as I usually was, trying to control the paperwork in my business. At two points in my gunsmithing career I got to the point where I said stuff this lot, and doubled my prices. My waiting list got longer both times. Limiting the number of guns in the shop is a good idea but five would not be enough for general gunsmith work. I also found that phoning for the next customer to bring in the job he booked a year ago was impossible to organise. Some had forgotten, some had the work done elsewhere already, some just cancelled, some did not have money at that time and some said they would bring it in and never pitched. This is a can of worms that one cannot get closed again. ------------------ | |||
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Moderator |
A simple thing that would endear the smith is to factor a certain amount of time one day a week to figure where you are on projects, on schedule, behind etc. Once you know a customer's gun is behind schedule, spend 5 minutes to call or e-mail him, and let him know you are behind schedule. When folks get communication, they are generally understanding of delays. Its when they are told it will take so long, it doesn't show up, call and are told 2 more weeks, again no show, and again and again. I know, easier said then done, I'm not a smith, and don't always keep my customers in the loop, but occasional communication with them makes a world of difference. | |||
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| one of us |
I'm constantly struggling to improve my turnaround time. Bear in mind I'm relating to a one man operation. I feel my work can be categorized in short term work and long term work. Short term like install a recoil pad or replace a firing pin and clean the gun. Long term like rebarrel, restock, reblue, refinish a complicated stock etc. If you work all jobs in exact order they are received someone might have to wait 4 to 6 weeks for a pad job while you complete a custom rifle, not practical. This is a business and all short term jobs should be finished in a timely manner. So I try to keep the short jobs caught up most of the time and attempt to keep at least one long term job in process. The trouble is the short jobs are causing me to push long term jobs farther back as I struggle to keep the short jobs current. I also try to give the customer an honest estimate on completion date but like the word says it is an estimate. Gunsmith work is done by piece work and the prices are pretty well set. If you are doing first class work you can charge the upper level for that job but if you charged double of what your top skilled competitors did you would be gouging your customer and even if he could afford it he would resent you for it. I feel I'm approaching the point where I will have to eliminate my general repair work to make room for my cusom work. It is very hard to give it up since it takes years of hard work to gain the needed experience and years to aquire all the special tools, fixtures, and parts. I have one problem that can't be solved as long as I'm a one man shop. Waiting on customers at the counter and on the phone. It consumes many many hours every day. One approach that helps is I'm only open to the public from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM. That way I have at least 4 or 5 hours in the morning to work uninterrupted before customers tie me up in the afternoons. But I still get dirty looks from my wife when I get up from the supper table and announce that I'm going back out to the shop, there is work that has to be out for tomorrow. If you won't accept anything but the very best and good enough is not in your vocabulary then sometimes you will end up spending 6 hours on a 2 hour job. First rate work is much more important that making a deadline or profit. I hope this thread continues, I'm very interested in input from both sides of the counter although I'd like to hear some other approaches from some gunsmiths who have more suggestions. In my shop there is a prominate sign stating " If you dont have time to wait for QUALITY work take it somewhere else ". | |||
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| <Doc Garnett> |
Gerald -- You were kind to say that my advice was good. I trust you were refering specifically to my suggestion to take it with salt! All the difficulties you mention are the bane of all gunsmiths everywhere, it seems. Yet, I have known a few who were able to organize the production in a way that kept their customers happy with the progress and the finished product. These experiences indicate that it can be done. However, that some can does not mean that all can. As you so correctly point out, business management is a different skill than gun crafting. The two differ as much any skills can differ. Some artists and other creative professionals routinely use professional business managers for this very reason. I too lack certain skills that would make me better at what I do. The solution? Constant STRUGGLE, sometimes failing, to improve all aspects of my personal business performance, including especially those areas in which I am relatively weak and or do not particularly enjoy. It's painful. Excuse me, please - I really don't mean to sound so preachy. In truth, I'm thankful for anyone who does his best to provide quality gunsmithing services. Best wishes -- Doc | ||
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one of us |
I'm not a smith, either, but I do a little business, here and there, and this discussion has been quite interesting. It strikes me that every smith that expressed their difficulties keeping their schedule is citing administrative duties as the principal cause of delays. Now, it seems to me that a craftsman gets paid to craft, and if he turns into an administrator, he is taking a pay cut, and the work doesn't get done, to boot. How hard would it be to train an apprentice to do the basic stuff (clean bolts and barrels, and sweep the shop floor? Some time management skills might be proper, too, including an answering service, or (gasp) a secretary/office assistant that can handle most of the routine matters. Clerical personnel are cheap (especially the part time variety). If you bill at $30 per hour, a secretary can do customer follow ups, contracts, answer phones, billing, mailings, and all for 5 hours, and all it has to do is save you one lousy hour at work. If there is time after all that work is done, there has got to be some packaging / shipping / errant work that can be done for the shop, as well. If someone wants to have you build a custom gun, waiting for a call back at the end of the day to go over particulars is no big deal. Yes, employees are a hassle, but so are customers, and we put up with those, too...... JMO, Dutch. | |||
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| <Doc Garnett> |
BINGO, Dutch! | ||
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| one of us |
Secretary sounds like a good idea. She has to know about the trade though. We have a terminology that is quite unlike any other trade and havoc ensues when people don't understand what it all means. I tried that route and the first one left after a couple of weeks of what she described as an alien environment. Going through some orders she prepared for parts, I found one that read: "One rifle med pondies." To this day I cannot figure out what I asked her to get that resulted in that typed note. The second hired help left after I expressed my displeasure when, for the umpteenth time, the wrong item was ordered. That incident resulted in a 22-250 Browning A bolt arriving when the customer wanted a 25-06. When I asked how this could happen, the reply was "Aren't they about the same thing?" This after more than a year with me....... So, if I have to write down everything LEGIBLY, and check everything personally, it is faster to just do it myself. I trained seven apprentices in 20 years. Two made it to the trade test and after qualifying, resigned and opened shop in the same town. Neither lasted more than six months. I went on time management courses, Dale Carnegie courses, Personal Development courses and business management courses. All the knowledge that I aquired brought me to one conclusion two years ago, and that was to get out of gunsmithing and into manufacturing. You have to be there to understand. ------------------ | |||
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| <DuaneinND> |
Before becoming a full time Gunsmith, I had a real job as the manager of a Grain, feed, seed fertilizer facility, with annual sales of around $15,000,000, much easier than maintaining a time line in the gunsmithing business. I can't even estimate how many times I have done a trigger "job" on a 700 Rem. but I do know none of them took the same amount of time- there is NO timetable for just right, and that is the major problem that plagues ANY gunsmith who cares about his work. Why should I hire someone else, train him to do work that I will allow to leave my shop, when all that happens is He quits, and opens up in competition with me, been there done that. As far as the suggestion for a secretary, Gearald hit the target in the bullseye. My customers want to talk to someone who can answer their questions, I try to keep my family informed, and all the family members can assist to some degree, but sooner or later the phone is passed to me, I have tried answering services, answering machines, but it all ends up at Me. So, sorry about being "slow" guys, but the only way My backlog will get cleaned up is when I quit because I am finally had my fill of being behind. | ||
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| one of us |
As the irritated customer who started the thread, let me ask the gunsmiths (current and former) for suggestions on how I should deal with a gunsmith who can't meet his promised delivery dates. Does the threat of no return work have no weight because you're already too backlogged? Should I just assume that if you say 1 month, that it will be 2 or 3 months? Should I draft a written agreement where the gunsmith is penalized for missing delivery dates? This is common in other businesses (ie. construction). Does it help to call often? Kind of like the kid in the back seat saying "Are we there yet, are we there yet?" What's the secret? | |||
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| <DuaneinND> |
Sam: I think the best thing you can do is be honest with your gunsmith, tell him you are at a loss of what to do, and hopefully the two of you can work out a solution. | ||
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| <John Romanowski> |
quote: Are you expecting quality work or do you just whant it done?? Gunsmith for one Wal-mart for the other! ------------------ | ||
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| <matt wolf> |
Hey folks, I've learned my smith's yearly cycle. Don't even think about dropping something off in September! I've been most successful dropping work off over spring break. Varmints arn't a big deal in New Brunswick, so my stuff is usually waiting for me when I get home from university for teh summer. Of coure the other thing to remember is to have another rifle to tinker with while the other one's in the shop. | ||
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| one of us |
Gerard, Duane, the points you raise are very valid, and anyone who has been in business for any length of time has dealt with the employee revolving door. Maddening! They key to that problem is not the training process but the hiring process. Believe it or not, there are many good people who never want to start their own business, and many who would like to work in this field. Takes some doing to find them, but they are out there. Of course, most have jobs and aren't looking for work.......... Hiring is not an easy process, but it makes or breaks a business. JMO, Dutch. ------------------ | |||
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| one of us |
SamB, It is easy to tell gunsmith time. If you use the following formula you will be dissappointed less frequently. Don't tell the smith you know this and when he quotes delivery time, nod, smile and do the calculation. You go to the next higher time unit and multiply by two. So a couple minutes = four hours, one week = two months and so on.  ------------------ | |||
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| <freezerman> |
SamB I had the same problem as you. I sent a shotgun out to have repairs made (the nearest gunsmith is 2 1/2hrs away and was recommended by the gunshop I dealt with).It took 9 months to get it back, after receiving it I went to the range to test it and it blew up in my face. I then sent it to a gunsmith across the country, I dealt with when I was growing up. He said the wrong parts had been used and had the gun working and back to me in approx. a month. The first guy came recommened, took forever and turned out garbage work. The gunsmith I trusted to begin with cost me a fortune in shipping, but I've alway gotten good work. I've learned if you find a trustworthy gunsmith, stick with him. The wait will be worth it. | ||
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| one of us |
Well, I can stop complaining for a little while. My job was just delivered from ER Shaw on Tuesday (after around 4 months). I haven't shot it as the stockwork has yet to begin, but it sure looks pretty! My admiration was shortlived though, as I just returned from dropping it off at another gunsmith to have the barrel contoured as a half-octagon. I know, I'm a glutton for punishment! I'm taking Gerard's advice this time. The gunsmith said "It'll probably be a month". I smiled and used the "gunsmith time" calculation, 1 month = 2 years. That's fine, I've got my eye on a 9.3x62 now anyway. I just got the reamer and headspace guages, now to find a barrel... | |||
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