Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Is it a reasonable expectation for your gunsmith to test fire your rifle?

Do you really think customers would be willing to pay me between $2-$300 to sight in their rifles and work up a load? I'm not talking about loading their ammo....I ain't about to get into that liability issue. Ask some of those customers that say they don't care if they'll pay $300. I may be overlooking something.

If you think $300 is too high remember that I can chamber 2 barrels in a day and not burn any components plus take me a nap after lunch.

Knowing the amount of time this AR handloader spends working up a good load, not to mention the burned components, I can't see how a gunsmith who's primary income comes from building rifles could offer that service and make it anything close to worthwhile.

My smith doesn;t flute barrels for the same reason. He could never charge what the job is worth once you consider setup time. The work he misses out on doing during that time pays much better. He comes out way ahead by sending those jobs out.

There is an outfit in Arizona that will go through the whole process of working up a load. From what I understand, they do a great job, and charge accoridingly. It is significantly more than $300.00.

For what its worth, by the time I do everything from prep brass to mount the strain gage and all, I have 8 to 10 hours invested if everything goes well. But then again I am a little slow.
Charlie

I guess I'm just a little stunned that there might be guys out there building complete rifles, that don't shoot them. I was fortunate to work for a rifle builder for a while and we had at least 20-30 rounds through everyone. And yes it did take a lot of time and components. And yes that cost was built into the cost of the rifle.

Amen to what Chuck said!

I had Jeff Hicks (HD Rifles) rebarrel/true action, pillar bed, new trigger, 8x40 mount conversion, and coat my Rem .300WM.

He patterned the rifle and sent me a pic of the group. Can you say aspirin? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Anyway, Jeff guarantees a .5" 3 shot group. I've only shot it twice since I got it back and my groups are approaching his promise. I have no doubts the rifle can shoot the way he promised. Me on the other hand, I have a little ways to go yet. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

If you have all the work I had done, I would expect it to be shot. As for load build up, that's another beast. Jeff used FGMM on my rig.



Mac