The Bench
Editorial & Insights — GunsmithZR
Featured · Contributor
A $200 Saddle on a $20 Mule
What happens when you do everything right on a gun that was broken before it came through the door.
Diagnostics
The First Thing I Do When a Gun Hits the Bench
I spent 26 years in the Air Force as a Combat Arms Training and Maintenance instructor. Six years into civilian gunsmith...
MR
Mark Randy Horne
Platform
When the Gun Tells the Story: Art, Collaboration, and the Making of a Dream Parker
A bespoke best gun starts with understanding the man who commissioned it his dogs, his birds, his vision. The metalwork...
BE
Bertram Edmonston IV
Platform
How to Make the Shift
Knowing you need to specialize is not the hard part. Moving a live shop from where it is to where it needs to be without...
ET
The Editorial Team
Platform
The Trade Is Demonstrably Contracting: Here Is Why and What May Come Next
SG
Seth G Cohen, Esq
Platform
Adapt or Disappear
The generalist model is dying. The trade is not. What separates the shops that will survive from the ones that will not.
BE
The Bench Editorial
Platform
If You Don't Understand the Load Path, Don't Touch the Lockwork
Forty years on American single-shots has taught Joe Seeley one thing above everything else: the damage is almost never i...
JS
Joe Seeley
Platform
Risk Management for Gunsmiths
With a background spanning tax (civil and criminal) and corporate law, firearm appraisal, and bench-earned gunsmithing,...
SC
Seth Cohen
Diagnostics
The 75-Year Ghost: Why Antique Diagnostics Defy Modern Shop Standards
A Rast-Gasser came in with a broken hammer. What I found inside told a different story entirely.
RI
Rich Denny
Craft
What You Send Me Is What I Have to Work With
Metal prep is not a finishing detail. It is the foundation of every engraving job, and most gunsmiths do not know the st...
ACGG
Yves Halliburton
From The Archive
Craft
How Bill Wilson and
Wayne Novak Redefined the Duty Pistol
Two builders, one platform — how a watchmaker's precision changed what the industry
considered standard.
GZ
GunsmithZR Editorial
History
The Patent as
Blueprint: John Moses Browning and Eugene Stoner
What they left behind functions as a curriculum in mechanical problem-solving for any
smith who reads it.
GZ
GunsmithZR Editorial
Craft
The 1911 Architects:
Jim Clark Sr. and Armand Swenson
Two men, one platform, opposite directions — how the accuracy-first and combat-first
traditions were founded.
GZ
GunsmithZR Editorial
Craft
The Experimenters:
P.O. Ackley and John Linebaugh
Both pushed chamber and cartridge work past conventional limits. Both watched the
industry eventually catch up.
GZ
GunsmithZR Editorial
History
The Action Men: Paul
Mauser and Benjamin Tyler Henry
Both designed actions so fundamentally sound that the industry stopped arguing and
started building on them.
GZ
GunsmithZR Editorial
History
The Industrialist and
the Inventor: Samuel Colt and John Moses Browning
Colt proved firearms could be industrialized. Browning proved design genius required
the right manufacturing partner.
GZ
GunsmithZR Editorial
History
Engineering Under
Constraint: Hiram Maxim and Hugo Schmeisser
Both worked under severe constraints. Both produced designs by starting with what
the field actually required.
GZ
GunsmithZR Editorial
History
The Voice of the
Sixgun: Elmer Keith and Skeeter Skelton
Neither was primarily a gunsmith. Together they generated more demand for custom
revolver work than any shop could.
GZ
GunsmithZR Editorial
History
Influence Without a
Workbench: Jack O'Connor and Bill Jordan
Not every person who shapes the custom firearms trade holds a file. O'Connor wrote
the spec for the American custom bolt gun.
GZ
GunsmithZR Editorial
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