Has anyone on this forum taken the American Gunsmithing Institute's (AGI) video machine shop course. Their website describes it as being top notch and very thorough. I have a gunsmith friend that might be able to give me the hands on experience with his mill and lathe. How much might an "adequate" used mill and lathe cost me (Can you suggest a good manufacturer?)? I would like to start building guns for myself as a hobby, and then maybe try it profesionally part time as a means of extra income. Thanks, Matt

Matt,
by all means, get into this hobby, but do so with your eyes open

1: a good lathe or good mill will be, at least, 2000 each... that's super steal.. and you'll probably sell those in 2 years

2: tooling will costs as much as the mill, at least

3: the AGI course is pretty durn expensive, and i've seen it second hand for like 800.

4: "part time" and "extra income" - if you do this as anything other than a hobby, your insurance will eat you alive...

5: american or eurpean machines -- if you have to do oriental imports, taiwan, not chi-com.

In short, you are looking at about 10k to get your shop setup... tons of personal risk of injury, lawsuit risk for touching someone else's guns, and very little money...

and if you do this AS INCOME you must legally have an FFL.. and if you aren't willing to follow the letter of the law on this part, you probably will not survive....



If i haven't scared you off, andd you really want to start this, first and foremost, work out a deal with a home machine shop (hsm) for "buying" machine time, and learning with him. He'll ask you to be a shoprat awhile.. then teach you a couple things.. and when you don't feed yourself to the lathe, he'll start to trust you. He would be a FOOL to allow you to have solitary time with the machines, as he would then assume lots of risk.

you could buy the agi videos, if you like, and watch them... hollands' chambering video is actually a decent thing to watch... if you can get everything he does, after watching a couple times, you probably have a knack...

I would suggest that you NOT take the $$$$$$$ plunge to build out a shop until you have worked with someone else for about a year...


let's say you put a small 10k into your shop.. and worked an average of 2 hours a week for the next 2 years, (assuming ramp up) at $50 an hour bill rate...

you make $400 gross, not allowing for inflation, opprotunity, utilities, insurance and space rental...

take out 300 for an ffl, and 100 for tooling (liek the first 2 months comsumables0 you are underwater on this...


seriously think about spending time in someone else's shop, helping them to offset this cost.


And if you are still interested

Mill first - bridgeport 1hp or 2 series 1 vari-speed jhead

then lathe (the most dangerous thing in your shop)
leblond is a good value - must have larger than 1.5" spindle hole.

you MUST put a deadman switch on it.. must

jeffe

I actually purchased the entire Machine Shop Course and still own all of the tapes. I thought it was well worth the money just for the knowledge of machining. My problem is that I have not found anyone nearby willing to let me rent time on their lathe and milling machine so that I can get actual hands on experience.
But I will say that if you have the machines available to you the course is well worth the money. I think the key to the whole thing is actually doing the work after you watch the lessons.

I disagree just a little bit with Jeffe. I don't think there is ever a time when money is wasted on acquiring knowledge, even if you don't get an actual payback from it. Once you own that knowledge you own it, and it can come in handy in many more ways than using it to make money. At age 53 I only wish I had a dollar for every hour of tv I have wasted my time on in my life. If you do nothing but use your tv time to fool around with a lathe and mill you have done something productive!!!!

If I put my 2 cents worth in - I would do a couple of things. 1st look into a voc-tech school in your area that has a machine shop course, as a hobby you can probably get by with a couple of night courses. You'll get far more out of that for far less money than you will from any video. 2nd - find yourself a friendly machinist afterwards to show you what all you don't know. Most of the voc-techs around the country are pretty good at what they do. I've hired several machinests and welders from them and with a few years more teaching ended up with really clever guys. the education you can get in different ways, but the imagination that must go with it will be all your own. To become profitable in a way that you can support yourself usually requires much more than a one man shop. Re-read jeffeosso & good luck