Posted on 03/29/2022 5:47:59 AM PDT by COBOL2Java
Top 10 Gun Designers We Should ALL Be Thankful For!!
MOST of the guns we enjoy today are based on designs from long ago. THIS video looks at the 10 Best Gun Designers We ALL Owe a BIG Thank You To!
I visited the US Firearms company a couple of times when it’s production facilities in the Colt building, “under the blue onion dome”. Beautiful guns.
owned lots of them, shot the rest.
I worked in the Old Colt factory for many years before they moved to West Hartford, mainly on e. It was a rabbits warren of tunnels, narrow, twisting and interesting. They had a M79 grenade test firing range right next to the Heat treat entrance. I was able to park at the back entrance and had access to the building without going through guards and screening because I had to have my truck and equipment available. Great job ,no time clock,no one to bother me. I could come and go as I wanted. The new factory, Meh. I worked in Heat Treat repairing all the furnaces and set up the new Heat treating facilities when they moved. Alot of the equipment was so old it was left behind and Colt’s bought Stanley Works H/T dept. which we moved from the 7th floor in New Britain to W. Hartford. I could have built an armory with all the parts I handled while moving things around [if I was dishonest]. By the way the Colt Rampant on the Blue dome is not the original. The original was sold by the new owners of the building and the one there now is a fiberglass replacement.https://www.nps.gov/colt/learn/historyculture/bluedome.htm I would recommend the Colt gun Collection in Hartford and a short drive north on 91 to the Springfield Armory to see their outstanding collection of weapons, I think it’s still free.
John C Garand
Way, way back when I was 15 years-old I worked broadleaf tobacco in South Windsor. The farmer was an old man (probably ten years younger than I am now) who was too old for military duty in WWII but worked as security in the Colt plant. I believe at the time they were making Thompson’s or some other submachine gun.
On the job, he walked his rounds and one night saw a wooden parts box by a back door covered by a corner of a tarp. It had a few parts in it. A day later those parts were gone but a few new ones were there. He alerted management and they contacted local police who deputized the farmer. For three shifts he and a thermos of coffee hid nearby and watched the box. Sure enough, a guy on the assembly line deposited a few more parts and left through a back door with a few. The farmer reported the guy to his cop handlers who took the deputy’s report and got a search warrant for the workers home.
Let’s just say this guy had quite a home built armory courtesy of Colt-supplied parts. As essential war materiel, the stollen parts got the guy ten years.
In 2011, the company ceased production of replica colt revolvers, and publicly rebranded itself as ZiPFactory.com, based on its titular USFA ZiP .22 firearm. The company formally dissolved in January 2017,[2] and the company was the last firearms maker in the Colt's Armory Complex. The site is now seeking National Historic Landmark status. [From Wikipedia]
It would be wonderful for another firearms manufacturer to find a home in the complex again.
We have something in common besides living in this God forsaken State. I lived in Bloomfield when it was a Farming town and worked in the tobacco fields too [Shade that is]. My kids laugh when I tell them I worked for pennnies but when your 15 back in the 60’s there wasn’t much else you could do to make money. Great times and I wouldn’t exchange those days for anything today. I can almost smell the tobacco when I drive down Blue Hills Ave even today when all those tented fields are gone.
I’d add Benjamin Tyler Henry and Georg Luger as well.
I’d like to see the ancient milling machines used to make those parts.
Speaking of shade grown tobacco, my cousins from Wyoming once flew in for a visit and they all wanted to see was those square lakes they’d seen from the plane.
I met Doug Donnelly, the founder of U S Firearms and he was an “interesting” guy. His family were heirs to a fortune that stemmed from the sale of the Bayer Aspirin. I understand he was raised on a yacht in the Mediterranean Sea and educated by private tutors.
The Museum of Connecticut History is now open to visitors Monday – Friday from 10am – 4pm. *Closed weekends and state holidays
Admission is Always Free. Worth the trip; if you have elementary age kids/grandkids especially. IIRC, CT history is covered in 4th grade, in CT. Valuable if the kids have to write a report. It’ll light a fire under them.
Besides where can you go for free these days? Considering it’s Hartford, it’s a fairly safe area.
231 Capitol Avenue, Hartford, CT 06106. Phone: 1-860-757-6535
All true.
Gracious, what a pedigree.
Looks like he took his marbles and went home, regarding his manufacturing business.
Oh wow. Wonder if it’s haunted...
Video of a Civil War era machine shop with working, belt-driven lathes and drill presses etc:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bITif6PSUpc
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