Gunsmith Gary Engels opens Victorian Arms Company at 610 S. Baxter Ave.

Looking at it from the outside, you may never know that the house at 610 S. Baxter Ave. is home to Victorian Arms Company, but with a gunsmith bench in the basement and a full machine shop out back, owner Gary Engels is all set up and ready to meet the gunsmithing needs of Holyoke and the surrounding area.

Services include such things as cleaning, rebarreling, total refinishes and stock carving, but the possibilities are essentially endless. In his shop, for example, Engels has a box full of guns that went through a California wildfire. They’re not much to look at right now, but he’s looking forward to seeing what life he can coax back out of them.

A person could bring in a gun pulled straight out of the gutter and get it back looking like a million bucks, Engels said, and that’s part of what he loves about the job. Whatever a gun owner wants, he can make it happen.

Engels and his wife, Jayne, have lived in Holyoke for just three months, but he describes it as just the right sized town for him. He was born in San Francisco, California, and raised in the Bay Area. At 45 years old, he moved away from city life and never looked back.

Having since moved to Holyoke, Engels suspects that some people automatically envision Los Angeles when he says he’s from California. In reality, he was living on top of the Sierras with all of nature walking through his backyard. Now living in Colorado, he’s looking forward to experiencing the nature and the hunting this state has to offer as well.

Engels’ gunsmithing services have been available to the general public for just five years, but it’s an area he’s been interested in since he was 14 years old. He’s always been driven by the thought, “I wonder what makes it work,” and since his dad had a machine shop, Engels started tinkering early on.

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