rugnelli said:
chet15,
Thanks for your reply and thoughts on the subject. I have found a couple of sources of information and they mention the ARTISAN brace being marketed by Gambles. I believe it was stated in "Ruger and His Guns" that because of the higher cost of manufacturing the braces the asking price was too high for the general public and thus, didn't sell well. This resulted in the demise of the Ruger Corp.
That was a partial reason. Their hand drills were way over-built as well, as compared to the more mass produced Stanley's and Millers Falls and other company's.
Another reason I've heard Ruger Corp went belly up is because of a distributor of the tools in New York or Ohio who wasn't doing good business. And then there was also a fire at Ruger Corp during their years of operation (tail end?) that may have been the final nail in the coffin.
rugnelli said:
As far as I know the Ruger Corp. marked braces and the ARTISAN marked braces are identical with the exception of the markings. If that is the case, do you think it would be reasonable to guess that the Ruger Corp. was the actual manufacturer of the ARTISAN braces and, as a result of the Ruger Corp. going out of business, there were few ARTISAN marked braces actually produced?
Not sure. It may be that the ARTISAN braces are a lot more common than the Ruger 1010, but there aren't too many people out there who know about the ARTISAN.
Here's something else to ponder. Ruger had a design patent on the 1010 design of brace. So they must have purchased the rights to produce the brace or at least have somebody else produce them. The ratchet mechanism I believe had at least patents pending on it by Seymour-Smith. But it doesn't appear that they ever did a design patent on it. So, WBR realizing this decided to get the unique design protected.
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Either way, it would seem that both braces were made with the same tooling so the Ruger connection is there... As to the Seymour Smith connection, they were already making a similar brace so why would they want to produce a near identical one (though arguably not as nicely marked) marked ARTISAN, especially if it didn't sell many units? If they did absorb the tooling from the Ruger Corp. I would think they might make the slight changes to produce their brace with it.
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That's the thing. From the earlier versions of the Seymour-Smith, it would appear that SS made them first, then perhaps Ruger purchased the rights to make them (or have them made? But if Ruger got a design patent on it, WBR must have purchased the rights to produce that brace from Seymour-Smith). Then when the Ruger Corp went belly up, Ruger may have settled with SS by giving up their rights to manufacture as well as any equipment that may have been necessary.
Check out the all the parts on the parts on the 1010 and the ARTISAN...even the ferrules up by the handle are plated the same etc. So it may be that Seymour-Smith did at least a "cleanup" of the remaining Ruger Corp brace parts.
You would also think that with an ARTISAN marked brace for Gambles-Skogmo, GS might have had a trainload of them made after Ruger Corp went out of business. But the ARTISAN marked braces were definitely made during or after the last variation of 1010 brace because of the half knurled chuck.
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I have found a patent drawing of what is supposed to be the chuck used on the Ruger designed brace but it does not match my ARTISAN brace. If I may, I am going to send you a picture of my brace (and comments) to compare with yours.
Thanks again.
rugnelli[/quote]
I haven't had a chance to look at this yet, but will in the next couple days or so.
Chet15