From a retired Remington -R&D and Custom Shop Employee "Additional info added" More added!

[LCazador]

Both Father and Son were longtime Remington employees. Dad retired and Son had 21yrs when they shut it down in Ilion.

Thanks for personal insight on this. Great reading!

 

[Carl S]

Great story Butch,thank you for sharing.

 

[butchlambert]

I have another for later. Parts came in from the anodize shop. I have several to build and packed to ship out tomorrow and Monday.

 

[wboggs]

original m40​

Smiley Mountain-"nickname" assembled the first M40 while at Remington

1962 - 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

Great stories. I would love to hear the same from former employees of the old Winchester plant at New Haven and the old S&W and Colt factories.

 

[JSH]

Butch once again thanks for more history.

 

[Iowa Fox]

Great stories. I would love to hear the same from former employees of the old Winchester plant at New Haven and the old S&W and Colt factories.

And TC

 

[Tommie]

Great stories. I would love to hear the same from former employees of the old Winchester plant at New Haven and the old S&W and Colt factories.

I have a minor story about Colt. I posted this a few years ago

Colt bluing/polishing trivia:

During the 1960’s and early 1970’s my father was an independent corporate recruiter (aka “headhunter”) in Hartford, CT. He developed a good working relationship with the CEO of Colt. Although Pops normally recruited for upper management positions, Colt asked him to help out filling several openings in their polishing and buffing department. Apparently this step in the manufacturing process required the most skill, took the longest to perfect and required considerable upper body strength. Interestingly, Colt’s CEO advised my father to seek out men of Polish descent. He said those guys, for whatever reason, tended to have the aptitude and strength to do the job right.

 

[butchlambert]

From Don Haponski-Long time Remington employee as well as his Son Wade.


The receivers and bolts and were all selected off the production line, fire controls for the 700C's were generally production line, for M40's and 40x's generally Timney and 2 oz on some target rifles, The barrels for all 40x, Custom 700's and M40's were all produced to close tolerances from bar stock bored, rifled, contoured, chambered and hand lapped right there in our department. M40 stocks were 700's specially selected, shaped and nearly finished on the factory production machinery. The 40x's received basically a production line finish. The 700C's were selected high grade wood and the barreled actions had a high polish (real early ones hand struck also), engine turned bolts (done by my wife at home and I still have the fixture), and hand checkered, sprayed or oil finished stocks as per customer instructions.
.
Now to the M40's. We built a few prototypes (1965??) for testing by the military which resulted in an order for (a few hundred ???) All the stocks were hand selected for strength and stability from the regular production run semi finished 700 stocks, with barrel channels opened up. The barreled actions were 40x made as stated above and Parkerized, hand bedded, assembled and scopes fitted. Other than the military connection and proudly helping the war effort, we just considered the M40 to be a 40x barrel on a 700 stock with a really ugly linseed oil finish.

As for the type 1 and 2, All that I had anything to do with would have been type 1 and I will use Majikani's image below to describe what I remember.
The shape of the stock looked like the slimmer one on the left but the shape of the cheekpiece and grooves in the front of the comb looked more like the one on the right. They were all touched up by the gunsmith that assembled them so all varied. Mine would not have been as rounded on the top of the for-end, but sloped back more and slightly flattened on the bottom.
The other Custom 700 gunsmith and myself built the first dozen or so rifles but got behind on our 700 C work, so they brought in another assembler from production and turned the M40 over to the 40x crew.
All 40x and M40's were targeted at 100 yards, with 3 five shot groups that were shipped with the gun and I don't remember the max allowable spread but was basically one larger hole. The 700C's were targeted the same but because of the light barrel, only the best group was sent (still all touching) if I remember correctly.
The best groups I ever saw while there was a 6mm 40x that had groups of .14, .16 and .18 That one went into the cabinet and became what was known as an employee grade. When they saw an order come in from someone we knew, we'd strongly suggest they take what was stashed in the back of the cabinet.
I hope this has answered some questions and if anyone has other questions I'll try to answer them.


Roy Marcot from the Remington Society interviewed me and some of the later employees about 4-5 years ago and was going to publish a book on the M40 but I haven't seen it come out yet.

 

[nakneker]

Thanks for sharing! Fun stuff!

 

[Edd]

I have two Model 700C rifles, a 25-06 and a 7mm Rem Mag. They were made in the 70's.

 

[Liven The Dream]

I love that story. I don't want to steel it.
I was 2000 miles away in Chicago 1967 Machinist Apprentice at the Chicago Transit Authority.
I had one very old Machinist would say "You Young Guy's Ain't on the Ball".
I was working on a Screw Machine one day not having a good go of it. Mr. Personality came giving the old "You ain't on the ball Kid" , I was not in the best of Moods , I fired back are you on the Ball?
He replied I sure am.. " I said good bounce up and Kiss My A--.
He never said that line again, and didn't talk to me for years. I moved on to Management.

 

[butchlambert]

Turk Takano had 4,000 of thye 52 grain 22s at the Shilen Swap meet. Like a fool I only bought 1000. These custom Shop bullets are sought after.

 

[jcarpen]

Great read Butch. Never knew of your experience with Remington or I’d have bent your ear more at Pencil Bluff.
I still have a few of the legendary Remington custom .22 52 gr bullets and they still shoot as good as any of today’s customs. I have read that the accuracy was mostly attributable to the quality of the jacket material, everything else carefully and properly hand made on the best carbide dies, I’ve heard Rorschach and Detsch?
Keep it going.
Jimmy

 

[butchlambert]

Great read Butch. Never knew of your experience with Remington or I’d have bent your ear more at Pencil Bluff.
I still have a few of the legendary Remington custom .22 52 gr bullets and they still shoot as good as any of today’s customs. I have read that the accuracy was mostly attributable to the quality of the jacket material, everything else carefully and properly hand made on the best carbide dies, I’ve heard Rorschach and Detsch?
Keep it going.
Jimmy

Rorschach dies. I just have friends that are former employees of Remington.