Customer Reviews

How to Design, Build, and Sell Your Own Small Arms (Home Workshop Guns for Defense & Resistance)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Some authors have a gift for conveying their thoughts to the reader in simple, non-technical terms. Bill Holms, author of this book, simply isn't one of them. This book is a helpful guide for designing your own marketable firearms, but practically requires that you be well-versed in the inner workings of guns to start with. There seems to be a few holes here and there, such as the lack of information on the case extraction and ejection systems, and a good, thourough explanation is rare indeed; Holmes instead covers a huge variety of action types (bolt, autoloading, etc.) and other mechanisms, but devotes only minimal space to each.

Overall, the book (which includes the plans for a 12-gauge shotgun and 10-round magazine)is a worthwhile buy to those who already have a good idea of how a gun works. Otherwise, you're better off simply sticking with books by P.A. Luty or Gerard Metral.

This book is nice reading if you already know what the gun trade is about, but it gives only minimal information on the actual construction of firearms. Too much talk and crude drawings do not really promote this publication. If you're after a nuts-and-bolts handbook for firearms construction, don't buy this one, but start off with something simple. P.T.Luty's book would be a useful alternative.

The author of this book prides himself of not having a formal education and it shows. You will find no useful technical information necessary to safely design, build, and test firearms.
What I didn't like about this book: Outdated information about firearms laws, hand drawn technical drawings (get a DELL dude), no information on new manufacturing technologies such as composite materials or CNC, total lack of technical information, single page on marketing of firearms. (There is more but I stop here)
What I did like about this book: It has a shiny cover.
If you are looking for real information on the engineering of firearms look elsewhere.

People who really know Bill Holes' books should understand that this book was never meant as a how to build book. I have all volumes of bill's home workshop guns for defense and resistance and this book is just not one of the series on how to build a gun, it is written as a supplement on the first 5, it is a book written in a general style concearning general gun issues. However, the book gives a nice idea of several subject concearning gun design, and bill gives some nice alternatives for some designing problems wich you might encounter. People tend to see bill as some form of gun messiah who gives away a nice design in every book for a few bucks, well, he is not, he is just an experienced gun disigner who designed some nice guns and gives a lot of practical designing ideas of his own mind in his books home workshop guns part 1 to 5. Finally, you people go out and try to find one decent gun design on the internet, let me tell you, there are none. Every info you can get on gun designs is valuable, including the info written in this book, so just buy it, it will be soon that books like these will be forbidden by the weak pacifist mass.

To my mind, this is probably the best of Bill Holmes's books. Maybe because its stated goal is not to tell you exactly how to build one specific gun... a goal Holmes always seemed to fall short of. This book gives a good view of Holmes's character, a broad sample of the fruits of his impressive creativity, and yes there are lots of suggestions for trigger mechanisms and so forth that could actually prove useful. Most of the advice given about machinery selection is basically good. In my opinion Bill Holmes had a lot of failings as an author, but this book was definitely worthwhile to me. Though again, you cannot learn everything the title promises by reading it.

In my opinion I should have bought this book first.This book has so much more to offer to first time Bill Holmes buyers. I beleave it will give the beginner a better view of Bills works. It still leaves things missing as in his other works but also leads you into an better understanding of what to expect. It offers a look at all his other guns and a deeper understanding of gun parts. I am a former marine and machine gunner. I have experianced alot of the guns Bill tries to create in some fashion and that experiance gives me a view of those parts Bill leaves out. So for all you guys that have trouble with Bills work its all about putting the missing puzzle pieces together. Look in other places and you will be enlightened to a world that is Bill Holmes.