Great account of Herter's Vapo!

I am familiar with the name, but now I know the story!

Thanks.

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I am familiar with the name, but now I know the story!

There's a lot of stories to be told and one I'd like to hear is a guy that actually worked for Herter's in Waseca that bought the property and started a machine shop. IMO it was a fairly successful shop and I did business with them years later.

butchloc who posts here may have some insight to add to this. He was a fan of Gopher shooters supply in Faribault which was about 20-30 miles east of Herters. Ahlman's gun shop was also in the exact same area (read about Carol's checkering on gunsmithing)....it was a heavy duty gun environment in southern Minnesota

I'll see if I can get butchloc to post his memories here.

he might be in Africa right now!!

I just finished looking at a 1967 catalog of theirs and the wasp-waisted bullets did look pretty good.I have some 70gr softpoints of theirs and they shoot real good.
Another thing that jumped out at me was the myrtle wood stocks and all the hype about the perfect drying process.
It was a good read and laugh just before bed time.

The Herters collapse must be a regional thing. Good lord look at the Vikings. The team collapsed. The coach collapsed. The quarterback collapsed. And now the freaking roof collapsed.

I seem to remember that Herter's floated a .44 Magnum single action revolver by including it in their catalog before it was actually manufactured, with the idea that if there was enough interest shown, they would contract for it to be made in Germany.

Only problem was, they used a cut of the Ruger Super Blackhawk in their catalog, which displeased Bill Ruger to the point that he sued and effectively put them out of business.

o yeah i remember herters. used to buy lots of stuff there back in the early 60's their powders were norma and cheaper than anything else on the market, as was their brass. their stock blanks were usually quite good. the reloading press was a big cast iron monster that served a teenager very well if for no other reason than i could afford it. bought an fn deluxe barreled action there once in 264 , shot the barrel out in about 6-800 rds. tend to believe it was a very special steel - mild - the dies at that time were something to behold. that same 264 i couldn't get over 2 loads out of a piece of brass, then the necks would crack. finally took the expander nipple out and ran a case through it - the outside measured 257. never the less somewhere in the die rack i think there is still a set of herter 8x57 dies. bought a heavy barrel sako 222 mag barreled action there once & carved out a stock. still have that one. you always had to keep both eyes open when you went there. some of their stuff was good, mostly it wasn't. when they moved to south dakota i bought a whole bunch of american walnut stock blanks from them. they were really pretty pieces of wood. crotch with a white sunburst in the butt. only problem was that every one of them cracked at the wrist. the lasst ones i made i burried a 3/8 threaded rod in before i even started shaping. another interesting point is that after they closed shop a bunch of their people went to work for cabelas. (notice the familiar advertising at times) the fellow that owned owatonna tool (OTC) bought a 400 acre farm north of owatonna. he was friends with some of the old herter people & offered them a deal on the land if they'd build a store. it was just like coming home to them, they grabbed on and kaboom the rest is history

oh and another thing = anybody have a 401 powermag??

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Originally posted by butchloc:
oh and another thing = anybody have a 401 powermag??

No, but it represented a genuine, one-of-a-kind proprietary cartridge which preceded the much ballyhoed .41 Remington Magnum that Elmer Keith so modestly took full credit for.

The .401 Powermag used an actual .401" bullet, as compared to the .41 Magnum's .410" bullet. The advent of a "mainstream" .40 or .41 caliber cartridge produced by one of the major ammunition companies (R-P) and chambered by one of the major handgun manufacturers (S&W) doomed the .401 Powermag. I remember Herter's putting on a "firesale" on its remaining inventory of .401's, discounting them about 35% below the same (well made!) revolver in .357 or .44 Magnum. How we all wish we had bought a truckload of those rare .401's now!

Bullets were a problem for the .401 as no one but Herter's offered them, but I'll be that you could shoot today's 10mm (.400") bullets in it just fine. Brass might be another issue.

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the fellow that owned owatonna tool (OTC) bought a 400 acre farm north of owatonna. he was friends with some of the old herter people & offered them a deal on the land if they'd build a store. it was just like coming home to them, they grabbed on and kaboom the rest is history

I knew the folks at OTC and always wondered if they had a roll in getting Cabelas to Owatonna. IIRC the guy was killed in a plane crash.....he loved to fly and was instrumental in recovering a WWII bomber from the ice in iceland.

Was Bud Grant part of this circus of events?...Maybe you knew something of this?

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oh and another thing, anybody have a 401 powermag??

quote:

Originally posted by butchloc:
oh and another thing = anybody have a 401 powermag??

I have one my brother gave me and am currently emailing another fellow with one. Both have the same problem of shearing lead off the bullets. I thought it was a gunked up forcing cone, but am starting to wonder if it is something else. Good, robust single action made by Sauer and Sons in Germany. Not a Blackhawk by any means, but not bad for the price. Yes, 10 mm bullets will work, and you used to be able to buy a cylinder from a guy in Indiana in .38-40 in case you couldn't fine .401 brass.

I always wanted a U9 rifle, but never managed one. Bought a good bit of stuff from Herter's back in the 60's, and spent way too many hours going thru the catalogs. Wish I still had one to look at.

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I knew the folks at OTC and always wondered if they had a roll in getting Cabelas to Owatonna. IIRC the guy was killed in a plane crash.....he loved to fly and was instrumental in recovering a WWII bomber from the ice in iceland.

Was Bud Grant part of this circus of events?...Maybe you knew something of this?

buzz kaplan was the guy to bring cabelas here. hellofva guy. loved to fish and fly. he died in a crash of an old WWI jenny that he was restoring. crashed right next to the airport. bud (wife was my 2nd cousin for what that's worth) didn't have anything to do with it, he was a fishing/hunting buddy of buzz

I still reload on a couple of old Herters presses.
A Model 3 and a 6 station Turret.
Stout as hell

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I always wanted a U9 rifle, but never managed one.

The U-9 was made by BSA (Birmingham Small Arms) of England and was of pretty good quality. I had a hunting buddy that had one in 7mm RM that served him quite well. The only problem was that they had only 22" barrels, even in the magnum calibers, and it could be a bit noisy, even for a magnum.

Herter's other bolt action rifles, the J-9 and the XK-3, were made by various contractors in Yugoslavia and Germany (and maybe Spain). Just as they varied in manufacture, they varied in quality. I bought an XK-3 barreled action in .257 Roberts which was one of the German actions. The action itself had problems with the floorplate latch, the filler screws were frozen, it had a horrendous trigger, and the root of the bolt handle had to be ground down to clear the scope ocular bell. Ironically, it made an incredibly accurate rifle once I got the "95% inletted stock" (which resembled a fence post with a barrel channel cut in it) whittled down to a manageable mass of wood!

ive got 2 boxes of .401 powermag ammo... lead wadcutters... pm me if interesed..

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Originally posted by RayGunter:
I still reload on a couple of old Herters presses.
A Model 3 and a 6 station Turret.
Stout as hell

You could either load shells with a Herter's press, or use it to jack up a loaded semi to change a flat tire, whichever suited your needs.

Or, tie a chain to it and use it to anchor a battleship.

Two happy days: 1) the day in 1970 that I bought Herter's loading equipment and started reloading. I bought it in Olympia, WA as I was stationed at FT Lewis. 2) The day I sold all of it at a gunshow, having replaced everything with RCBS. (I loved the Herter's stuff until I was exposed to the good stuff and realized how rough the Herters stuff was).

They were selling used bear traps.....claimed they were finding them in Alaska and selling them as genuine antiques.....

Truth be known a company in Minnesota was making them, sandblasting them, and spraying them with a brine solution to accelerate rust.

They couldn't make them fast enough....Herters was always sold out!

Now THAT's a great story!

Looking for something on the shelf above my loading bench, I noticed something. It was a Herter's plastic cartridge box, the slide cover type for 20 cartridges. Until the advent of MTM, Herters ruled the plastic cartridge box market. I still have a bushel of the 20 round variety, along with a number of the 50 round pistol cartridge boxes I used to store my .22 Hornet/.218 Bee rounds.