In Range

Last May, we got word that RCBS was being spun out of the Vista Outdoor group, purchased by Hodgdon Powder Company. If you’re having trouble keeping up with who’s where among the many brands that were part of, first, ATK, then Vista, you’re not alone. The corporate machinations are verging on dizzying and by the time you read this, even more changes may have taken place.

Most of those will be fodder for the financial pages, not for handloaders, who are mainly interested in two things: Will they still make what I need and can I still get it?

In the case of RCBS, I have no doubt about either. In fact, the change may well result in improvements at RCBS since, instead of being a small part of a many-tentacled corporate octopus, it will be an important segment of a company devoted to handloading.

Going back over the changes I’ve seen at RCBS in my lifetime, it makes me feel old – even worse than when I name all the U.S. presidents who’ve been in office during that time. (Since you ask, Harry Truman was in the White House when I was born, although I don’t remember much about him.)

RCBS came into being even earlier, founded in 1943 by Fred Huntington, Sr., and named for his first product – the Rock Chuck Bullet Swage. He was located in Oroville, California, and got his start making bullets by swaging lead into spent 22 rimfire cases. This was during severe wartime shortages of loading components.

After 1945, interest in guns, shooting, and handloading took off, and many famous companies got their start in those frenetic years. Among them, we can count Nosler, Hornady, Sierra, Hodgdon, Speer and CCI.

Every one of those companies was the brainchild of one man, or a couple of guys with a shared interest and a good idea.

There were many more who got a start, then were bought out, or went under, or merged with someone else. That’s the nature of the capitalist system, and while it has some downsides, from my point of view, on balance, it does nothing but good. Sure, some admired products ceased to exist, but these are vastly outweighed by new ones that came along to replace them.

My purpose here is not to defend capitalism but to look at the nature of handloading and the kind of company that thrives by serving its needs.

Dick and Vernon Speer, John Nosler, Joyce Hornady and Bruce Hodgdon – these were all shooters. As such, they knew what was needed. They also knew their market because, in many cases, they were out shooting with them on the range on weekends, or chatting around campfires.

On a much bigger scale, the same is true of Bill Ruger, and much of the credit for the success of Ruger guns can be credited to his knowing his customers, and what they would buy. He didn’t depend on marketing surveys sent in by consulting firms, but trusted his own knowledge, instincts and tastes. Where did it get him? Sturm, Ruger & Company Inc. is now the largest gunmaker in the United States.

As companies grew, they became targets for mergers and takeovers. From the 1960s and into the 1970s, corporate types figured that combining several of these companies into one mini-conglomerate would pay dividends in the form of economies of scale, coordinated marketing, and all the corporate-speak buzzwords so beloved by junior executives.

Some had even grander ideas, and envisioned a conglomerate with separate divisions for golf, camping, shooting, fishing and so on.

In 1976, RCBS was sold and became part of Omark (remember that name?) Less than a decade later, in 1985, Omark was sold to Blount Industries. In 2001, Blount sold RCBS to Alliant Techsystems (later ATK) and still later, it became part of Vista Outdoors when that was spun off by ATK in 2015.

Meanwhile, back in Oroville, the Huntington family had a retail store, and also formed Huntington Die Specialties, which eventually became an internet retailer. It was run by Fred’s two sons, Buzz and Fred, Jr. Buzz died some years ago and Fred continued the business on his own, importing hard-to-get brass for obscure cartridges, from companies like Bertram in Australia, and Hirtenberger in Austria. He even had runs of brass made for obsolete cartridges like the 303 Savage – in that instance, by Norma – with the HDS headstamp.

Can you imagine a product manager of a large company doing something like that? They would have looked at the situation and dismissed it out of hand.

After all, the 303 Savage was only ever chambered in one rifle, the Savage 1899, and was discontinued as a chambering almost a century ago. How many were made? How many could still be used? The answer to both questions is, quite a lot. Hundreds of thousands, at an estimate, and loading for them has been a handloading-only proposition for decades.

This is the kind of niche market, and marketing, that only a small company closely attuned to its customers would recognize as an opportunity. To do a run of brass, Norma required a minimum order of 250,000. Okay, Fred did it, and now 303 Savage brass is fairly readily available; at least, a lot of it exists and can be had for a price, which is better than the situation of 20 years ago, when you could not find it anywhere at any price.

This is what a small company can and will do for us fanatics.

Hornady, still an independent company, still family-owned, still a hotbed of shooters, has done much the same thing over the years – resurrecting a cartridge like the 8x56 Hungarian that allows owners of those rifles to get them shooting once again. That cartridge needs both brass – it can’t be reworked from anything else – and bullets of an odd diameter – .328, not .323 – and Hornady supplied both. As the owner of one of those rifles, I’m eternally grateful. I doubt it was a big “profit center” for Hornady, but it made them a lot of friends. In the long run, friends count more than quarterly results.

Some things are worth doing for the good of the overall shooting and handloading community, but unless you are part of that community, you are unlikely to do it. Both Fred Huntington and Steve Hornady qualified.

Another favorite tack of corporate types when they take over a company is to “rationalize” its product line. Usually, this means dropping anything that isn’t selling in sufficient numbers, or with a large enough profit margin.

One part of the industry RCBS was famous for, for decades, was producing custom loading dies for wildcat cartridges, or dies for long-lost or obsolescent rounds. They were not alone in doing this, but they were one of the first and biggest, and had a great reputation. RCBS still makes dies, but dropped the custom end of the business a few years ago. Too much trouble? Too many man-hours for not enough money? Who knows? Anyway, it’s gone.

For years, one of the more enjoyable ways to spend a half hour was to call Fred Huntington and chat about the business, or cartridges, or bullets. During one of those conversations in 2008, I asked Fred about loading some obscure thing and he referred me to Bob Hayley in Seymour, Texas.

Bob was a bullet maker and custom handloader who produced “the weird, wacky and wonderful,” and insisted he could get any old gun shooting again. This began my long association with Bob, which lasted until his death in 2020.

Late last year, Fred also called it a day, and Huntington Die Specialties closed its doors for the last time.

Back to RCBS: While I’m not holding my breath waiting for Hodgdon to reintroduce any old RCBS goodies that have fallen by the wayside, I do believe it will end up with a closer relationship with the shooting community than it had as one small part of ATK, or Vista.

From our point of view, that’s all to the good.