As a tool and die maker, I would absolutely LOVE to see that machine being set up and then cutting a rib!

Right - Good point Allan.





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I know there are others out there that have ORIGINAL Parker rib machines , it would only take a lot of time and effort to find one that a person/company would be willing to dispose of. Good luck !!! If I were younger , I would find one.

Think of this question---Do you think Parker Brothers only had ONE rib machine ???

Gary,
If your ever traveling through the area give me a call and I will take you over there. Last year Dave and I took founding member Fred Stump and his wife to view the Parker grave sites, the Meriden Historical Society, and the old PB factory site. I'm not sure the neighbors have figured out why people would stop on a dead end street to pick up old bricks.:)

A well run manufacturing company wouldn't limit themselves to only one machine that was depended upon to produce 5,000 matted ribs per year, let alone the fact that machines break down and can put production way behind schedule without at least one or two backup machines.


A guy would be pretty hard pressed to even find a single whole brick there anymore. The place has been so well bulldozed and the rubble is just about all crushed and crumbled brick and mortar. I have seen some bricks from the area purported to be from the original Parker Bros. factory but which are much too recently made to be from the Gun Works.





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I know where they are

The bricks or the rib mills?

Sorry for being so curt. I was on my I-phone in the shop. I was referring to available whole bricks from the factory site. There is an area on the lot that still holds a fair amount of whole bricks.

As far as the rib matting machine goes the last I saw of it was at Tony's place. The machine is more of a micro shaper than a mill. I would love to play with it as I have a lot of literature on it and it looks like fun.

The shaper angle is what I always imagined it to be, although I've never actually seen pictures of the machine either static OR in operation. You've actually got literature on this thing?!?! I don't suppose you'd be willing to scan and share copies of that, would you?

Dave submitted an article for publication in Parker Pages on Parker Bros machinery a couple of years ago and the rib-matting machine was featured in it.





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A CNC machine, as noted by Brian, would never be able to replicate the rib matting used by Parker. A a mill cuts metal whereas the ribs were rolled, giving a very different appearance.

Hey... At this point, i would take someone who could re-matte a rib by CNC.

I was just mentioning that it would habe a different look of you are talking about being completely correct.

I know. I was just commenting that CNC is not gonna 'cut it' for this type of operation.

We do have an alternative to a bricks & mortar museum. A Parker film documentary on the history of PB, the factory, people and grades would be relatively inexpensive to produce. No travel required and it would reach a broader audience. Much of the material has already been researched, collected and published. I'll bet the membership has even more to contribute too.

Wouldn't it be terrific to watch a PB historical documentary and learn about the manufacturing process along with photos and maybe even some early film footage? What a great way to educate folks about Parker and preserve a proud piece of American gun manufacturing

Thanks Garth - those are precisely my thoughts and have been for several years.
Another thing I have suggested to certain "low membership number" members is to record the history of the PGCA through each of their recollections... I mean each and every detail (good or bad) that they each can remember and record it all for posterity. Once these guys are no longer with us the PGCA's history becomes little more than "somebody once said."

There is a lot of valuable history in these guy's memories - things that were never written in The Parker Story - or any other Parker books for that matter.




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Get busy. I can't believe the number of Parker experts and historians are DED, yes, dee ee dee DED. Very few of them left anything in writing. I saved Herschel Chaddick ads for years and finally trashed them. They were a true piece of history that should have been preserved.