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Old 11-29-2010, 07:32 PM
Rockwolf66's Avatar
Rockwolf66 Rockwolf66 is offline
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Default Armorers and Gunsmithing

Ok Here are two quick and hopefully easy questions.

What is the differance between an Armorer and a Gunsmith?

What acredidation does one need to be classified as an armorer or a gunsmith?


I'm asking because I am moving to southern Oregon and frankly retail sales swallows in a bad way.
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Old 11-29-2010, 07:42 PM
Ionatan Ionatan is offline
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Originally Posted by Rockwolf66 View Post
Ok Here are two quick and hopefully easy questions.

What is the differance between an Armorer and a Gunsmith?

What acredidation does one need to be classified as an armorer or a gunsmith?


I'm asking because I am moving to southern Oregon and frankly retail sales swallows in a bad way.
Quick, dirty, and not wholly accurate answer: An armorer supplies weapons to a group (military, LE, film/tv productions); a gunsmith repairs, maintains, and/or modifies said weapons.

I'm afraid I can't give much of an answer to the second question.
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Old 11-29-2010, 07:45 PM
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MoviePropMaster2008 MoviePropMaster2008 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockwolf66 View Post
Ok Here are two quick and hopefully easy questions.

What is the differance between an Armorer and a Gunsmith?

What acredidation does one need to be classified as an armorer or a gunsmith?


I'm asking because I am moving to southern Oregon and frankly retail sales swallows in a bad way.
The term armorer OUTSIDE of the movie industry, usually applies to Police Departments or Military units. The Armorer is usually a dedicated officer/soldier who is in charge of making sure all the department/unit weapons are in sound working order. They don't do a lot of custom work, sometimes they may, but it's not expected. They are supposed to work on the guns and make sure they do not fail in the field. They also repair non working and damaged guns, but they are not supposed to work on ANY weapons which are not official or approved by the department/branch of service.

A gunsmith is a craftsman/artisan. He is more of an artist (and there are many SUCK ASS bad gunsmiths out there). He 'may' engraves stocks (sometimes) or sometimes some of them engrave guns. He sets scopes to an array of different guns. He does trigger jobs, does custom work that can be pretty wild. Like a gunsmith can gold plate a gun and then do custom engraving. An armorer would NEVER do that.

Both do some refinishing, trigger work, barrel replacements and some custom work, but the Armorer's changes are more dictated by regulations and policy than the Gunsmiths'.

In the movie business, the armorer is just the dude in charge of the weapons. He's been called the weapons wrangler, gun wrangler, etc. same thing. His job is anything from just bringing the guns to set and watching them to actually doing some training. I've been on sets where they had Spec Ops retired guys doing the actor training so I just handed out dummy guns for the training and live fire guns for the filming (with some practice with blank fire for the actors to familiarize them with the firing). The armorer CAN BE a gunsmith as well, but it doesn't mean they are the same thing.

But an armorer is ANYONE in charge of the weapons. In a period piece about the Roman Empire, the armorer is the guy in charge of all the swords and spears. There are some very famous armorers who are known for their swords, and bladed weapons in movies.

Hope this helps, it was a super fast typing because I'm running off to a job right now!!! see ya....
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