Jon Miller provided this correspondence from Dick Baker emails in November 2019. Dick Baker was employed by High Standard for many years. He passed away last year.
From Dick Baker:
OK, I'll add my contributions based upon nearly 56 yrs. in the industry from draftsman to Director of Product Engineering.
When I think back, at 81 years old, I was very lucky to experience this era in gun manufacture and well-known names including many gun writers. I was an avid gun enthusiast and researcher. The CT valley area was rich with gun history and people. Many of the old timers were still alive and I used to spend time with them. I met, worked, and became friends with many of them. They covered fascinating era and gun history from pre-WW1 thru wars up to the present. A couple even remembered John M Browning himself!
Oddly, most gun designers are not gun enthusiasts and never went to gun shows! I only remember seeing Rob Roy and Harry Sefried at gun shows. I did see Bill Ruger once at the Stratford show.
It is just a job to them and plant workers. Gun enthusiasts are rare. Except for a couple all were not college educated either.
The gun industry years ago was described as a very "incestuous industry" by a Judge on an accident case I was on. He arrived at that conclusion because the gun expert witnesses in court all knew each other and had moved around in companies! That situation does not exist today in the industry. Changing times, gun interest, and computer advent has changed everything.
At Hamden the auto pistol barrel rifling was held to tight tolerance and checked with gages. The barrels outside of these tolerances were for revolvers and rifles. However, in my experience about any .22 barrel is accurate for normal use.
Smooth bore barrels are exactly like Bob Shea said. The long barrel blank is initially deep hole drilled, reamed, cherry buttoned (qualifies bore), and then button rifled. Then it is cut into pistol length barrels. The barrel rifling is supposed to be inspected after button rifling. If missed, you end up with a smooth bore barrel which could go on to be machined to shape but final inspection outside the range firing should have spotted it. However, it does happen rarely, and I have seen at Colt In .357 barrel, and they were made to length and broach rifled one at a time. Contrary to popular belief smooth bores are not apparent in range testing on target up to 50 to 75 ft. Accuracy is not terrible. I proved it for myself. Smooth bore handguns used to be a no-no with Federal regulations who used to consider them a short shotgun. I don't know if this has been changed.
Interestingly a skipped button rifled barrel would be smooth bore at BORE DIAMETER. Thus, the bullet (being designed for rifled diameter) would actually be squeezed down slightly in firing!
Ralph Kennedy was at E. Hartford, and he told me about finding some smooth bore pistols all set to be shipped. Guns to go out to make payroll! It simply showed they had no quality control or inspection at E. Hartford.
In 1997 John Currie and I went down to visit George Wilson, Jr in Venice, FL. I took video during our interview. He mentioned his father working at Remington before going to Hartford Arms. In fact, he had his father's old Remington pump shotgun in disassembled condition. (He had taken it apart and could not figure out how to reassemble). Swebilius hired Wilson, Sr upon purchasing defunct Hartford Arms because of his experience. Wilson, Sr basically ran High Standard pistol plant in 1930's as well as designing. Swebilius was off doing design work for Winchester!
I worked with late Larry Larson and Harry Sefried at Ruger. I also was very familiar with their work in Hamden R&D Dept. Larry had left for Ruger shortly before I started in the Dept. He had worked on the T-3 pistol, tank machine gun, and T48 rifle as well as designing the bracket barrel weights for target auto pistol and designing the Double Nine. Larry also was excellent artist and used to do renderings of possible variations. He used to work a lot with Harry Sefried at High Standard.
Art Murtha was President of High Standard, Hamden. Circa 1956 he left and formed JEFFERSON ARMS in North Haven. (It later became KODIAK under George Rowbottom). They used to make Sporterized military rifle conversions for Montgomery Ward and the mail order companies. His move gave incentive to some of the R&D people and some left. Rob Roy and Harry went to Jefferson, but Harry went independent soon after. Around 1960 he became chief engineer at Ruger. Harry's talent at designing was actually responsible for much of Ruger's success but of course, as usual, Bill took credit and Harry was almost invisible.
Murtha in later years had a deep hole drill operation over in North Haven.
High Standard had military contract work out of Springfield Armory. Bob Hillberg headed R&D during work on T-3, Machine gun conversion for tanks and 7.62 ammo, and the T48. I have many of the memos and time sheets from this period. The military projects were handled like regular projects using R&D Model Shop. However, being government work, there was mandatory reports, timecards, and records. This type of contract work went on from about 1950 to 1955.
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