The Life Of A Frontier Gunsmith - An Interview With Mike Miller 

the bobble head active listening is really annoying tho. like hes not listening but waiting for a chance to speak.

CircumcisionIsChildAbuse what are you talking about he never cut him off at all. He let the guest talk

@@kevinjhonson5925 rewatch it, and reread what I said,

@@CircumcisionIsChildAbuse The head-nodding is just something people do unconsciously to show they are listening and interested in what the other person is saying. To some people it may be annoying, to some not. There is no ill intend behind it. Hope you understand. Cheers.

@@oliverwagunaere1697 its one thing to do it politely and casually,...the way he does it is neither....I know that type of head nodding it's from people who would rather be speaking. Nothing you said changes what I wrote...so not sure what you hope I understand. His body language is rude, and impatient.

Joshua Rankin I would love more videos like this for sure

I agree. More lost arts. (Or just scarce.)

Same. I'd like to see how they made wagons/carriages, or even something super common like a bucket or a butter churn.

This one of my favorite video also.

Free America any tips on how to get into the Industry? It’s my dream job.

@@kylethedalek it depends on what you want to do. For me I went to SDI and got my Associate in Firearms Science or you can go to a bigger school. There's one in Colorado, North Carolina and one other one.

firablaze Day well I would love to do anything really, but it’s just my location unfortunately. And how much do they cost?

@@kylethedalek You could get a Advance Gunsmith cert for around $10k or less from SDI. It all depends on the classes you take.

Lol

She was a Branscomb. One of the larger frontier families, her grandmother married a Seward, one of Secretary of State William Sewards grandkids. Combining 2 of the great American families. I have a different last name, but the Seward and Branscomb names are still around in my cousins. It was amazing to go to Seward Alaska and see how much Williams work is still appreciated today. His biography was done by Walter Stahr and it's really good! I am lucky enough to know my grandparents, and to have known my great grandparents well into my 20's so I learned a lot about our family history. Take advantage of that knowledge if it still exists! You never know what you might learn! Love the channel!!!!

Sure bud

Awesome eagle eyes. Some people got it.

With a flint lock?

Arrogance and skill is a german tradition.

@@SPAZTICCYTOPLASM I thinkit helps maintain quality, if the craftsman is proud in the quality work he does, well, he may have high standards.

@@Overlord99762 Yep. Might as well be arrogant, as long as you churn out masterwork.

steamboatmodel Germans say it straight to your face. This is uncommon for an American who expect certain curtesies.

Germans still build outstanding firearms. Hk and Walther come to mind (I’m particularly fond of the former). 👍

seminolewar that and if it takes a month and a half to make it's going to be more expensive then a cookie cutter robot built one.

@@Cody_Ramer or make a pipe gun for pennies

seminolewar agreed. Nothing of any quality is ever inexpensive. So many people just don’t get it. I’ve got my eye on one right now. It is of course, a creation by Mike.

Haha that’s funny

Hahahah I was waiting for this and it did not disappoint

If you have to tell people you dont stink. You might stink.

I wonder if that was part of a historical presentation. I hope it was. LOL

Hahah loves it. Also find it hilarious that Townsend found this comment and favorited it :D

Welcome to CostCo. I love you.

LOL

this is a really good sci fi idea.

They wouldn't need to there is plenty of industrial films to show from the 20th on but there are things that will be lost. Just watch this part of the video ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aEatTMQsGtg.html See the hand communication? Hand communications is a thing that is gone replaced by radio communications, only the most basic of hand gestures are left.

This is also called "having a lathe in your garage", I guess. Long post incoming. A factory, to be a true reenactment, would quite literally need to be a functional factory. In all senses. This would require a few thousand people to spontaneously decide to shirk their greater duties for however long it would take to erect a building to house it, pour the concrete for the floor, install the mega machines needed to operate the cotton spinners and make the spindles for the fibers, and then start having little kids or something run between the machines to start doffing them into bins for transporting to the trucks. Or for a more modern factory, with assembly lines and chain hooks and whatnot, it would be even worse, since you'd need to make all these huge chain hooks and start producing serious quantities of sheet metal and cold rollers and welding machines needed. Actual, true factory reenactment, in the social sense, makes about as much sense as "medieval fief reenactment", but only including the civil parts like taxation, serfdom, and actual harvesting of real crops to be stockpiled; rather than the martial parts like SCA where people hit each other with big sticks. The things which imitate these civil parts are what you'd call "Amish communes" or "Trappist monks", unless there are people who are actually building honest-to-goodness castles or something using quarries and traditional granite slabs or just digging loads of dirt to make those huge medieval Chinese city walls that can stop military cannons. Making things in a small machine shop in an outbuilding on your land is already a thing (it predates the factory anyway) and basically covers the only actual part of factory work that can be considered a hobby to be reenacted I'd imagine. I suppose maybe there will still be factories in the future, running and producing things, but it won't be for fun. Factory work is mind numbing, simple, and repetitive. Very similar to working in a field, but working in a field is probably healthier for you since it requires way more movement and exposure to sunlight, both of which are beneficial for people. It also has more interesting things occur and more varied movements and actions, whereas factories are doing the same four or five things for 10 hours. Being able to make things like wood rifle stocks, guns, metal components, tools, etc, is absolutely an employable skill, after all, even today. There are dozens of small hobby shops in every major city or region of America that supply custom wood engravings or whatnot. After all, hobbies are only fun if they involve learning something, and the difference between a hobby and work is mostly internal perception rather than anything physical or external (barring things like "hitting people with big sticks" which became non-employable I guess around the time when the Hundred Years War ended; now armies require their soldiers have a certain level of decorum and innate ability/talents to function), and the amount of learning and skill needed for factory work is essentially zero. You might consider it to be a platonic form of no-skill work, since even working in a field requires some physical activity to sustain tilling the earth for hours, and particularly good field workers might not be the most skilled individuals, but it is literally back breaking for anyone not used to it. Not the case for factories, at least not anymore, since most work involves pushing things that are already majority supported on hooks or rollers, and anything heavier than about 30-50 lbs is going to be lifted with a hydraulic winch, and at worst you lift a 5-20 lbs piece from waist height about a foot or so without assistance. This excludes sweatshops, and really primitive/early factories that are pre-Fordism, but the latter are less "factories" in the modern Toyota sense and more "skilled craftsmen aggregated under a single roof". At some point, though, and I suppose a factory absolutely qualifies if only because the capital, labor, land, and resources being consumed are tremendous (ex. a factory in my hometown cost something like $50 million dollars for a single work line investment and has 6-8 lines plus two shifts, and a separate stockpile warehouse), you'd stop reenacting and just start living in this self-sustaining vortex of activities needed to support whatever thing you're ostensibly reenacting. A factory, by itself, has a workforce comparable to a small to medium size town of this time period. The necessary amount of people to support a small factory with forklifts and assembly lines (like the example I gave) is probably comparable to the size of Boston in the mid-18th century, TBH. The sheer scale and presence of a modern factory, even little ones with barely a thousand workers, is immense. Sometimes I wonder how the industrial titans of the 20th century did things like the 50,000 ton heavy presses at Alcoa, and the heavy press itself has such powerful presence. That will never be reenacted, as it would essentially be reenacting the building of the pyramids, I suppose. But those people had truly big factories with shifts numbering in the tens of thousands, too, so a little factory with shifts in the couple hundreds, despite being little in comparison to the titanic factories of old, are still not small. That said, if the fast food restaurant disappears in favor of some other method of food preparation, people may start reenacting McDonald's at the county fair or something. A historical reenactment of a McDonald's food restaurant would make more sense, since while it is still a social organization, it is only about half a dozen people at most working together with headsets, uniforms, and some slight training. This is well within the realm of most reenactment groups, and like military reenactment, it would require substantial teamwork and preparation to pull off in a convincing manner. At least in a manner that is like the Platonic ideal of Fast Food Workers: Efficient, quick, and timely responses to rapidly changing conditions and heightening pace. Perfect for fitting into the Autumn fair although I suppose it might make people of such a future wonder why we'd abandoned fast food at all.

I wish it was longer also.

I’m glad nobody has gone for the obvious joke

Aero Precision and Sons of Liberty are my fav's!

As a non English native: what the hell is a cheese head screw? I've heared of crosshead and flathead and triwings but.. A cheese head?

Wouter Sikkema I didn’t know, either, and English IS my mother tongue. I “googled” it and found it is a common type of screw which I have used many times without knowing it had a special name. The head of it is “blocky” rather than sloping or curved.

@@GundamReviver It generally means a head like a 'hoop of cheese'- flat bottomed, parallel sides, and thick sometimes with a somewhat convex top but the term has also been used to describe similar flat-topped screws. They're not something you can generally find in the usual supply stream.

The sights would be German Silver and it sounds like he was wanting materials for his gun what was specifically the Pennsylvania type (taking it quite seriously).

Where do you find the catalog?

Nightrader I followed a link mentioned in one of the videos: www.townsends.us/pages/catalog-request

Probably!

Just to be nosy but what is it setting you back?

@@stevep5408 3 grand plus for entry model, also its a 4 year waiting list as of right now.

Vault Boy wow 4 years. I guess if it takes a month or two to make.

@@The_PaleHorseman I would honestly expect it to be more than that. I guess the price goes up depending on how much embellishment you want

That’s so cooool! I’m so jealous!

wasatchdan Thank you for figuring this out; I am very interested in “social” history. For example, unlike with well-made guns, it is much less expensive to buy a basic sewing machine nowadays, relative to monthly income, than it was in the 19th century. I own three antique sewing machines, but only have one machine (from 1908) set up in a treadle cabinet. It works, more or less, and I love it, just because it is beautiful. It also makes me think of that unknown woman who must have loved having it in the early 20th century.

Tina - remember the scene in "Fiddler on the Roof" where the young tailor got his first (probably only) sewing machine? That was going to make him his fortune because he was (semi-) automated! Not just for 'mere' women aka housewives - this was the future! And what did it lead to? Sweatshops.

Rob Lamb I do remember that scene.

Yeah, just making a small rivet or pin is quite bit of work. then making threads (plate or filing)...

I live 30 minutes away.

@@andrewhunter9995 I live 15 minuts away

@Serpent Descendancy Thats 15 minuts in a plane!

Jason Patterson You make a very good point. It is certainly true that most people in the past lived in houses which were not well built and which have since fallen down. If you like vintage clothes (I am mildly interested in this), you may notice that the clothes of regular people from the late 1920s and the 1930s (in the US, at least) are very scarce on the ground. During the 1930s, most folks couldn’t afford to buy new clothes, and wore what they had until it fell apart.

@@Tina06019 Clothing was also passed down until it was a rag or remade and reused until it was a rag. I was the youngest and smallest of three daughters born over 12 years. I wore remade hand-me downs augmented with home made clothing and, rarely, store bought items. It wasn't until I was 12 and earning babysitting money that I got some control over my wardrobe by buying fabric and making my own clothing.

@nateman10 That's a good point. There are definitely "they don't make 'em like they used to" things that are 100% valid. It's only recently that people started making equipment that is intentionally cheap and effectively disposable. I don't know about the wood carving though - the highly decorated stocks have a level of artistry that is really impressive, as well as fine metalwork and the like. I can see it to a degree, but not to the degree we see preserved. :-)

@@nateman10 My 28 year old workvan is much the same. If you take into account it's original cost and what has been spent on it to keep it going, it is at least ten times the value of a new van which will be turned into scrap metal in half the amount of time. The old standard was to make it the best you could; today's standard is to make it just good enough and no more. Today's stuff may be more efficient and better in some ways but it will never reach the level of real value that the old stuff had, has, and always will have.

The whole point of the conversation was that 200 years ago people made crap and people made quality... just like today. The quality was preserved because it was worth the time and effort to do so. The crap was discarded or recycled because it no longer had any value. Historians don't see what is no longer there.

Eric Taylor still works today....

@@augurcybernaut4785 What fine?

SplinterOscar FB gets the largest fcc fine ever 5 billion US.... sounds like a lot but when compared to the 33 billion it gens annually ain’t that big of a deal --- cost of doing business

@@augurcybernaut4785 What is "FB"

@@erictaylor5462 Facebook

Amazing isn't it. I found myself thinking the same thing. These are the gifts that the industrial revolution and modularity gave us.

Rufus Chucklebutty i can believe it i have a pair of holland and hollands from my grandad and as a watchmaker i can say the work is top notch