Richland Arms Michigan...rifle Q's.

[StevePrice2]

My coworker brought home a rifle for me to look at.

It's an import from Italy through Richland Arms, Michigan.

Anybody have info on these?

a brief description of the rifle.

Barrel is 36", .45 cal, proof marks, Richland Arms Company, Blissfield Michigan. Black powder only.

Full stock, cap lock, the lock is smallish with a weak spring, double set triggers, Euro walnut, patchbox, decent fit and finish, noticeable cast, might be 40+ years old.

My internet search did not yield much. One big red flag was some gunsmiths called either this model which might be a Kentucky rifle or the Pennsylvania rifle a "Yorktown" as in reference to the exploded cannon from that battle.

any info or thoughts?

thanks,
Steve

 

[killer]

seen one on gunbroker or auctionarms a week or so ago. might want to look there for info.

 

[ohio ramrod]

I don't know about their rifles but in the seventies they "rebranded" some petroseli shotguns. I have one I bought in seventyone.

 

[hanshi]

In the 1974 issue of The Gun Digest, A Richland Arms .45 fullstock "Yorkshire" rifle is still listed. It is described as having a select grade maple stock & 36" barrel. The price at that time was, if memory serves me correctly, around $150 give or take. This puts it higher in price than many of the high dollar rifles of the time. Putting this in perspective and judging by what the surviving competition costs I'd estimate it would be selling for $500 - $800 today.

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

Richland Arms used to carry a rifle they called the "Michigan"rifle. There was another long dead outfit that carried a similar rifle they called the "York" rifle. They were a step up from the entry level stuff like CVA but were still low cost compared to T/C or the like.

I recently saw one of the Richland Arms rifles at a gun show, and they wanted $100 for it. It was still there the next day, so apparently collector interest isn't very high. Looked to be in nice shape though. They had some stamped out parts as I recall.

 

[jaguarxk120]

I have the Michigan in 45 cal., flintlock. There are no stamped parts on the gun!

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

Good to know. Could be the "York" that I'm thinking of. There were an awful lot of Spanish and Italian guns imported by these companies-and there a number of these companies, too--and in this price range, pennies counted. One importer would specify a few stamped parts, often where they wouldn't be seen, to allow them to undercut the next guy. Instead of case hardening they would specify bluing or a less highly polished overall finish. Sometimes the same gun would have a different name according to the whim of the importer. It was a real crapshoot sometimes.

 

[shortstring]

I live 6 miles from where they used to be located. They went out of business probably close to 20 years ago now. They imported both modern & ML guns. They were better known as Richland Furs & also had a business in the snow skis.

 

[StevePrice2]

Rusty and Jaguar-

This is the "Michigan" rifle in .45 percussion. I took a bunch of photos of it but looks like I going to pass on it. Everything I have in ML'ers is .50 cal right now and any additional caliber is going to be bigger or down to a jack rabbit plinker.

here's the one full length shot. If anyone really wants the other pics of it let me know.

BTW - no stamped parts.

Steve

PS- this rifle is quite slim and trim. Very little extra wood and the overall feel to me is that this would be more of a junior or missus rifle. Nice balance, good evident cast to the buttstock, length of pull is 13.5 and OAL as I mentioned is 51". Seems like it should be slightly beefier and 3-5 inches longer or maybe that's just me. Has that "Euro" look and feel to me. Some of the lines seem odd. It has a short toe plate and the flat under the toe plate to the trigger guard. but what do I know?

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

A lot of the early imports have the "Euro" look. I sometimes wonder if the tooling people weren't working from bad photographs. Even when they had an actual antique gun to work from they often got it wrong.One of the bigger importers gave an Italian builder a Colt Navy to copy and the first prototype, while generally resembling the Colt, had screws that would have held a battleship together. It took some serious negotiating to straighten that out!

 

[Martin Ullman]

Was at a gun show on sunday there was a guy there try to sell a Richland Arms hand gun in 44cal.He wanted $300.00 for it.I told him he was nuts,that it made way back in late 60ezz?.Very rough cast meatal almost looked like a early kit gun.The blueing on it looked real bad.

 

[Zonie]

BellyDancer
What you didn't realize is that the gun you were looking at was an old family treasure that came over to America with the Pilgrims.

Valuable guns like that don't grow on trees. :rotf:

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

Richland wasn't famous for top quality merchandise. Some of it was pretty sad. Few were surprised when they went out of the muzzleloader business. Actually, few probably even noticed.