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Your workspace must be well-lit. The overhead fluorescent light gives good tight, and the white watt next to the bench adds an even reflection. The dehumidifier next to the bench is a good idea in some climates. Arizona residents need not bother.
First, there should be light. You can't work in the dark, and you can't work very well in the typical gloom of a basement, garage or spare room with only a centered ceiling light. A fluorescent fixture over your bench will fill the area with even light, without being too bright or hot. You'll need additional light, in the form of a flexible desk lamp. The desk lamp can be positioned and angled to shine directly into an area as you're working. Rather than fish around inside a receiver by Braille, you can shine the desk lamp into it and see what's going on.
You need a sturdy bench. The bench can be in a spare room or large closet, in the basement or the garage. It should be solid wood, not particle board. You can build a bench from lumber or heavy-duty steel shelving. One of my workbenches is made from lumber. It came as a ready-to-assemble kit from one of the “big box” stores. I also used shelving rated for 1,500 pounds per shelf, and stiffened the tops of both benches by laminating plywood to them. The particle board shelving that came with the steel frame is sturdy enough to hold things, but not sturdy enough support a vise. You should have a vise. A solid vise holds parts securely while you are filing on them, measuring them or using a tap or wrench on them. A good vise is a more solid arrangement for holding parts than the strongest person you know, and you don't have to worry about missing the part and hitting your buddies hands if the part is in a vise.
In addition to the overhead light, a flexible desk lamp adds light just where you need it. Notice the fire extinguisher on the end of the bench. Keep it close at hand when soldering.
Bench height and vise height are important. The bench should be high enough that its working surface is a couple of inches above your wrist when you stand next to it. If you have to bend over to grab something off of it, it is too low. Vises are designed to stand on top of a bench of the proper height. Depending on your height, you may have to vary the height of the bench when you assemble it. At the proper height, you do not have to bend over even the slightest to pick something up off the bench, or to file something in the vise. The easiest way to find the correct height for YOUR bench is to work on a bunch of different ones and see if they cause you pain. A low bench will cause a stiff back, while a high bench will tire your arms and cramp your shoulders.
You want a solid, sturdy bench. This one has been stiffened by laminating plywood to its top surface. The vise on its overhang has been given additional support with a post. The bench is kept in place by storing ammo on its lower shelf.
A solid vise is a must. This medium-duty one is up to all tasks short of unscrewing a rifle barrel. As the bench isn't up to that either, the barrel vise has its own steel post elsewhere.
If you are going to do some work on your gun at the range, a small vise you can clamp to the bench is very useful.
This heavy-duty vise is everything you'd need.
A cleaning cradle lets you work on your shotgun without having to clamp it in a vise, or hold it in your hands or lap.
An additional holding tool you will find very useful is a cleaning cradle. Not so much for cleaning the barrel (unlike rifle barrels, on most shotguns the barrel comes off) as for scope mounting and working on the beads. Growing up, I learned cleaning and disassembly from my father. He learned from the Army, who taught him how to strip and clean a whole bunch of firearms, none of which were shotguns. And all this stripping and cleaning was done without a bench or cleaning cradle. My first day as a gunsmithing apprentice I looked at a cleaning cradle as if it had been beamed down from the starship Enterprise. By the end of the day I was converted, and would not be without one again.
With a bench and vise in your workshop, you next need disassembly and cleaning tools. A good set of screwdrivers is a must. The standard home screwdriver blade is too soft, too narrow, and too tapered to work on guns. The soft metal is cheaper and less likely to break, but deforms under a load. The narrow tip ensures it fits into any screw slot in the house, but defoms the edges of screw slots on guns. The tip's taper also ensures that it “fits” every screw slot, but acts as a lever to pry the screwdriver up out of the slot of a frozen screw. Unlike a home screwdriver set, which has four or five sizes, a gunsmithing set will have two dozen. A proper blade is hard. A hard blade will break before it bends, and not deform under a load. You should select a screwdriver blade that properly and tightly fits the screw on which you are working. And the tip must be hollow ground. The sides of the tip of a gunsmithing screwdriver are parallel. Unlike the home screwdriver which levers itself out of the slot, the gunsmithing screwdriver transmits all of its force to the screw.
Professional gunsmiths commonly grind their own screwdriver blades. With a drawer full of candidates, if the working screwdrivers on the bench do not fit the screw at hand, they will pluck one out of the drawer and grind it to fit. As one example, Browning shotguns in general, and the A-5 in particular, will have screws with very narrow slots. You will have to grind screwdriver blades to fit. Even a gunsmithing screwdriver set with two dozen tips will not have any narrow enough for the Browning.
The best investment is one of good screwdrivers. A full set like this B-Square will work for 90% of the things you'll need.
Likewise, take your cleaning cradle to the range to aid in cleaning while testing.
Household screwdrivers (the gray one on the right) are not meant for firearms. Either invest in the correct screwdrivers, or modify standard ones to fit.
To grind your screwdrivers, the best tool is a bench grinder. However, bench grinders are noisy, heavy, expensive and messy. You can use a hand-held grinder to modify screwdrivers. Use a sanding drum in the grinder. Clamp the screwdriver in your vise with the tip sticking up 3 or 4 inches. Brace your hands against the vise and use the drum to narrow the tip and keep the sides parallel. Do not overheat the tip or you will soften it. If the tip turns blue, you've overheated it. The two solutions to a softened tip are to either heat it in a propane torch and quench it in oil, or grind the shaft back to hard steel and then grind a new tip in it.
You can see the rounded tip of the household screwdriver on the right. The gunsmithing screwdriver has
