Biography

 

Located on Maine’s mid-coast, Angus Arms has provided gunsmithing services to northern New England shooters since 1986. Owned and operated by Gus Norcross, our primary focus is the repair and tuning of vintage semi-auto battle rifles such as the M14, M1 Garand and FN/FAL. On the handgun side, we offer a full menu of services for the 1911 pistol including accurizing packages. If you are into black rifles, you are in good hands. We were building custom AR-15s in the early 1990s before they were cool.

Gus began his gunsmithing career as a NCO in the Maine Army National Guard in the late 1980s when they sent him to work with the National Guard Marksmanship Training Unit based in Nashville, TN. In Nashville, he learned the basics of building 1911 match pistols for bullseye competition and M14 rifles for Highpower Rifle shooters.

A competitor himself, Gus shot Highpower Rifle for 20 years earning a Master classification and one state service rifle championship. In 1994, he was one of the first wave of AR-15 shooters at Camp Perry and won his class there in 1996. About the time black rifles began dominating service rifle competitions in the late ‘90s Gus returned to his roots and shot M14s and M1 Garands until retiring from the line a decade later.

If you were at Camp Perry as a pistol shooter in 1996 or 1997 you may have seen Gus there as an armorer repairing 1911s at a frantic pace on the NGMTU pistol truck.

Since 2015 he has served as Gunsmithing Editor for Shotgun News and later Firearms News publishing a monthly feature article on servicing and/or customizing various firearms.

Articles authored by Gus have appeared in Guns & Ammo special interest publications such as the Book of the AR15, Book of the AK-47, and M1 Magazine.