Isn’t it true that lathe operators have always been able to make guns for very little money? Used lathes are a few grand each. That’s how they’re made in Pakistan, where copies of AK-47’s proliferate.
If all you want to make is handguns, the necessary machines cost about $1500 (without tooling) for both lathe and mill.
These are the Seig "minimill/minilathe" that are popular in the hobby machining area from places like Harbor Freight.
We have a couple of these (from MicroMark) for quick and dirty prototype work. They need a bit of tweaking during initial setup, but they can certainly "turn out" the necessary precision/accuracy.
Yes. Gunsmithing has been done since forever with small lathes. A gunsmithing lathe needn’t be powerful or large. An old Southbend 9A lathe would work, and a Southbend 10L (aka “Heavy 10”) is considered nearly ideal by lots of gunsmiths to this day. These were very inexpensive and reasonably priced machines back in the day when we used to make something in this country.
Today, you could gunsmith full sized rifles with a 12x36 lathe from Grizzly that you can get for, oh, less than $3500, delivered in CONUS.
Then you need to buy some tooling, so reckon you’ll be up to $5000 to crank out product.
For a mill, you can make a milling attachment for your lathe. Lots of gunsmiths didn’t use to have a mill. John Moses Browning didn’t have a mill. Today, the cheap price of used Bridgeports means that instead of owning a drill press, most shops have at least a Bridgeport mill.