Against my better judgment I decided to seek out the services of the gunsmith at the Gander Mountain in Chambersburg. Gander Mountain had previously put a bad taste in my mouth from my Dad's dealing them. A while ago he brought in his problem-riddled Kahr PM9 to them for send back to Kahr and they failed to ship it and left it in their back room for over a month before my dad called and asked what the hell was going on. So up until this point I haven't had a real high opinion of the firearm department at the Chambersburg Gander Mountain. Despite of all of this, I made my decision to go back to them again because the only other easily accessible gunsmith in the area that I was familiar with was at Hunter's Den. The smith there installed night sights on my Glock 26 and within days the front sight came lose and they refused to do anything to fix the problem. I decided that I didn't want them to potentially botch up my newly acquired Smith and Wesson 629 while installing a fiber optic sight so I went to Gander Mountain. I reasoned that while the people who sell guns and handle the shipping were pretty dense, maybe, just MAYBE the Gunsmith himself had a little bit better head on his shoulders than the rest of them.

I presented the Gander Mountain gunsmith with both my G26 slide with the loose front sight, and my precious 629 and fiber optic sight. I figured that both tasks were pretty simple and not asking a whole lot, I mean it's just front sights, right? How hard is that for the average gunsmith? Well APPARENTLY Gander Mountain is not equipped with the special proprietary equipment to install or even tighten up the front sight on the complicated, obscure pistols known as Glocks, even though they clearly list Glocks as being one of the manufacturers that they will service. Next, they looked at the pinned-in front sight on my Smith and Wesson 629 which of course they also claim they serviced and again said they weren't equipped install a new sight on that gun either. This time he gave me the excuse that they didn't have a small enough bit to drill out the pin on the sight. I'm no gunsmith but it looks to me like that pin could be drifted out with a proper-sized punch.

I ended up being turned away with no resolution to either sight issue on my guns. If I didn't know any better, I'd say the only thing the Gander Mountain gunsmith knows how to do is mount scopes on hunting rifles. Apparently asking him to do anything else, like installing front sights, is an astronomical task of epic proportions that he just can't handle. Ugh, I guess I only have myself to blame for thinking I could give Gander Mountain another chance.

Can anyone recommend a good smith in Franklin County?