I just got my Uzi back from John Andrewski and he turned a jamomatic into perfection. Before I sent it to him for repairs, I could not run a full magazine though it. He brought it to SMG specs by drilling out trunion, removed barrel restrictor ring, replaced barrel with SMG Barrel, changed sear, repaired loose ejector, changed lower and refinished it . I am extremely happy with his work.
Just got Uzi back from gunsmith
- Thread starter damp5
- Start date
TheColtCollector
UZI Talk Life Member
What was the turn around time?
mike
UZI Talk Life Member
He installed a couple of feed ramps on my UZI’s 4 months ago and the turn around time was 2 weeks. I can’t say enough good things about John he does excellent work and he’s a really nice guy to deal with.
TheColtCollector
UZI Talk Life Member
Wish I had chosen him. I chose another very well known uzi smith, he sat on it for a year, did no work, told him to give it back to me wouldn’t let me pick it up in person, cost me $300 to ship, charged me $100 for doing zero work. I was so pissed. All in all, probably would have taken him 3 hours of dedicated work. I was so fed up with the year wait I just sold the GD thing, mine never worked at all either
trilogymac
UZI Talk Supporter
Damp5,
Did he say what was wrong with it? Why was it jamming?
Did he say what was wrong with it? Why was it jamming?
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I would like to know who NOT to send it to. The smith in question, did he give a time frame when he spoke to you and not meet it? It sounds like he has taken on too much and should of referred you to someone else or politely not taken your work on.
There is a reason people are reluctant to answer the question above. I will also not answer that question but will try to shed some light on the situation. The gunsmith in question has done A LOT for the Uzi community. His reputation for workmanship is first rate. He has posted many useful gunsmithing videos and has been a real asset to the Uzi community (and other firearms).
As far as I know, he has always operated with a long turnaround time because there was always a backlog of folks wanting him to work on their valuable guns. Unfortunately, in early 2021, he required emergency surgery for cancer and had to undergo chemo for a good while which slowed him down in the middle of the pandemic and he also developed diabetes. Earlier this year, he lost his wife who helped run the business. He has posted public videos explaining all of this in greater detail so I’m not disclosing private info. But anyway, as a result, the wait that most people expected, including me, was much longer than expected.
The reason previous posters haven’t mentioned his name is because nobody wants to kick a man when he’s down. The man has had some serious issues to deal with the last couple of years that have impacted his turnaround time. I think we would all like to see him move forward successfully with his business and I respect his courage to keep going as he has been determined to push through it all from the beginning.
My story is that I decided to send him one of my Uzis for some tweaks. It worked fine but I wanted the semi-auto feed ramp installed to improve reliability with subsonic truncated cone or hollow point rounds. There were a few other minor things and since I was sending it off, I asked him to refinish it. He estimated an 8 month turnaround. I knew that and I accepted that. I sent it in Nov. 2019. Unfortunately, that was a few months before the pandemic hit and I didn’t see it again for over 2 years due to the aforementioned misfortunes. When I did get it back, it looked great. I have no complaints about the workmanship but there’s no way I would have sent it away for 2 years if I had known how long it was going to take. So it’s true to say I am a satisfied and a not satisfied customer.
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So I would like for that gunsmith to succeed. But I feel like it would probably help everyone if he made some adjustments to his business in the following way: Come up with a sort of reservation system by providing customers “a number” or an estimate for when they should send in their Uzis (or whatever) so it is not in storage for so long. That would eliminate much of the waiting time for customers to be without their expensive firearm. I haven’t operated a gunsmithing business full time but I say this from my experience with a hobby business I ran for a number of years.
This is a non-Uzi related story but I share it because I feel the business practice could be applied to the gunsmith market (sort of like what Lage Manufacturing does).
This may sound crazy, but in the late 90s and early 2000s, I was actually one of the go-to experts in a very specialized niche market. I restored Corgi Batmobiles. Up until Mattel managed to get licensed to manufacture Hot Wheels TV Batmobiles in 2007, the Corgi was the best die cast version of the TV Batmobile available for fans of the car between 1966 and 2007. The Corgi Model 267 appeared in 1966 with more than 4 million produced thru 1983. They had some cool action features and many Baby Boomers hung onto them well into adulthood. That was my customer base. I received a lot of emails from folks telling me stories about how they loved their Batmobiles and kept them since they were a kid or that they were upset when their mom tossed out their old toys when they were away at college, etc. and they wanted me to restore an old one to replace it, etc.
In the internet era, my fame spread sufficiently that I had far more requests (from countries all over the world) for my services than I could handle. So I kept a list of folks that wanted their Batmobile restored and I would only let people send me their prized Corgi Batmobiles if I felt I could get it done within the following 3 months. I don’t think I ever needed the full 3 months, but I wanted to give myself a cushion. I think it would be good if gunsmiths did something like that. You can still find traces of my work and one of my old webpages via Google searches. Here is one of my pages that a gentleman in France has preserved for it’s historical value:
http://www.batmobile.free.fr/Wayne-foundation/Eric7000.htm
This is a non-Uzi related story but I share it because I feel the business practice could be applied to the gunsmith market (sort of like what Lage Manufacturing does).
This may sound crazy, but in the late 90s and early 2000s, I was actually one of the go-to experts in a very specialized niche market. I restored Corgi Batmobiles. Up until Mattel managed to get licensed to manufacture Hot Wheels TV Batmobiles in 2007, the Corgi was the best die cast version of the TV Batmobile available for fans of the car between 1966 and 2007. The Corgi Model 267 appeared in 1966 with more than 4 million produced thru 1983. They had some cool action features and many Baby Boomers hung onto them well into adulthood. That was my customer base. I received a lot of emails from folks telling me stories about how they loved their Batmobiles and kept them since they were a kid or that they were upset when their mom tossed out their old toys when they were away at college, etc. and they wanted me to restore an old one to replace it, etc.
In the internet era, my fame spread sufficiently that I had far more requests (from countries all over the world) for my services than I could handle. So I kept a list of folks that wanted their Batmobile restored and I would only let people send me their prized Corgi Batmobiles if I felt I could get it done within the following 3 months. I don’t think I ever needed the full 3 months, but I wanted to give myself a cushion. I think it would be good if gunsmiths did something like that. You can still find traces of my work and one of my old webpages via Google searches. Here is one of my pages that a gentleman in France has preserved for it’s historical value:
http://www.batmobile.free.fr/Wayne-foundation/Eric7000.htm
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I've heard nothing but good things about John. Just about the best there is. I have a Full Size, Mini and Micro in jail now. The Micro will be ok but the jury is still out on the other two. They are supposed to run fine.
ScottinTexas
UZI Talk Life Member
I'm going to totally derail this thread.
I was born in 1960.
Reading this, I remembered..'hey, I have one of those Corgi Batmobiles. Or at least I did.'
So up into the boxes and closets upstairs, and I found it. Pretty decent shape for being played with and 60 years old.
My Aunt always took me to a special toy store in Eldorado Kansas whenever we visited, and she always bought me a cool Corgi or Matchbox.
I need some touch-up paint and missiles....
Thanks for jogging some great memories.
I had John re-do a Micro pistol and then he did some work on a Mini for me. Also modified a registered mini bolt so that it would work in a micro. Just got the mini back. Amazing work and a genuinely nice guy. I will also say, after dealing with a couple of HK smiths, how short his turn around times are (2 months on the micro and 4 on the mini). Also, when he tells you what the turnaround time will be, he keeps that schedule.
You had a nice aunt and you understand the appeal that toy has for our generation! OK, I'll quickly tie this back to the Uzi universe... This is a true story. Before 2002, I only owned airguns. Batmobile restorations paid for a good chunk of my firearms collection that I started in 2002 and the Uzi was one of my earlier firearms purchases. So for me, Corgi Batmobiles are very connected to my gun collection and this website.
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