I don’t know about the rest of you, but this has been a weird couple of months. Seems like everyone I’ve talked to has had a run of bad luck, everything from wildfire evacuations, to deaths of friends and family members.
We were not immune, and one of our more technically challenging issues hit at the end of October when we got a call from our landlord, pulling our lease. He claimed there are some bigger tenants in the building who wanted more space, and he was going to give them our space. We attempted to negotiate, and he was not particularly interested. I only share that to head off any rumors that this was caused by us. Regardless, we need to be out somewhere around the first of the year. The current real estate scene in our area... sucks, to put it mildly. Commercial space is nearly impossible to find, and when you can find it, it’s incredibly expensive. Our situation is complicated further, since the ATF has specific zoning requirements for an FFL, and as a machine shop, we have some unusual power requirements for a shop of our size.
Long story short, we cannot find anything that works in our current price/size requirement. Actually, we already have the perfect spot, but it’s still in development and will not be available for another year, at least. So after much
discussion and soul searching, we have decided to ‘pause’ Brimstone Gunsmithing. We have found a space to ‘store’ the FFL and shop, but for a variety of reasons, we will not be able to accommodate walk-in customers.
We expect that our current front counter will only be open one or two days a week, and we will gradually accept fewer projects as we approach our move date. Most everything will show ‘out of stock’ on the website as well.
Once we get settled into our new temporary location, we expect that some work will come back online. 10/22 triggers, thread cutting, slide milling, and Cerakote, will hopefully be available through our website and our dealer network. We will not be able to accept walk in customers, but we hope to provide other ways for you to get your work to us, and we may actually have faster lead times than we currently are providing!
And ultimately, we expect that the new permanent location will be running in the next year or two, depending on development time. Keep your fingers crossed; there is discussion that the new location may have a full gun shop and shooting range as well!
Thanksgiving is a weird time to be posting this message, but I personally have a tremendous amount to be thankful for. This was a setback, and is creating a staggering amount of work and costing a ton of money that I was not expecting to spend. But where one door closes, another opens, and I am genuinely confident that Brimstone will be better, stronger, and much more resilient, as a result of this event. Thank you all in advance for your patience and support as we navigate the next couple of months.
Wishing you all a happy and blessed Thanksgiving!
-David Seth
Owner, Brimstone Gunsmithing