butchlambert
Site $$ Sponsor
original m40
Smiley Mountain-"nickname" assembled the first M40 while at Remington1962 - Mike Walkers Remington R&D Engineers
One thing I'd like to clear up in the very beginning; Most all people nowadays confuse R&D Custom rifles, with the later "Custom Shop" guns . R&D customs were almost exclusively C grade 700 rifles, 375 and 458 Safari rifles and a few F grades thrown in, but engraving was done in custom repair on those. This was many years before the Custom Shop, came into being.
Remington R&D had been around about forever and was on the second floor, uphill side of Hoefler ave, under direction of Sam Alvis.
Mike Walkers operation was bottom floor directly below.
From what I understood original R&D handled all jobs from arms and machine design, plant layout, etc, etc and testing which including destructive testing. One destructive test I saw the results of, would make a grown gun lover cry. A $2000 (1960s$) Holland and Holland double rifle blown sky high.
When they wanted something built, I guess they would have to rely on the tool room and custom repair to build it.
In the early 60's they thought it would be good to have an operation under their control, that could be partially self supporting by building target and custom rifles.
In 1962 the R.& D dept/shop was formed headed by Mike Walker, to design and build experimental, prototype and anything else the engineers could think of, plus projects for military/Govt.Contracts.
My father hoppy, was a machine setter and the first non salary person hired, then a couple machinists, a couple gunsmiths, Leon Johnson senior gunsmith, and myself, were hired to build the original C grade custom 700s, Safari rifles or anything else that needed a stock and a couple other guys built 40x target rifles.
We had all the equipment, machines and people to build anything they could dream up.
We did use the factory production receivers for both 700 and 40x rifles and in the beginning, we made all the barrels but later before I left, we used production barrels from the gfm machines for the 700s but contoured and finished them in R&D.
They had some good engineers already on staff and hired some new ones. Some good, some not so good.
When I first started they were working on a five shot semi auto grenade launcher. . They took some prototypes to somebody's camp on the lake for testing with dummy rounds for range, function etc. Results were good and we built some for testing by the military. There was never much said but rumor had it that a live round went off in magazine with several injured. . That pretty much put a squelch on that project. We also built the full auto shotguns model 7188 and m40 snipers for Nam.
Most all the engineers were ok but one exception comes to mind. There was an empty bench next to mine that the engineers would sometimes use. One new engineer, with the highest degrees you could get in book learning from NE ivy league college, who I don't know had ever touched a rifle, was in and out a dozen times a day to that bench next to mine, with a 40x with 2 ounce fire control. After a couple days of this, I walked over to see what he was doing. He said he couldn't get it adjusted. I asked if he wanted me to try and in about 30 seconds had it working perfectly.
One major gripe we in the shop had with engineering, was the fact that $100,000 might be allotted for a project and they'd use up $95,000 of it setting around with feet up on desk, talking about it, sometimes drawing pictures or throwing paper airplanes and then finally bring it into the shop and want us to build it for $5,000.
Some other engineers were really sharp. One in particular was a fantastic designer and artist. I remember his drawings of the mini gun he was working on for the govt. looked like it was the real thing laying on his desk. GE was finally awarded that contract.
A couple engineering screw ups they probably rather that I didn't say, one was when the 788 was first built they were all proud of themselves, They'ed designed a good looking, multiple locking lug rifle, reasonable cost to build. When they decided to take it to the gallery and test it for accuracy, and brought it to me to mount a scope. They took it up sat down at the bench fired the first round, ejected that case which hit the scope and fell back into the magazine, as did most every round thereafter. There was some hasty redesign on the ejector. Another time was we had an old cut rifling machine that was huge and they wanted to use the space for something else. it was moved out onto the scrap loading platform and sold to the company that picked up the scrap at probably 3 cents a pound. Not long after they came up with a brilliant idea a building a barrel that necked down from the chamber to smaller diameter at the muzzle and also wanted to try a progressive twist rifle where it started out slow and tightened up at the muzzle. Well, you can't do that with button rifling. they had to buy that old machine back that was still sitting on the dock. I don't know if it's true but I heard that the company charged them $3,000 for it. My father was the only one in the company that new how to run it. Neither idea worked out well so they shipped the old machine back out again.
Mike went an an African Safari and after he got back, showed us his slides, trophys and tusks one afternoon in his his office. A couple months later one of the engineers went on Safari and came back and showed his slides in the office. Most of his trophies were bigger and better than Mike's, He had had a picture of a live elephant and said, He stood there looking through the scope at the elephant and elephant looking back at him and said, "it was like shooting a cow in a pasture and I couldn't pull the trigger. That engineer moved on to Weatherby shortly thereafter.
I saved the best for last, One of the top engineers we'll call Mack, had a favorite saying if something wasn't going right or we weren't going fast enough, he would say "Are you on the ball"? one of the machinists we'll call George was turning something and having trouble with the lathe with Mack standing there impatiently waiting for the part and Mack said to George "are you on the ball"? and George said, "yes I am" and asked Mack, "are YOU on the ball ?" and Mack replied YES, to which George replied "Well, then swing right up and kiss my xxs" everyone within ear shot busted out laughing like crazy including Mack the engineer.
Smiley
Last edited:
