Suggest Gunsmith to take Form 1'd AK from 14" down to 12" & Re-Crown?
TL;WR : looking for a gunsmith who will take an AK with a ~13-14' (already Form 1'd) and bring the barrel down to ~12-12.5" and re-crown it. I'd love if anyone miraculously knew someone local to Eastern Nebraska/Western Iowa that I could drive to, but am resigned to having to ship the rifle out of state.
Long Version: I have an Arsenal SLR-106cr that I already Form 1'd. Now, besides engraving, I need to get the barrel cut down to around 12.5"ish (just in front of the gas block threadmount- I'll be a putting on a Krinkov-style flash hider/booster). Basically, I'm going for an AK-102 clone.
I understand that for NFA reasons, a gunsmith cannot just take a 16"+ barreled receiver and cut it down to NFA length, because then he'd be the "maker" and not me, who filed the Form 1. Or, he can do it, but I must be present during that work. I'd love to find a local gunsmith who'd do it on the spot & let me sit in the room. I currently do not have the means to remove the AK's barrel from the receiver, let alone press it back in & re-do the rivets.
I've been told by several that to get around this, all I have to do is hack off a couple inches of the barrel to turn it into an actual SBR (and it's officially been made an SBR by me), and then send it in to a gunsmith to fix my bubba-job by evening out the cut and re-crowning it. I currently do not have the means to remove the AK's barrel from the receiver, let alone press it back in & re-do the rivets.
However, I'm having trouble finding a gunsmith able/willing to do this. I first called Rifle Dynamics (RD) because something like this should be a snap for them, and quality would be guaranteed and maybe by a miracle, it wouldn't cost 12 gold bars. They'll do it, but only as part of their "Arsenal Upgrade" package that costs $975- that's about as much as the rifle cost in the first place. They did however recommend a gunsmith out in Louisiana and all they do are AKs. The guy called me back really quick, was very thorough and patient in describing how it'd all go down (he removes barrel & puts on lathe), but it's going to cost $250 for the barrel work, $50 for the engraving, and that's before all the S&H (I estimate ~$80 out & back)- and their backlog is 2mo. Also, he said that it might mess up the finishing, and it'd cost extra to fix that (I don't want to spend another $150-250 on Cerakoting).
Given RD's recommendation, I'm comfortable that they'll do a quality job, but I still feel like I should do a smidge more homework to see if there aren't any gunsmiths out there who might a) be closer b) have less of a backlog and perhaps c) cost less. I'd sure as hell like to save $80 if I can find someone I can just drive to (I'm in Omaha, NE). I see that Lee Armory costs just $185 for barrel cutting/re-crowning, but it's a similar 8-12 week return time.
Gratuitous Story Time: Before I got to this point, one gunshop near me actually agreed to take the rifle and when I talked to their gunsmith he said it'd take 4-6 weeks. Cool. ~10 weeks later, I'm wondering what is going on, so I call and leave a message. The next week, no return call so I call the store itself and ask for a status update- "Oh, your rifle is ready to pick up! That's funny- we shut down our gunsmithing service and our guy said he had finished the backlog and called everyone. Guess he hadn't!"
I go down there, and a manager goes back for the rifle, and 15min later finally comes back with it and I see it's untouched. Sweet. "Yeah, our guy went to 4 different machinists and nobody wanted to touch it, because they couldn't find a way to secure it to do a good enough job [I imagine 3/4 of them just didn't want to touch an NFA item]. And actually, this is the rifle that made us decide to close our services- we just aren't able to make the gunsmithing work financially." He gave me a couple 1/2hr range cards for my troubles (I already belong to outdoor & indoor ranges that are much closer). Well, at least the gunsmith made an effort by going to 4 different guys to try to get it done (allegedly).
BTW if you're in Omaha or want to move there and know your way around 'smithin an AK (or any other firearms that aren't for the 90yo deerhunter FUDD crowd), come start a gunsmithing business because there isn't s*** out here for that kind of thing. Seriously, one of the "best" gunsmiths out here charges $60 for attaching sling swivels and $100 for "boresighting" (not even zero'ing the scope, that's a different charge).
