On:

By Dick Fraser A box of unusual looking Remington .22 Long Rifle cartridges showed up in a gun shop in Fairfield, CT, just southwest of Bridgeport where it was made. Loaded into conventional copper “U” headstamped cases were these cylindrical lead bullets with a large nose cavity, half filled with dried lubricant. The company name on the box, “Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Company” combined with the red ball “Remington UMC”logo indicated mid-teens production. Indeed, decoding the date stamp “G21EFZ” revealed that it was packaged on October 21, 1915. Also rubber-stamped on the top and bottom labels were the letters “GULLY”. The Remington-UMC catalogs from thatRead More →

On:

By Dick Fraser This is all really Rich Rains’ fault. He threw down the gauntlet at one of his .22 box collector meetings at the St. Louis International Cartridge Show (SLICS) some years ago. Referring to the letter/number box filling date codes rubber stamped on the bottom of early Remington .22 boxes, he proposed that if you wrote down enough of them a pattern would emerge and decode itself. So I did. All my Remington boxes; .22’s, center fires, rim fires, etc. D19D, C21P, F8P, J11A, L17A, 20OT, I9A, P9B, E7RPX, G30H and on and on and on. No revelation, just spots before my eyes.Read More →

On:

Starting on page 61 of R.L Wilson’s monumental book, RUGER & HIS GUNS is a wonderful story of the development of the Ruger Deerstalker as told by gun designer and former YCGG president Harry Sefried. The Deerstalker was later renamed the Ruger Carbine. Harry’s tale is several pages long, be sure to read the parts before and after the excerpt we have selected for this article.The experimental cartridges that Harry cites in his story have not been lost to posterity; indeed, they are intact and reside in an extensive private cartridge collection in New England.We thought that that the members would enjoy learning about thisRead More →

On:

      The Parkhurst patent Cartridge Packing and Feeding Case was a device intended to be used to rapidly load the double stack Bruce Feed magazine on the Gatling Gun.         It consisted of a paper box with paper dividers and two pieces of wood dovetailed together with a thin piece of sheet metal attached to the upper wood, plus a paper lid to keep everything clean until use.       The sheet metal kept the cartridges from falling out as the case was raised to a vertical position with the base of the cartridges just above the twin openingsRead More →

On:

After 60+ years of rummaging through old ammo the value of exposing yourself to every opportunity to study potential variations continues to pay off. While going through an old collection recently acquired I came upon a bunch of inside primed .50-70’s and glanced at the bases to see if all was normal. One was an obvious misfire, destined for the 25 cent box. Or was it? Well, looking at it more closely, the indentation in the base appeared to have perpendicular sides and flat bottom, not the tapered sides and rounded base of a firing pin mark. Having studied Berk Lewis’ book “Small Arms AmmunitionRead More →

On:

I recently attended an auction at CT Firearms Auctions in Berlin, CT and won a lot that included this matchbook. On the surface one might just pass this by, but I was curious and upon opening the matchbook I found the the following handwritten note which read: ‘To Richie Pagano Best Wishes Mike Vinich USMC “IWO”‘ What struck me was the letters “USMC” which indicated Marine Corps and I suspected the “IWO” reference might have something to do with the Island of Iwo Jima. Well it did not take long and a quick Google search led me to a hero of the greatest generation whoRead More →

On:

Rob Roy, gun inventor and designer, came to work for Colt about 1960. He had been involved with them for several years while Colt was transitioning the production of a .22 semi-automatic rifle of his design from Kodiak/Jefferson, and Rob ended up coming along with the guns. His fertile mind, perhaps triggered by previous work undertaken at Colt in earlier days, took him and Colt into several interesting places. One was an improved pistol cartridge, the .400 Colt Magnum. It was developed for use in the Colt Official Police size revolver (based, perhaps, on similar work Rob discovered Colt had done in the early 1930’s).Read More →

On:

Prepared by Dick Fraser From Wikipedia Marcellus Hartley was the son of Catherine Munson and merchant Robert Milham Hartley who was active in public health reform and the New York temperance movement. Hartley was educated in New York and entered his father’s business at the age of seventeen as a clerk. After three years he moved to Francis Tomes & Sons, Maiden Lane, New York, and became involved with gun sales. In 1854, at the age of twenty six, he started in business with partners Jacob Rutsen Schuyler and Malcolm Graham. They purchased goods in Europe and found a ready market in New York, withRead More →