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A hidden gem: Weaver's Gun Shop
Weaver's Gun Shop at 300 Salem Street in Bloomfield repairs and restores firearms. One could easily miss the shop, which is marked only by a small sign on the door, but inside is a trove of interesting machines and one very interesting man.
Norman Weaver, now 82, was born three miles outside of Bloomfield. He attended Dexter schools until the fifth grade, when his family moved to Detroit, where his father worked for Hudson Motor Company for a year and a half. This was during World War II, when the factory built war materials instead of automobiles. Weaver's father worked fitting breech blocks to the mechanisms on 20mm Oerlikon machine guns. His mother kept the home and made custom clothing.
After leaving Detroit, the family returned to Dexter for a year then moved to Poplar Bluff, where Weaver finished high school.
"I never did do the things other people done. I was never interested in sports of any kind," Weaver recalls. "In high school I took machine shop in my last year. From there I just kind of drifted into working on guns."
He opened up shop in Poplar Bluff and sometime around 50 years ago, a customer brought in a gun and asked Weaver to convert it from right-handed to left-handed. He found the task impossible due to the gun's mechanics but the problem gave him an idea. Weaver designed, built, and patented a rifle that could be converted from right- to left-handed by switching four parts.
"I had intended to build the rifle in quantity but I couldn't get any help from the Poplar Bluff business community. So I came back to the same briar patch that I hatched out of, Bloomfield and Dexter," he says.
Along the way, Weaver met his beloved wife, Janet, at a church function.
"I just saw her standing over against a wall and thought she was cute. I went over and asked her to dance. I couldn't dance but it was an excuse to become acquainted. I pursued her and convinced her that she needed me," he recalls with a fond laugh.
These days Weaver works on all kinds of guns, from minor adjustments up to major overhauls, rebarreling, relining, and conversions. Most of his work involves modern firearms that either break parts or quit functioning in normal use. He can change barrels on rifles to different calibers or replace a barrel to make the gun functional again. He also does some restoration work.
"I have a guy from Arkansas who brings up 150 year old stuff and he wants to get it back to shooting condition. There's a limit on what you can do to collector's items, though. Collectors want the items in the most original condition possible. They'd rather have original rust as a nice shiny blue. But I can reline the barrel on old gun and that doesn't detract much from the value because it still leaves the outside original. You'd have to look real close to tell it's got a new lining," he explains.
Weaver is considering selling the repair part of his shop so that he can dedicate more time to developing an ambidextrous automatic rifle. When he's not working, he also loves to work in his garden, where he grows corn, beans, potatoes sweet potatoes, radishes, pumpkins, watermelons, and cantaloupes.