Saw it earlier…
Made me get my P90 out. 
I got lost reading for over an hour here… Modern Firearms - Encyclopedia of Modern Small Arms
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Solid bit of reference material there. 
I can see how you got lost in it. 
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Ha well, SDI had there moment of glory. Gthumb has dropped them, others likely will or have. Far out $20k for a nothing course using your GI Bill money tsk tsk
They sponsor Brandon Herrera as well… He always endorses them on his channel. Not for much longer, I’m guessing. 
Funniest thing I heard him come out with lately was his comment about hiding out in Costa Rica…
“Perfect urban camouflage for someone with a name like Herrera.”
Funny thing is, for guys like you and I that have spent a large portion of our working lives on lathes, milling machines, cylindrical grinders, etc. gunsmithing would come easy.
One piece of metal is the same as another in our trade, the only things you’d have to learn are the regulations and technicalities of firearms.
Maybe that’s an option for a retirement income… it’s not like there’s a shortage of real steel up here in Queensland and they all need maintenance work at some point.
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Yep. Build up a collection of lathes and mills. The precision machinists are all dieing out and people don’t realise that you can’t easily do repairs with a CNC machine
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That’s because we’ve developed a “when something breaks, replace with new” attitude towards everything.
That’s okay if parts are available, but if not…
Who you gonna call? 
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Oh yea I always have a lathe and mill on my wishlist, got the space and shedding for it. Just not the moola. Looked at one of those Chinese small lathes for a grand or 2, but ah, they are too small and the spindle through holes are usually about 19mm which is way too small for the type of work I’d be doing.
Was a good point I thought the above video about SDI brought up about nothing was hands on and can’t teach people how to use a mill or a lathe which is basicly a core requirement for gunsmithing. Or welding. You can assemble some firearms with out such machines like AR15’s. But what if you need to machine a replacement extractor that is no longer available for an older model, a firing pin. I’ve done both those on an older .22. When I had access to lathe and mill. Turning down and crowning barrels. All sorts you can’t do by hand precisely enough.
Also in rural areas such machines are very handy for machinery repairs as a lot of parts can be repaired for much much cheaper than new, and quicker than replacement as a lot of it is made overseas, also older machinery. Like my old Commer tip truck the input shaft bearing on gearbox shat and the replacement was an odd size being old pommi I just could not match up a size anywhere. So said fk it had the right OD and width on a bearing took it to an engineering shop 100k away and got them to turn down the shaft to fit the ID of the closest bearing I could find… and fixed
Yeah, there’s always a way.
Even heat treated parts, and let’s face it, with gunsmithing that’s going to crop up, are easy enough to deal with. Find the right grade of heat treatable steel, machine up the part, send it out for 3rd party heat treating. Easy.
Like you, I count myself lucky that my apprenticeship in engineering was at a time when CNC was just coming in. My apprentice instructors were grumpy old tradies who were a pain in the arse, bur damned if they didn’t know their shit. We even had the old pegboard automatic lathes when I started my apprenticeship and they were considered by some to be the future of production. 
But I was taught my trade on DS&G centre lathes, Bridgeport milling machines and tool and cutter grinders… much like yourself, I suspect. So threads were cut using change gears and the lead screw. Things were milled in vices, on rotary tables and in dividing heads… even helical milling was done by dividing head in my first year… old school skills, but after talking to fitters and turners who qualified much later, they’re skills that haven’t exactly been lost, but not very often used on the job.
I tell people “Give me a lathe, milling machine with a dividing head, a mig welder, a workbench and a few files and I’ll make you anything.”
I know you know that’s no exaggeration. I reckon we’re lucky, we’re the last iteration of fitter/machinists that can do it all without CAD/CAM or CNC.
100% very similar. Colchester lathes and Bridgeport milling machines. Big ass Snow grinder that would kill apprentices and smaller surface grinder, index heads the works. You can make anything. Threads pick your poison and get the right cutter then select the right gears and away you go after checking some charts etc and measure. All that you know it. 20ft old radial drill press to drill the dies out and machine tap. Man I seen some snappage in those things $3k drill bits and taps operator error. I took note to not gun it like the old fellas.
NC lathes were in my time as they are very good for repetitiveness of machining 100 alloy car rims an hour, and form work on rim roll recuts. I did some basics on them, which would all be different today yet again with the programming no doubt.
And you can make anything because we’ve had that experience. Some items need heat treating as you say and where I worked had heat treating facilities so I had a lot of that exp as well. Two ovens that got used as pie and food warmers as well LOL and a quench bath that was a bitch for the apprentices to clean out every year, that shit stinks. The only treatment we’d send out for was Nitriding. Even got my firing pin sent out and nitrided Rockwell hardness tester we had as well. It was very well equipped that place. Not too much got sent out good 90% was done in house. Some specialty items like the Nitriding or outsized machining like a 800 ton press crank, but they are not common.
The cast dies for alloy wheels that make those fancy shapes of the spokes etc mag wheels, they were roughed out via CNC mill centre, then the final form was done by Toolmakers hand with a selection of files and die grinders. Even refurbishing one they’d weld the worn spot and reprofile it by hand.
So much skill. All gone. I’d get a lot of jobs locally if I set up shop here repairing broken machinery bits. Maybe one day if I win lotto to buy machinery.
I enjoy watching CEE sometimes https://youtu.be/K2Rpgq5v0HQ?si=XqiH8QWCEy_PQ8U9
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Ooo how cool.
Get Air BME to B709 that for me
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I didn’t mind the stg44 in call of duty black ops zombies, wasn’t my goto gun, preferred the MP40 as my secondary, but when you’re on the run from a swarm and you run out of ammo you’ll grab whatever you can find 
and the stg44 did the job 
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SOOOOO… Mate just got a message saying that the WA Gun Buyback/Amnesty ends this Saturday.
Same tactics used with the Gelbaster Bans.
Give owners only a few weeks notice to force them to make rash decisions and limit the ability to Advertise/Sell/Transfer their gear to potential buyers. … instead most likely just be hurriedly handed in to be destroyed by the authorities to “get more guns off the streets” 
Is this the same in our other States???
Not in the past it’s not the same as my experience, what the future will be like is uncertain.
Are they paying full decent price for the firearm at least. New replacement cost.
Oh I see now Firearm buyback to support historic Cook Government reform | Western Australian Government (www.wa.gov.au)
Well that’s cooked(pun intended) if you own a high end one. Last one I sold to the amnesty law change took 4 years for it to sell and didn’t matter because it was not in my hands but the firearm shop.
But I swear it was only a few weeks ago they made the decision, not back in February. What is going on here or have I lost the plot.
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WZ35 Polish WWII anti-tank rifle…
Let’s see you fit one of those in the boot of your Maluch… you’d be shit outta Maluck!!
You aren’t losing the plot, these fckwits are just making shit up as it goes…
Where have we seen this happen before
The new Laws are still being drafted and my mate keeps getting updates from his shooting buddies by text about all sorts of stuff, including the Amnesty/Buyback etc at the last minute.
Any Gun owners who don’t have their finger on the pulse of this clusterfuck of constantly changing law “making” is going to be in for a big shock 
Its about creating a “false sense of urgency”.
They can implement whatever timeframe they want.
Saying…" X comes into effect in 12 weeks, you have until then" , allows people time to advertise and sell items / transfer interstate/ ship overseas etc.
Saying…" X comes into effect in 2 weeks" , basically allows No time, and forces people to surrender their items to police.
Their rules, their choice.
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EXACTLY CORRECT!
Same tactics as they used with the Gelbaster Bans.
Force people into making rash decisions, by implementing very short notice to put pressure onto people into taking action, that they wouldn’t normally consider if they were given a decent timeframe to weigh up those actions