Obsolete firearm parts that are no longer available from the manufacturer are replaceable at minimal costs if an owner of a similar firearm sells his firearm part by part. Usually these kinds of parts are available on sites that sell obsolete parts or on E-bay. If the obsolete gun parts are not available on any of these websites, there is one hope left: re-fabrication. This re-fabrication can be made by a manufacturer who studies the market and realizes that there would be some real gain in manufacturing an entire lot of identical parts and then selling them on the market, as the demand would justify the upfront investment. Obsolete gun parts can also be produced to order, as a one-off, by a manufacturing shop that has the tooling, equipment, CAD design software, knowledge and skills to engineer and manufacture the part.
At Brubaker Arms, we have been tooling up for some time now to be able to produce serialized parts that are obsolete on the market, and for a while now we can reproduce any obsolete parts.
If you have the original parts, even if they are broken, they can be re-designed. Even if small pieces of your original parts are missing, the parts can still be reverse-engineered. If the parts are missing entirely, they can be designed from scratch - but it might come with a very pricey sticker.
Below, a few pictures of the last 3 obsolete parts that we have manufactured.
What is the average cost for one-off manufactured parts?
A simple part, like an obsolete firing pin or another similar small, basic part will require about 3 hours of work – so depending on what is your manufacturer’s hourly rate, you can figure a rough cost. In addition to the machining, rough shaping of the part and polishing to perfection, other operations like hardening the part or finishing might be required.
A complex part, like a leaf spring, can take anywhere from 7 to 20 hours of highly skilled work. Especially when it comes to leaf springs, tempering plays a big role in the quality of the final product, which is why no manufacturer will produce one part at a time. If one part is needed, they will produce four to six, in order to end up with one good part. (This might come as a shock, but manufacturing obsolete firearm parts is just as much a matter or know-how, skill and… luck! Sometimes metal doesn’t bend the way you want it to bend!)
I ordered my one-off obsolete gun part, it arrived back and it won’t fit in the gun. Now what?
All obsolete parts will require skilled manual fitting in order to match the assemblies they are powering. Obsolete parts usually come from obsolete guns, and obsolete guns are… well, old!- Which means that not only the part that needs to be replaced, but all parts that form the assembly have been grinding against each other for years. In some cases, the parts have been eroding and made room for each other for one hundred years. As such, all obsolete parts will be oversized and will require careful hand fitting. This hand fitting is definitely not recommended to be done by firearm enthusiasts or unlicensed gunsmiths. Certification is required not for the sake of the paperwork, but because the way a firearm functions is way more complex than it seems at a first glance, and polishing off the wrong corner from your part might cause irreversible damage to the part or the firearm.
Warranty Issues – Is my one-off obsolete gun part covered by warranty?
It depends on the manufacturer’s policies and it depends on your and their state laws. Most manufacturers – including us - do not consider an obsolete part/s project complete until the part/s are manually fitted in the assemblies they belong to by the manufacturer. If the customer provides the full firearm and the part breaks in the process of fitting, the part will be re-made at no cost for the customer. If the customer asks for the obsolete gun part/s to be shipped out without being fitted by the manufacturer, the manufacturer’s liability ends when the obsolete gun part/s leave the facility and the obsolete gun part/s are not covered by any warranty.
In general, in the case when a gunsmithing shop does not have the opportunity to make a project from A to Z, but parts of the jobs are done by owners / gun enthusiasts / other gunsmiths licensed or not, the shop will not take any kind of responsibility for the quality of the project. Customers who work on their firearms (including maintenance cleaning, assembly, disassembly, parts change, etc.) waive any legal right to complain about the quality of the work. Can any gunsmith replicate gun parts? Can any machine shop replicate gun parts?
No. Most gunsmithing shops are specialized in a few services – generally finishing and coatings, customization through painting or accessories. Most machine shops, on the other hand, lack the know-how to replicate GUN parts. They might be highly efficient at replicating some parts or machinery, but not gun parts.
At Brubaker Arms Manufacturing, LLC, we can replicate any kind of obsolete gun parts, the question is only how much are you willing to invest in the firearm in order to make sure it is safe to shoot and it runs?