AMHERST CO., Va. —
In his small shop just outside Amherst, Lenny Whitcomb is hard at work.”This is an old Remington,” he says, looking at the single-barrel shotgun. “It’s got an ejection problem.”And he’s backlogged by six months.”It’ll be strip cleaned but I asked [the owner] the last time the trigger group was cleaned and he shook his head. he had no idea,” he says. Since late September, Whitcomb has been at Amherst Arms, just off Route 29. but for two years he’s been a master gunsmith; a title that only comes with nearly four years of professional training. “You had to learn everything from machinery to woodwork,” he says of his time at Piedmont Community College in Roxboro, NC. “You had to do it all.”You may find a gunsmith around the area but as Lenny sees it non are more qualified than he is. and that makes him one of a kind in Central Virginia. Now the prisons are calling him for gun repairs.
“The Department of Corrections called me and normally you need three bids [for a contract]. There were no other bids,” he says. “So they contacted me.”But aside from getting his hands dirty, Whitcomb loves the history of each firearm he sees.He’s currently working on a Winchester 1873 and even is cleaning a WWI-era German Luger.but just like the pistol, Whitcomb has his own military history. After an accident while he was in the Navy, he was told he couldn’t work while standing up. he could have collected checks from the government, but he wanted to stay busy.”I could never sit on my butt even though I was getting a check. at this point I can tell disability to kiss my rear end because I make more money than they can pay me,” he claims.