Tag Archives: Monte Carlo stock

Did you know that Daisy used to make Firearms?

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Back in the 1880s, the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company of Plymouth, Michigan, used to make vaguely daisy-shaped all-metal windmill kits, specializing in sales to small and medium-sized farms. Founder Clarence Hamilton, a watchmaker, and inventor, also had an interest in airguns, forming the Plymouth Air Rifle Company at about the same time to manufacture pellet guns of mostly wooden construction.

Designing an all-metal air gun, Hamilton approached the board of the windmill company he founded with the prototype and it was soon in production as the Daisy, with the company including one with the purchase of new mills. By 1895, the guns proved so popular that the windmill company changed its name to the Daisy Manufacturing Company, to reflect their primary product.

After a brief (and accidental) stray into the firearms market in the 1960s, Daisy launched a line of .22LR rifles in the 1980s that was both interesting and short-lived.

More in my column at Guns.com. 

Stopping in at the Navajo Lodge, 80 years ago

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In April 1940, Russell Lee, a 37-year-old prolific shutterbug who worked for the government’s Farm Security Administration, crisscrossing the country to document American life, stopped in at the Navajo Lodge along U.S. 60 in Datil, New Mexico.

Pretty cool looking place. A rustic relic of the Old West filled with Navajo rugs, trophies, furniture crafted long before the days of pressboard IKEA junk, and guns. Oh, the guns.

Speaking of guns…check out this gun rack.

How many can you name?

More details after the jump to my column at Guns.com.