'Something more'

FONTANELLE — It's one thing to get by, to make ends meet and just mosey through life, and it's an entirely different thing to thrive, living to your fullest potential.

Tedd Christensen of Fontanelle thinks he and his wife, Lynn, are putting themselves in a position to thrive as he's connecting himself deeper and deeper to a lifelong love for the outdoors, hunting and trapping through a gunsmithing business he's started. It is called Slayers Gunsmithing and is located at his home, 520 W. Third St., Fontanelle.

Honing his sights

Christensen was always intrigued by the outdoors as a child. Hunting was an experience he shared with his father, Earl, before he was old enough to own guns of his own. Christensen would trap and work to earn enough money to buy guns.

"I worked for the neighborhood farmers. I threw hay, I worked hogs. I trapped and loved to hunt. I'm passionate about hunting. I love everything about it," Christensen said. "It's not always about getting something, it's about being out there. When fall came, it was in the air. I've been fortunate to live somewhere where nature is out my back door."

As an adult, Christensen spent over two decades employed by Cardinal IG Greenfield in their architectural glass division. While he said that was a good job, he commented, "I just knew there was something more."

That's when Christensen turned to a gunsmithing school where he knew he would be able to learn to make, repair and restore firearms of all kinds and start a business of his own doing that.

The school was Iowa Valley Community College's Gunsmith Tech Program in Grinnell. The school is heavily supported in many ways by Brownells, Inc., which is also located in Grinnell.

Christensen first wanted to go to gunsmithing school out of high school, however the lone program he found was in Colorado.

To go back to school at age 50 was no small feat for Christensen, he said. It required diligent study, four-hour round trips daily to class and a lot of cheerleading and support from Lynn. But keeping his end goal in mind, adult learning became a manageable venture for Christensen, and he graduated a member of the Phi Theta Kappa honor society.

Christensen said he never thought he'd be in a classroom learning public speaking, trigonometry or geometry, however gunsmithing relies on math skills in many ways. A rifle barrel is tapered, for example, and figuring math is paramount to making that and most of the other aspects of guns to work.

"A lot of it is patience. We took a round piece of steel and had to file it square with files. I asked my instructor what that was all about and they said it teaches you patience. You're going to get into a lot of situations when you're restoring a gun for somebody and it's all rusty, you're going to have to file on that gun. You're going to have to make that gun smooth," Christensen said.

Setting up shop

Several years ago, Christensen tore down a farrowing house on his property, but the cement slab it stood on remained, so he utilized that in building his gun shop.

The new building measures 12-by-36 feet and has all the tools a gunsmith would need for their work.

The shop has a room for all of the machining — equipped with a lathe and a buffer, it will soon include a mill — and a front room where Christensen has his work bench, which is complete with a vise, good lighting, and more.

"I will work on anything anybody brings in," Christensen said. "I can coat it with whatever coating they want on it. I have a little bluing shed because it will rust everything."

Christensen explained that the name of his business comes from a nickname he has picked up among a few hunting buddies, but it's also a nod to a gun he frequently deer hunts with called a deer slayer.

'Even more than we think it can be'

Christensen has helped customers already from the local area and welcomes others to come in and see how he can meet their gunsmithing needs. A business study Christensen and his gunsmithing professor completed showed nobody within a 70-mile radius of Fontanelle who can do the amount of work Christensen is equipped to do.

"Everything's all about the effort you put into it. You put effort into it, you'll have good success," Christensen said. "The fact that my dad was a military man helped me. My dad was one of those people who was on top of everything. He was one of those guys who there wasn't a task he wouldn't take on. There wasn't a thing he wouldn't do. We all kind of got that ability to be willing to take on something. Some of these guns are a challenge. It's rewarding. We've got a long way to go but I hope my wife and I can build this into even more than we think it can be."