"So unless you...are machining your own receiver from bar stock or rifling your own barrels your just an assembler as well"
Yep, and I have stressed this point as well in the past; I do consider myself a builder, but not of guns.
I scratch build (and fly) rubber band powered free flight scale model aircraft, staying pretty consistently with those in the 1/24th scale (1/2" = 1ft). This is a holdover activity from the early 20th Century; I began with it in 1949.
I start with plan images on the internet, usually .PDF files, download, then scale them properly, then print them out in tile format and join them as complete plans. The plans are taped to ceiling tiles (2' x 2', they can be pierced with straight pins), covered with wax paper (transparent and glue doesn't stick) and structures are built right on the boards.
My components are Balsa Wood sheets, Tissue Paper, Cellulose Glue, Piano Wire, and long rubber bands.
I occasionally design and draw my own non-scale plans or modify scale plans to create plans for scale models that don't exist in plan form, as I am currently doing with a 1/24 Kawasaki Ki-100 1a "Goshikisen" (Army Fighter Type 5) Interceptor, cobbled together at the end of WWII to bring down the B-29's over Japan itself. It was considered one of the finest interceptors, of any nation, during that war.
Once completed; the structures are covered with fine tissue paper, gently shrunk down by passing the covered structure through an atomized cloud of 90% isopropyl, and fixed to prevent further shrinkage (and warped structures) with one or more coats of Krylon clear brushing lacquer. Usually the color of the tissue is very close to perfect (I have
BIG collection of colored tissue paper), so pigment painting becomes optional, but camouflage patterns and aircraft markings must be masked and applied using acrylic paints and an airbrush.
Final step is trimming/adjusting the aircraft to fly under both rubber power and as a glider when the power runs down. Propellers can be bought but are traditionally carved, canopies are drawn using heated clear plastic and vacuum (I use a purpose built dental vac-former), and just about all of the wire parts are bent and cut manually.
FWIW, I've been spending a lot more on model airplanes than on guns this last year; and the way the future is looking, I may be out of guns completely and into model airplanes permanently by the and of this year. The
other site I haunt.
FWIW, I don't do frustration well...; and these days guns are just one huge mass of frustration.
...As the rest of you are finding out...
Greg
PS: For
Example...