Having a gun reworked is not cheap if you need to have it done by a good smith or machinist. Time is money and it takes a lot of time to do things right. My modified guns are labors of love and I could never afford to have the work done even at a low hourly rate.

To cut down a barrel, first it needs to be removed. Then chucked up and centered. I now have a pieces of aluminum round stock drilled and tapped for both N and K frame barrel threads. I thread these onto the barrel and use them to chuck up the barrel, then use a live center in the muzzle. Cut to length with a cut off tool. Recrown muzzle and finish with turned brass laps and grinding compound. Now you either need to cut off the original sight from the original muzzle and mill the base to fit the new muzzle or mill out a complete new one. I like to make a key in the base and a matching slot at the new location, clean everything, flux and silver solder in place. Getting the sight right, square, in time and centered takes time and your working with something to hod to use your fingers. The flux will remove blue and no way you are going to only flux the area to be covered, plus the solder clean up will remove blue near new sight anyway. I camber cylinder chambers in my lathe and a 4 jaw chuck with brass shims on the 4 jaws. Even using a piece turned to fit the chambers to aid line up it takes time to go from one chamber to the other. I am sure you could make a cutting tool for this, but I don't do many and have time. Tools cost money to buy or time to make. Plus, you have to be careful to make sure you don't mess anything up. Once metal is gone on a gun most of the time there is no good way to replace it. Except for the grip frame or the trigger guard there isn't much I would weld on and I have a good tig welder. Then there is cleanup time, putting away the tools/tooling, supplies, cleaning up the swarf around the mill and lathe, etc etc.

Then to really make it right you have to clean everything up, finish it, either polishing, sanding or bead blasting it evenly, and then reblue it. Even doing a good job using cold blue to just touch it up and cover where you worked on things takes time for proper cleaning,, warming the metal and a couple applications to make it look good. All this takes a lot of time. I am sure someone who does it all the time knows how to do these things more efficiently than I do, has special tooling and jigs, but, precision work takes time and patents, no mater what.

Good precision metal work takes time even by the best. (gunsmith or machinist). A gunsmith is really a precision machinist with a focus and training on guns. Any machine shop working at a shop rate of less than $50 an hour can't be making much profit or is doing lots of the the same work where they can keep setup time to a bare minimum. Even with every tool I wanted, taking off a barrel, cutting it down and reinstalling it and a new front sight and good cold bluing would take me most of the day. I recently cut a 8 3/8" 629 barrel to 5". Cutting the barrel and giving it a new crown might have only taken an hour. Machining the new muzzle area for the sight base, cutting off the sight from its orginal location and remachining the base to fit the new location and silver soldering it on took way more time, then I had to replace the sight insert because it would have never survived the heat of the silver solder job. Probably had 8 hour in it and that was without removing and reinstalling the barrel and no real refinishing, just clean up because it was stainless.

Having guns customized is no longer cheap. Takes more $ to live, equipment and tooling cost more. Plus,, the wide selection of off the shelf guns with a variety of features, barrel lengths and chamberings has driven many gunsmiths out of business. On top of that the semi auto crowd and the offerings in those has really thinned down those who focus on revolver work.