A great sense of loss as Remington Arms prepares to depart Ilion
I was touring the custom shop at Remington Arms and stopped to talk to a guy who was working on a .416 rifle.
This was long ago, but it must have been a Model 700.
The caliber was developed to handle dangerous game – elephants, rhinos, Cape buffalo, Alaskan brown bears – and designed to deliver awesome stopping power at relatively short range, with bullets of up to 400 grains.
The gunsmith handed me the rifle.
“Work that bolt,” he said.
I did. It felt almost like silk over polished glass, with just enough of a catch to let you know that things were moving along mechanically.
I was stunned by the quality of the work, and how it might contribute to the efficiency of the tasks at hand. Really, I was amazed that a firearm could be so finely made, almost watch-like. Yet it was big and hefty and was going to go through some rough times, maybe, but you know what I mean.
I long have admired well-made items, built to last from high-quality materials, that do their jobs the way they are supposed to be done, over and over again.
That’s one reason I mourn the departure of Remington Arms, or RemArms or whatever the corporate name is now. The loss of so many jobs, the junking of more than 200 years of history, and the damage to Ilion’s identity and economy are among the many negatives coming in the wake of the closing of the local plant in March.
Most local sportsmen know the Remington Arms origin story. Young blacksmith Eliphalet Remington built a barrel in Ilion in 1816, then walked to Utica to have it rifled.
The legend is that he used it to place high in a shooting contest, attracting interest from his neighbors. Eventually he made barrels for sale and supplied firearms manufacturers.
Later, he formed E. Remington and Sons., which went on to become one the nation’s legendary sporting and military arms manufacturers, alongside such famous makers as Colt, Winchester, Smith & Wesson, Savage, Henry, and many others.
I have a couple of Remington guns – a Model 552 Speedmaster semiautomatic .22, and Model 870 12-gauge turkey gun with a matte finish. They both look great and shoot great. I love both of them.
When I was working down in Washington, I had a colleague from Mississippi who bragged about his Winchester Model 12 shotgun.
“I only shoot the classics,” he said, or something along those lines.
I told him I thought Remington guns were classic as well, just as much so and maybe more so than his Model 12, admittedly one of the iconic firearms of all time. The 870, affordable and rugged, is more of a working man’s gun, with more than 11,000,000 made, so I’m told, since 1950.
We would receive the Remington catalog every year, and I used to flip through it with my mouth watering. I wanted to buy everything in it – the guns, of course, but everything else, as well. Ammo, clothing, accessories.
One of the items that always caught my eye was the Model 7 rifle, a lighter, shorter design than the 700, made for carrying a long way, and especially the Mannlicher version. The stocks on those guns run the length of the barrel. There are several arguments as to why that style was or is practical or not, but it seems that many shooters just regarded them as aesthetically pleasing.
Remington offered hand-checkering on its shotguns and rifles, although I believe only on custom shop firearms. Checkering is a means of improving a shooter’s grip, but it also is an art form when done by hand in a fine manner, say 26 or 28 lines per inch. Some of that work is just sensational.
Custom guns also could be engraved. Engraving of sporting firearms became popular around the time of the Civil War, and many Remingtons were decorated with hunting scenes and other art. Among the celebrated craftsman doing that work were Joe Loy, Anda Hardy, Simeon Rogers, and Carl Ennis.
Ennis, an Ilion High School graduate who worked at Remington for more than 40 years, is considered by some gun collectors to be the best. He is the subject of a short biography – “Carl Ennis, Master Engraver” – by his daughter, Carol Ennis Burns.
The Remington family and their successors – DuPont owned the company for many years – made many different products over the last 200 years, but sporting firearms were the bedrock offering. The company also provided millions of firearms and untold millions of rounds of ammunition to American and allied armed forces from the Civil War to the present.
Many years ago – certainly more than 30, maybe a lot more – I ran into some old guy whose son worked at Remington. He ranted and raved about how the company was going to move out of Ilion. I said I didn’t think that would happen.
“Wanna bet?” he said.
I didn’t, even though it was sure of myself, but, you know, he was finally right. I’m not happy about that.
You can talk about economic realities and keeping stockholders happy or corporate greed or whatever the causes might be for Remington’s departure from its home ground.
The bottom line is that all that history, tradition, pride, quality, all that industry and work, is gone. It’s beyond sad, and terrible thing.
Write to John Pitarresi at 60 Pearl Street, New Hartford, N.Y. 13413 or jcpitarresi41@gmail.com or call him at 315-724-5266.
This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Losing Remington Arms is a blow to Ilion
