The worst part of my job.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 Filed in: General gun stuff, Gunsmithing, My Life

Do you have a recurring task that you put off because it's just so...annoying? For many people paying bills falls under that classification; for others, doing the dishes. In my job, it's tracking down parts.

If I'm working on a gun of recent manufacture, it's just a matter of popping onto the website of one of the parts houses and ordering up as many as I need. For guns that are out of production, or are of a vintage when the parts were of a different configuration, I have to hunt them down. With Colts everything is discontinued, and the very small number of used parts that are available are hard to find and are often not serviceable. I have to hunt those parts down.

I hate parts hunting.

Hunting takes up a lot of time, especially because many of the better parts houses don't have their inventories online. I have to call them up, in some cases multiple times because their phones are always busy, ask for the part, wait for them to check if they have the right one, and if they don't I have to repeat the procedure with the next company.

It chews up a lot of time, time which I'd rather spend working. It's also often unproductive, so I end up making the same calls for the same parts over and over. Is it any wonder I put it off?

Today is parts hunting day, which I've been putting off for several weeks. Now I have even more parts to hunt down, which makes it worse!

Wish me luck. Not in terms of finding parts, but that I don't go stark raving mad in the process!

-=[ Grant ]=-
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