What to Fix, What to Replace, and What Somebody Else Will Fix Free
A firearm that used to work and now does not leaves you guessing at two things at once: what it will cost to fix, and whether the gun is worth fixing at all. Most articles on the subject answer neither, because publishing real prices means committing to them. This one commits, using the rates from our own bench, and it opens with the check that occasionally makes the entire bill disappear.
TL;DR
Diagnosis on any handgun, rifle, or shotgun is a flat $35, parts not included, and no paid work starts until you approve a quote. General repair labour runs $60 an hour plus parts on every platform we service. Cleanings run $55 to $95 for a handgun and $75 to $125 for a rifle, shotgun, or AR, depending on whether you want it done by hand, ultrasonically, or expedited, and the full list is posted on our gunsmith near me page.
Repair beats replacement whenever the frame or receiver, the slide, and the barrel are sound, because everything else is a wearing part. Structural damage to any of those three is a safety problem rather than a repair job.
Before you pay anyone, check whether your model is covered by a manufacturer recall or free retrofit program. Several are open right now; they cost the owner nothing, and we would rather tell you about one than take your money for the same fix.
Check This Before You Pay Us Anything
Firearm makers run safety recalls and voluntary upgrade programs the same way carmakers do, and hardly anyone checks. The programs are usually free, including parts, labour and shipping both ways, and they stay open for years.
Ruger publishes its product safety notices and recalls in one place, and the list is longer than most owners expect. It currently runs to fourteen entries, from a June 2026 notice on LCP MAX manual safety models where the safety lever detent spring can become dislodged, back through free retrofit programs on the SR22, the Ruger-57, the American Pistol 9mm, the Mark IV and 22/45, and an M77 bolt-action program covering rifles built between 1968 and 1991. Every one of them is free to the owner.
Most manufacturers maintain a comparable page. The habit worth building is to search the maker's own site for your model plus "recall" or "safety notice" before you book any trigger, safety or drop-related work, because the thing you were about to pay for may already be somebody else's obligation.
Two caveats, both honest. A recall program fixes the specific defect it names, not the general wear on a gun that has run twenty thousand rounds. And these programs move: a page that listed your model two years ago may have closed the program since, so read the current page rather than a forum post about it.
What Lands on Our Bench and What It Costs
Here is the working price list as currently posted. Nothing on it is a quote. The condition of your gun and the parts backlog set the real number, which is exactly why we diagnose first and quote second.
| Job | Price |
|---|---|
| Firearm diagnosis, handgun, rifle, or shotgun | $35, parts not included |
| Repairs and upgrades, any platform | $60 per hour plus parts and materials |
| Restoration of a rusted or inoperable firearm | $60 per hour plus parts and materials |
| Handgun cleaning | $55 hand, $75 ultrasonic, $95 expedited |
| Rifle, AR-15 or AK cleaning | $75 hand, $100 ultrasonic, $125 expedited |
| Shotgun cleaning | $55 hand, $100 ultrasonic, $125 expedited |
| Trigger job | $75, or $135 on a 1911 |
| Glock trigger install | $95 |
| Revolver trigger job | $100 single action, $125 double action, plus parts |
| Sight install | $45 to $80 depending on the sight, $50 on a Glock |
| Glock RMR cut | $200 |
| Laser sight-in to 25 yards | $45, or $60 with live fire |
| Any sight install with sight-in to 25 yards | $60 plus ammunition |
| AR-15 full assembly | $150 plus parts |
| AR-15 free-float rail install | $75 |
| AR-15 gas port tuning | $100 plus ammunition |
| 1911 barrel fitting, non-ramped | $125 |
| 1911 bushing fitting | $75 |
| Polish feed ramp and chamber, handguns | $65 |
| Cut and crown a barrel | $100 |
| Chambering | $400 |
| Recoil pad fitting | $100 on a rifle, $125 on a shotgun |
| Laser boresight | $35 |
The hourly rate that governs everything else
The number to anchor on is the $60 an hour plus parts posted on our bench rates. Every repair, restoration, and unlisted job runs on it, and the named prices above are effectively fixed quotes for work we do often enough to know the time it takes.
That matters when you are estimating something not on the list. A job we have not priced is not a mystery number; it is whatever the time comes to at sixty an hour, and we tell you the estimate before we start.
Hand, ultrasonic, or expedited
The difference between the tiers is real rather than marketing.
A hand clean is a complete disassembly, lube, function, and safety test. An ultrasonic clean is the same teardown with an ultrasonic bath in the middle, which pulls carbon and old lubricant out of the fire-control group, the extractor channel, under the ejector, and inside a rifle's gas system- places a patch and a bore snake never reach. Expedited is that same ultrasonic service moved to the front of the queue.
For a gun that gets shot a few times a year, hand cleaning is plenty. For a carry gun, a competition gun, or anything that has run thousands of rounds without coming apart properly, the ultrasonic tier is what stops a small problem from becoming a stoppage at the worst moment.
Should You Repair It or Replace It?
Look at three things: the frame or receiver, the slide, and the barrel. If all three are sound, repair almost always wins, because everything else on a firearm is a wearing part. Springs, extractors, firing pins, triggers, sights, and most feed-related components are consumables across the long life of a decent gun.
Replace it when the damage is structural.
A cracked frame, a bulged or cracked barrel, a slide with real damage, or a receiver a previous owner grounded on are safety problems, and no amount of labour turns them into repair jobs.
Between those two poles, four rules of thumb do the work:
- A common, quality gun that needs only working parts is worth repairing. Arithmetic almost always favours it.
- If the quote climbs past roughly half the price of a comparable new gun and there is no sentimental or collector value, replacing is the honest answer, and we will say so.
- Any crack, bulge or burr on the frame, slide or barrel means stop shooting it and bring it in. Do not fire it again to test whether it is really a problem.
- Heirlooms and discontinued models are worth restoring even when the dollars alone do not justify it, because there is no replacement to buy.
We would rather send somebody home with a straight answer than sell a repair on a gun that should be retired. Charging a flat fee for the diagnosis instead of building it into the job is what makes that possible.
Running the numbers on a real decision
Take a common polymer-framed 9mm that has stopped extracting reliably. Diagnosis is $35. Suppose it comes back as a worn extractor and a spring set past its life: parts plus an hour of labour puts the whole thing comfortably under a hundred and fifty dollars, against a comparable new pistol at several times that. Repair, without hesitation.
Now change one fact. The same pistol has a hairline crack at the ejection port. That is the slide, one of the three structural parts, and the answer flips regardless of what the rest of the gun is worth. No amount of labour makes a cracked slide into a safe one.
The interesting cases are the ones in between, and the honest test is the one nobody likes stating out loud: what would you pay for this gun today if you saw it on a table at a show? If the repair quote is meaningfully more than that, and the gun is not an heirloom, you have your answer.
Sentiment is a legitimate input, though. A grandfather's Model 70 that costs more to restore than to replace is still worth restoring, because the thing being bought is not a rifle. We say that to people often, and we mean it.
Why a Jam Is Never the Diagnosis
More than half of the "my gun is broken" visits are feeding, extraction, or ejection problems. A pistol that stovepipes, a rifle that will not go into battery, a shotgun that will not cycle.
The frustrating part for owners is that the jam is a symptom with at least five plausible causes. The same stovepipe comes from a tired recoil spring, a worn extractor, weak ammunition, a chamber too dirty for the case to seat, or a shooter limp-wristing the gun. Guessing costs money in exactly the wrong order: people buy the $60 part first and find out later it was a $20 spring.
On a semi-automatic pistol, the usual suspects are a recoil spring past its service life after a few thousand rounds, an extractor worn or gummed with carbon, or a chamber that needs a real clean. On an AR or AK, feeding trouble points at the magazine or the gas system well before it points at the rifle, and the magazine is cheap enough that it is worth ruling out at home first: number your magazines with a paint pen, shoot a few rounds through each in turn, and write down which ones misbehave. That single habit has told more owners what was wrong with their rifle than any amount of bench time; it costs nothing, and it turns a vague complaint into the kind of specific report that shortens a diagnosis considerably.
Owners who arrive holding one suspect magazine and a note about round counts get better answers faster than owners who arrive holding a rifle and a shrug.
Nobody does that first, of course.
Ammunition deserves its own mention here, because it is the cause people dismiss and we confirm constantly. Bring the box you were shooting when the trouble started. If you have been running something unusual, our guide to what clears our lanes explains which rounds cause problems and why a home reload is the one we ask you to leave at home.
The Jobs You Do Not Need Us For
Not everything needs a gunsmith, and saying so out loud costs us work we would rather not take.
Swapping a Glock recoil spring, dropping in a drop-in trigger, changing a magazine release: that is armorer-level work on parts engineered to go in without fitting. If that is all your gun needs, we will usually just tell you and point you at the part.
A gunsmith is for the work that needs fitting, machining, timing, or genuine diagnosis. Hand-fitting is the entire point of the job, and it is where the money is worth spending.
The one thing we ask people not to attempt at home is a trigger job. Stoning and fitting engagement surfaces to get a cleaner break and shorter reset, without ever taking the pull below a safe weight, is precise work. Done right, you feel it immediately, and the gun is safer. Done by somebody following a video, you can end up with a firearm that discharges when you did not mean it to. It is the single thing we most often see ruined before it arrives.
Will You Need Paperwork to Get It Back?
No. Leaving a firearm for repair is not a transfer, and getting your own gun back does not put you through a background check or a new Form 4473.
The rule is in 27 CFR 478.124(a), which says a Form 4473 "shall not be required to record the disposition made of a firearm delivered to a licensee for the sole purpose of repair or customizing when such firearm or a replacement firearm is returned to the person from whom received".
Read the last clause carefully, because it is where the exception ends. The gun goes back to the person who brought it in. Sending your brother to collect it is a different event with different paperwork, so plan on picking it up yourself, or call ahead and ask before you send somebody.
If you bought a firearm elsewhere and need it shipped in rather than repaired, that is a separate process entirely and runs through our FFL transfers.
The 30 Day Rule, and the Law Behind It
Any firearm left more than 30 days after we tell you the work is finished starts accruing a storage charge of at least $30 a month. Nobody enjoys that policy, ours included, and under Texas Property Code Section 70.001 it sits inside a statutory framework rather than being something a shop invents: a worker who by labour repairs an article "may retain possession of the article until the amount due under the contract for the repairs is paid", or where no amount was specified, until reasonable and usual compensation is paid.
A shop holding a customer's firearm is operating inside that framework, and the framework assumes the property gets collected.
The practical version is simple. Leave a phone number and an email address you actually check, because the 30 days run from the day we tell you the gun is ready, and we cannot tell you if the number on the ticket is dead.
What Goes Wrong Around Here
A few patterns show up at our counter often enough to be worth naming for anybody in Collin County reading this after a bad range trip.
Summer storage is the big one. Guns that live in a truck console or a garage safe through a McKinney July come back with the oil migrated or gummed, and a firearm cleaned last autumn can be running dry or sticky by August without anybody touching it. A carry gun that has baked all summer wants a look before hunting season, not during it.
Waiting for the gun to fully quit is the second. A trigger going gritty, a slide racking rougher than it used to, light primer strikes that happen "sometimes": those are early warnings, and brought in early, most of them are a cleaning and a spring. Ignored, the same gun becomes a failure at the worst possible moment.
The third is the home trigger job, which we have already flagged and will flag again, because it is the one that genuinely worries us.
Dropping Off a Gun for Repair
No appointment. Bring the firearm to the gunsmith counter during store hours, Tuesday to Saturday 10 AM to 7 PM and Sunday noon to 6 PM, closed Mondays, unloaded and cased if you can.
Tell us what the gun does and when. "It stovepipes on the last round of the magazine" narrows the search far faster than "it jams". If the problem only appears with one magazine, that magazine comes too, along with the ammunition you were shooting.
The diagnosis runs; we call or email with what we found and a real quote, and no paid work starts until you say go. First time in the building for anything, our post on what to bring for a first visit covers the rest of it.
Come by The Range in McKinney at 415 Industrial Blvd. McKinney, TX 75069, or call (972) 330-4415 first if you want to talk it through. We will tell you straight whether it is worth fixing, and we will show you why.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does gun repair cost?
General repair labour runs $60 an hour plus parts on our bench, after a flat $35 diagnosis. Common jobs are fixed: $75 for a standard trigger job, $45 to $80 for a sight install, $200 for a Glock RMR slide cut, $55 to $125 for a deep clean.
Is it worth repairing a gun or should I replace it?
Repair it if the frame or receiver, the slide, and the barrel are all sound, since everything else is a wearing part. Replace it if any of those three is cracked, bulged, or damaged, or if the quote is roughly half the cost of a comparable new gun.
What does ultrasonic gun cleaning cost, and is it better?
Ultrasonic cleaning is $75 for a handgun and $100 for a rifle or shotgun here, compared to $55 and $75 by hand. It reaches the fire-control group, extractor channel, and gas system that hand cleaning cannot, which matters most on carry and competition guns.
Do I need a background check to pick up a repaired gun?
No. Under 27 CFR 478.124(a), no Form 4473 is required when a firearm left solely for repair or customizing goes back to the person who brought it in. The exception covers you collecting your own gun, not somebody else collecting it for you.
Can a gunsmith fix a gun that keeps jamming?
Yes, and jamming is the most common repair we see. It usually traces to a worn recoil spring, a tired extractor, a dirty chamber, or the ammunition rather than a broken gun, which is what the $35 diagnosis is for.
The Range in McKinney
415 Industrial Blvd., McKinney, TX 75069
Tuesday–Saturday 10 a.m.–7 p.m. | Sunday 12 p.m.–6 p.m. | Closed Mondays
