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A Question About Dixie Gun Works
allen griggs
Member Posts: 35,692 ✭✭✭✭
As many of y'all know, Dixie Gun Works has been at the forefront of development and sale of reproduction muzzle loaders for the past 60 years.
I travelled up through Union City Tennessee and visited DGW about 25 years ago, even got my picture taken with DGW founder Turner Kirkland.
Mr. Kirkland passed away several years and the company was taken over by his sons. I just read that his son Hunter passed away last year. Does anybody know how he died? He was just 58 years old.
I travelled up through Union City Tennessee and visited DGW about 25 years ago, even got my picture taken with DGW founder Turner Kirkland.
Mr. Kirkland passed away several years and the company was taken over by his sons. I just read that his son Hunter passed away last year. Does anybody know how he died? He was just 58 years old.
Comments
Always wanted to go there but it's a long way off to that corner of Tn. Must have been great to visit there. I heard he had a nice car collection too.
Sorry to hear that. Back in the 60s-70s I bought a lot of parts and other things from Dixie. I was building muzzle loaders back then. I could spend hours just looking thru the catalogs. Haven't had a catalog in many years now. I need to order one.
Always wanted to go there but it's a long way off to that corner of Tn. Must have been great to visit there. I heard he had a nice car collection too.
You heard right.
quote:Originally posted by fideau
Sorry to hear that. Back in the 60s-70s I bought a lot of parts and other things from Dixie. I was building muzzle loaders back then. I could spend hours just looking thru the catalogs. Haven't had a catalog in many years now. I need to order one.
Always wanted to go there but it's a long way off to that corner of Tn. Must have been great to visit there. I heard he had a nice car collection too.
You heard right.
I like kids,but there is a time and place for everything...
Obit, COD not stated.
Yes he does have a nice collection. Hope it stays together. Hopefully there is still family that will keep Dixie alive.
I like kids,but there is a time and place for everything...
If taking a kid to a museum full of historical guns and cars is wrong.
Where and when is the CORRECT time and place?
I used to buy a DGW catalog every year, and I would spend hours reading it. Back in the sixties and seventies, before the internet, this was the Mother Lode of information about muzzleloaders. Turner Kirkland not only sold muzzleloader replicas, he helped develop them.
He worked with contractors in Belgium and Japan to provide guns, and kits, that he sold through his catalog. I bought the kit for one of his classic guns, the Tennessee Mountain Rifle, and I built that kit in 1983. The Tennessee Mountain Rifle had been one of the mainstays of DGW, starting back in the fifties, and Mr. Kirkland had arranged for the rifle, and kit, to be made in Belgium.
I must say, by the time I bought my kit, it was being manufactured by Miroku in Japan. I was disappointed in that, but, it was still a very well made kit with a beautiful tiger striped cherry wood stock. Being that I was the builder, before I browned the barrel, I filed off "Miroku Japan" from the barrel, didn't want to look at Jap writing while I was in my deer stand, I was in a Davy Crockett mood, not Samurai mood.
What a beautiful rifle! I killed 3 deer with that gun.
Back then, he had pics in the catalog of his two little kids, Lee and Hunter, who were hanging around the shop and helping their dad.
If you ever get the chance, you ought to visit Dixie Gun Works. Every gun in the catalog is for sale in the store. It is a huge store. Plus, they have lots of beautiful, and expensive muzzleloading replicas for sale for one to three Grand, and, they have real antique flintlocks and percussion rifles on the shelves. This place is a "must see" for any avid muzzleloading guy.
Back then those flintlock rifles could be had for a couple hundred bucks. It was hard to come up with a couple hundred bucks though.
So I bought parts and made parts, bought cast unfinished parts and finished them, such as brass trigger guards and side plates. Took original parts we could find from old rifles and bought the rest from Dixie. Lots of other accoutrements and books, I still have the handbook we used to make replicas of clothes, shoes, canteens, belts and bags we needed. Some of the best times I ever had, trying to make something from nothing. I'll always remember ol'Turner Kirkland and his bowtie.[:D]