awp101 wrote:BTW the only thing I could find on the Epps website was related to new guns, etc. Nothing about what Ellwood did.
That's because it's a business and not a historical page. Ellwood passed away in 2002. He was 94. He sold his business eleven or twelve years ago to the present owner.
Ellwood opened his first business in the 1920s. It was a motorcycle shop. He got into gunsmithing in the 1930s because he was getting more work from farmers and locals wanting repairs done to guns. Bikes didn't sell too well in farm country. He had the machinery and the customer base, so he switched over.
The first fifty years of the 20th century were the golden days of wildcatting and gunsmithing. Most of the work was still performed by hand and smokeless powder cartridges were fairly new. Experimentation was rampant. Ellwood built a hockey sock full of rifles on single shot and military surplus actions. Nowadays, he's remembered for his Epps cartridges, but he did a lot of work with military surplus Mausers, P14s and SS Winchesters as well. He was an olympic pistol coach. He was also the local curmudgeon. Some of the locals didn't see eye to eye with him.
From the 1920s until the early 1960s, he was in southern Ontario, near Clinton. In those days, almost all of southern Ontario was rural. He built a lot of groundhog rifles but was getting more requests for big game rifles. He moved north and built the present location after chasing business north where the moose were. He lived in a house built onto the side of the shop. In 1999 or 2000, he moved from there into a single level bungalow because he was having problems negotiating the steps.
All Epps cartridges were based on a simple premise - a 35 degree shoulder with minimal body taper. They were built from 22 up to 44, but the 375 Epps was supposed to be the biggest practical design.
Times change. Today, Epps feels different from what it used to be. There was a time when guys would go in there and hang out by the wood stove and shoot the breeze. No more. Insurance costs kicked the wood stove out. No one can smoke inside anymore. They have a much bigger gun room and many employees now.
)
especialy if it had a 1/9 twist would be the meow for 70gr bullets at the higher velocities.