I'm looking for info on getting my type 1 FFL, I've just about finished building a shop for my gun coating and planning on expanding to do different things in addition. I still need to get a safe but trying to find one that doesn't weigh a ton. My main question is what is the ATF looking for and what is the process they normally go through with you. From what I understand they do a walkthrough of the shop and also make sure you understand the processes for the ATF laws. I just want to make sure I cross my T's and dot my I's so I don't go about getting denied. As far as the notifying the local police and getting approved in my town I already know that is easy for me. Just looking for any advice or info anyone has out there. I was finally able to find a job again and am planning on getting the paperwork all filed and sent off as soon as my shop is finished. Thanks again for any info or help you can offer me.

I am a home based FFL dealer and the ATF seemed very helpful through the entire process you can call your local ATF office in my case the Fort Worth location and they helped me with any questions i had about filling out the paperwork and such when they did come do the inspection it was more of a meet and greet they didnt do a walkthrough but she was very thorough and made sure that i fully understood what was required of me before she left. you are required to have lockable storage that can mean a closet with a lock on it or a safe doesnt matter and in my case they didn’t even check but its not hard to put a lock on a closet until you get a safe. the overall process of getting a FFL is the easy part the hard part comes after you get that piece of paper in the mail and have to send that tax money in every three months and from my experience the state makes more off of your gun sales than you will ever think about making not to mention i have 7 different vendors i go through when i have a customer that wants a gun and anything and everything thats popular is never ever in stock you just have to wait and generally people will just go to where they can pick it up that day no matter the price difference another thing is if you just order one rifle or scope the shipping and small order fees will take up any profit you thought about making it is fun though im not trying to run your idea down its just a lot of responsibility for not much monetary gain unless you can afford to deal directly through the manufactures and buy in volume but if your like me and cant afford to keep a good inventory then its really tough good luck I hope it works out for you

If you are gonna do alot of coating get an 07. An 01 can only coat guns for their customers, not for guns they buy for a profit.

As the Combat says, the margins are very very low. Its good you are doing coating, without services (coating, gunsmithing, machine) work it would be a very tough way to make a living.

Everthing is volume, you will see other dealers selling guns for under your FFL cost because they do a bigger volume.

i got a 07 with the dream of building custom rifles but quickly realized that the trouble and expense was not worth it in my case, i would certainly do a lot of research before deciding to go the 07 route it might cost you in the end if you dont plan on utilizing it to its fullest

Thanks for the info, I asked Rebel since I knew he had just recently gotten his but he said it was a pain and not worth the money, but I'm pretty much set on getting it and knew there were people on here who had some info and would be able to give me a little info. I may go the 07 route, I'll have to weigh the cost vs profit margin. I wasn't doing it so much for profit as the enjoyment of what I could do to guns with coating. However if I get the FFL obviously I would have to cover that cost also. Right now I'm leaning towards a type 01 and maybe get a type 7 in the future if things are going well enough to make it worth my while. I'm still a few months away from the paperwork phase but trying to line things up for that to make it go as smooth as possible. Thanks again everyone.

There is a local ATF office in Tyler. Sometimes it is little hard to get a hold of the folks in the DFW office. I deal with the ATF on a daily basis. I also have direct numbers to people in the Martinsberg WV license office. If you need these numbers, please send me a PM