 | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry |
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| Founded | 1923 New York, New York |
| Founder | |
| Headquarters | Andover, New Jersey , USA |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Steven Polanish, CEO |
| Products | |
| Services |
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Number of employees | 24 |
| Website | griffinhowe |
Griffin & Howe, Inc. is an American firearms manufacturer headquartered in Andover, New Jersey. Founded in 1923 by Seymour Robert Griffin, a New York City cabinetmaker, and James Virgil Howe, foreman of the machine shop at the Frankford Arsenal in Pennsylvania.
Griffin was employed as the in-house carpenter and cabinetmaker at the Hotel Bretton Hall in Manhattan at 2346 Broadway. In 1910 Griffin, having read of Theodore Roosevelt's use of a sporterized .30-03 Springfield on a safari to Kenya and Uganda, decided to turn his own M1903 Springfield rifle into a sporter. He purchased a Circassian walnut blank from Von Lengerke & Detmold. In his spare time at the woodwork shop of Bretton Hall, Griffin continued to manufacture gunstocks converting surplus military M1903 Springfield rifles to sporting rifles. Griffin's distinctive hand-checkered Circassian walnut gunstocks featured schnabel fore-ends and a unique downward-angled slope cut into the right side of the stock parallel to the bolt ejection port. A few of these rifles featured engraving by R.J. Kornbrath. Early rifles were unmarked until Griffin began using a small S.R.Grffin New York banner in 1922. [1]
Colonel Townsend Whelen who was then in command of the Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. played a large role in the inception of the company. In April 1923 Col. Whelen told Griffin about the talents of the head of the machine shop at the arsenal, James Virgil Howe, and suggested that they combine their skills to produce custom rifles. Also assisting, and providing the necessary startup capital, were James M. Holsworth, and James L. Gerry. On June 1, 1923 Griffin & Howe opened its doors and built rifles out of a New York City loft. [2] The partnership was short-lived, for Howe left the firm in September of that year to work for Hoffman Arms Company of Cleveland, Ohio; but Howe's name remained on the hundreds of M1903 Springfield and Gewehr 98 rifle actions converted through the 1920's. [1]
In 1927 the Griffin & Howe Sidemount scopemount was introduced. This mount allowed for a mounted and sighted scope to be removed and replaced without the zero being affected. [3]
Griffin & Howe was bought by Abercrombie & Fitch in 1930. [4] Griffin & Howe became the main firearm and gunroom of the outfitter for the next 45 years. From the 1930s to the 1960s, G&H supplied sporting rifles to customers including Ernest Hemingway, Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Robert C. Ruark, [5] Osa Johnson, Gary Cooper, Jack O'Connor, William B. Ruger, and Tom Selleck. [1]
In 1935 Griffin & Howe had opened the first shooting school in the U.S., at what is now the Orvis Shooting Grounds in Sandanona, New York.
During World War II, G&H was forced to discontinue its rifle business and turned to making the triggers for US anti-aircraft guns, along with over 50 different parts for the American aircraft industry. In addition to this, the G&H side mount became the standard rifle mount for the M1 Garand rifle, and by the end of the war, 23,000 had been delivered to the Springfield Armory.
In 1976, G&H was sold by Abercrombie & Fitch to longtime employee, Bill Ward. The company moved its headquarters to Bernardsville, New Jersey in 1987, with the present management taking over in 1989. The company opened two new locations in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1999 and in 2003 at its Shooting School at the Hudson Farm Club in Andover.[ citation needed ]
In 2011 Griffin & Howe moved its gunsmithing operations to a newly renovated, 6,000 square feet (560 m2) facility to alongside the Shooting School at the Hudson Farm Club. In 2015, the company brought all of its operations to its shooting school location in Andover, NJ.[ citation needed ]
A semi-automatic rifle is an autoloading rifle that fires a single cartridge with each pull of the trigger, and uses part of the fired cartridge's energy to eject the case and load another cartridge into the chamber. In contrast, a bolt-action rifle requires the user to cycle the bolt manually before they can fire a second time, and a fully automatic rifle fires continuously until the trigger is released.
Bolt-action is a type of manual firearm action that is operated by directly manipulating the bolt via a bolt handle, which is most commonly placed on the right-hand side of the firearm.
The M1 Garand or M1 rifle is a semi-automatic rifle that was the service rifle of the U.S. Army during World War II and the Korean War.
The M1903 Springfield, officially the United States Rifle, Caliber .30-06, Model 1903, is an American five-round magazine-fed, bolt-action service repeating rifle, used primarily during the first half of the 20th century.
The Springfield Armory, more formally known as the United States Armory and Arsenal at Springfield located in the city of Springfield, Massachusetts, was the primary center for the manufacture of United States military firearms from 1777 until its closing in 1968. It was the first federal armory and one of the first factories in the United States dedicated to the manufacture of weapons. The site is preserved as the Springfield Armory National Historic Site, Western Massachusetts' only unit of the national park system. It features the world's largest collection of historic American firearms.
The .30-06 Springfield cartridge, 7.62×63mm in metric notation, and called the .30 Gov't '06 by Winchester, was introduced to the United States Army in 1906 and later standardized; it remained in military use until the late 1970s. The ".30" refers to the caliber of the bullet in inches, .300 and the "06" refers to the year the cartridge was adopted, 1906. It replaced the .30-03, 6mm Lee Navy, and .30-40 Krag cartridges. The .30-06 remained the U.S. Army's primary rifle and machine gun cartridge for nearly 50 years before being replaced by the 7.62×51mm NATO and 5.56×45mm NATO, both of which remain in current U.S. and NATO service. It remains a very popular sporting round, with ammunition produced by all major manufacturers.
The .308 Winchester is a smokeless powder rimless bottlenecked rifle cartridge widely used for hunting, target shooting, police, military, and personal protection applications globally. It is similar, but not identical, to the 7.62×51mm NATO cartridge.
The .270 Winchester is a rifle cartridge developed by Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1923 and it was unveiled in 1925 as a chambering for their bolt-action Model 54 to become arguably the flattest shooting cartridge of its day, only competing with the .300 Holland & Holland Magnum, also introduced in the same year.
A gunstock or often simply stock, the back portion of which is also known as a shoulder stock, a buttstock, or simply a butt, is a part of a long gun that provides structural support, to which the barrel, action, and firing mechanism are attached. The stock also provides a means for the shooter to firmly brace the gun and easily aim with stability by being held against the user's shoulder when shooting the gun, and helps to counter muzzle rise by transmitting recoil straight into the shooter's body.
Sharps rifles are a series of large-bore, single-shot, falling-block, breech-loading rifles, beginning with a design by Christian Sharps in 1848 and ceasing production in 1881. They were renowned for long-range accuracy. By 1874, the rifle was available in a variety of calibers, and it was one of the few designs to be successfully adapted to metallic cartridge use. The Sharps rifles became icons of the American Old West with their appearances in many Western-genre films and books. Perhaps as a result, several rifle companies offer reproductions of the Sharps rifle.
The M1917 Enfield, the "American Enfield", formally named "United States Rifle, cal .30, Model of 1917" is an American modification and production of the .303-inch Pattern 1914 Enfield (P14) rifle, which was developed and manufactured during the period 1917–1918. Numerically, it was the main rifle used by the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe during World War I. The Danish Sirius Dog Sled Patrol on Greenland still use the M1917, which performs reliably in Arctic conditions, as their service weapon.
The Springfield Model 1892–99 Krag–Jørgensen rifle is a Norwegian-designed bolt-action rifle that was adopted in 1892 as the standard United States Army military longarm, chambered for U.S. caliber .30-40 Krag cartridges. All versions and variants were manufactured under license by the Springfield Armory between 1892 and 1903 and famously served as the longarm during the Spanish–American War.
The .350 Remington Magnum was introduced in 1965 by Remington Arms Company for the Model 600 rifle. It was later offered in the Model 660 and Model 700 rifles but was discontinued as a regular factory chambering in 1974 after a poor sales record. Remington has also offered the Model Seven MS from their Custom Shop and a limited edition 700 Classic in recent years chambered in .350 Remington Magnum. Remington began chambering the round in the new Model 673 Guide Rifle in 2002. This caliber was also sold as a chambered size configuration in a line of long range shooting and competition handguns, the Remington XP-100.
The .35 Whelen is a powerful medium-bore rifle cartridge that does not require a magnum action or a magnum bolt-face. The parent of this cartridge is the .30-06 Springfield, which is necked-up to accept a bullet diameter of .358 in (9.1 mm). This cartridge is more powerful than its parent, especially in killing power on large game. However, with much wider availability, and the higher BC .30 caliber bullets of today, the power gap between the two cartridges has been decreased.
Sporterising, sporterisation or sporterization is the practice of modifying military-type firearms either to make them suitable for civilian sporting use or to make them legal under the law.
The Winchester Model 52 was a bolt-action .22-caliber target rifle introduced by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1920. For many years it was the premier smallbore match rifle in the United States, if not the world. Known as the "King of the .22s," the Model 52 Sporter was ranked by Field & Stream as one of "the 50 best guns ever made" and described by Winchester historian Herbert Houze as "perfection in design." However, by the 1970s the World War I-era design was showing its age and had given way in top-level competition to newer match rifles from Walther and Anschütz; the costly-to-produce Model 52, which had long been a loss leader prestige product by that time, was finally discontinued when US Repeating Arms took over the manufacture of Winchester rifles from Olin Corporation in 1980.
Townsend Whelen, called "Townie" by his friends, was an American hunter, soldier, writer, outdoorsman and rifleman.
.30-06 Springfield wildcat cartridges are cartridges developed from a 30-06 Springfield "parent cartridge" through narrowing or widening the cartridge neck to fit a smaller or larger bullet in an attempt to improve performance in specific areas. Such wildcat cartridges are not standardized with recognized small arms standardization bodies like the SAAMI and the CIP.
The .400 Whelen cartridge was developed by Colonel Townsend Whelen while he was commanding officer of Frankford Arsenal in the early 1920s. The cartridge resembles a .30-06 Springfield case necked up to .40 caliber to accept bullets manufactured for the .405 Winchester.
Major Ned H. Roberts, was an American hunter, competition target shooter, gun writer & editor, ballistician and firearms experimenter. Roberts was a prolific contributor to sporting publications, including Outdoor Life, Outers, Arms and the Man (later renamed as American Rifleman, and to Hunting and Fishing magazine, for which latter publication he served as Firearms Editor. His work on cartridge design in collaboration with Adolph Otto Niedner, Franklin Weston Mann, Townsend Whelen, and F.J. Sage led to a commercialized version of his own original .25-caliber wildcat cartridge introduced by Remington in 1934 and named the .257 Roberts.