I agree that you got hosed. I had a build several years back that ran into the same issues with all the local smiths, but thankfully, I didn't forget to ask how they intended to do it, and end up getting frustrated and doing it myself. (Successfully...Thank god!)
There do seem to be an awful lot of gun stores hanging out their hat as a "gunsmith", when in reality what they have are gun technicians. If you walked back to their workshop, you wouldn't find many machining tools. Just lots of plug and play parts bins. You're not gonna get the real deal without dropping your hardware off with somebody who probably won't give it back for months!
There do seem to be an awful lot of gun stores hanging out their hat as a "gunsmith", when in reality what they have are gun technicians. If you walked back to their workshop, you wouldn't find many machining tools. Just lots of plug and play parts bins. You're not gonna get the real deal without dropping your hardware off with somebody who probably won't give it back for months!