I guess that is kind of the point.
You go to have a vehicle worked on, you pay more for your parts. We know this, we don't like it so much, but we grin and bear it.
I've been told by more than a few successful business men that in order to make a profit on parts, a minimum of a 40% true mark up needs to be charged. It's not worth staying in business otherwise. (true 40% being the cost divided by .6)
So, what happens to the gunsmith who makes no profit on his parts? He's getting at best a ten to fifteen percent break point if he/she buys enough components from a given manufacturer.
To respond to your direct comment regarding a gun smith drooling over a box of parts. He might be drooling because you are right. It's the best he can do cause he knows it's not worth his time to order parts when he will only make ten to fifteen percent mark up. He's loosing money by ordering parts because his machines are not running which typically bring in a minimum of a dollar for every minute the spindle is rotating. If this is correct, it's not drooling, it is uncontrolled salivation from strangulation.
None of us really want to spend 500 bucks for a barrel we know costs 300.00 I agree. At the same time though, how does the gun smith make the money, just labor?
How many other businesses can afford to run this way?
What happens when a customer wants a wildcat. Conventional wisdom is that he buys the tool and then hangs on to it. Maybe the gunsmith pays for half and hangs onto it to use for other guns that come up later down the road. What happens when it is the 6mm "who's it this week" that chambers two guns and sits for five years? He spent money to have one more piece of inventory (delicate inventory at that) to track and maintain in case you come back in need of a set back and rechamber cause of a cooked throat.
In a mainstream machine shop, if the customer requires special tooling for a job, the customer pays for it and it goes the shop owner afterwards.
I'm not trying to fight, just wondering (cause I'm a bit young at this I will admit) why the gun building trade is so different. My job at the shops I worked at was to get rifles built, tested, and delivered. I am pretty good at that. these are questions I have always wondered about because of experience in other fields. Automotive and aerospace machining.
this is a sort of poll because down the road I will have my own shop. Building the rifle is not my challenge. Superior Customer service, fair pricing, and keeping a guy from feeling like he got bent over is.
I'd much rather have an argument/debate in this setting and learn something from it instead of loosing a customer/deal due to my ignorance.
Didn't mean to offend and I am guilty of perhaps not being more up front about what I was trying to say.
Oops.
Regarding excise tax. I think that law may have changed a bit. Prior to leaving Nesika, I recall a newsletter being published by the BATF stating that if a gunsmith went so far as to hang a new barrel on a gun, he was going to have a manufacturers FFL and that the gun, regardless of whether it was the exact same caliber, contour, material, etc. . . was going to be subject to the excise tax again. I know it raised a bit of a stink because it sounded like double taxation.
Please don't quote me on this, as I never personally saw the document, but I remember the plant manager discussing it at length and that none of us as Dakota Arms/Nesika were very pleased about it. It effectively cuts the legs out from under a lot of people in this trade at the hobby or part time level. Your buddy who does a little home smithing is now a felon if he hangs a barrel on your rifle.
Just be careful and please check everything out. No need to wake up the beast.
I was told also that a well known gunsmith who's name is tossed around in this forum often, had found this out the hard way and is right now fighting a nasty litigation with the BATF over an alleged failure to charge/account for the tax. Again, I can't confirm this, but it is what I was told.
Normally I would not have put much stock into this, but the specific mention of this person's name caused alarm. I think it would be worth investigating, just for peace of mind if nothing else.
Please, be careful everyone. It's not worth a trip to the butt house for five/ten years.
FYI
