http://www.pressconnects.com/apps/pb...73234925574921
The familiar but tattered Ithaca Gun name can
once again be listed with shotgun manufacturing companies.
It's now Ithaca Guns USA, LLC, and headquarters is Upper Sandusky, Ohio.
The move from moribund to viable happened, or is
happening, fast. When I ran across the Web site
(http://www.ithacagunsusa.com/) last week, it was
still under construction and I was only the 700th-something visitor.
Craig and Floyd Marshall, owners of MoldCraft, a
molding and tool and die company that makes
plastic molds for fast food chains' salad bowls
and the like, purchased the rights to the Ithaca
Gun name, designs and inventory in December.
Using their 30,000 square-foot CNC
machinery-equipped plant and Ithaca Gun plans and
specs, the new company is already turning out
variations of the Model 37 pump that has been the
flagship of the troubled Ithaca Gun name for early 70 years.
"We've been in business for 36 years," said Craig
Marshall from his office Monday afternoon. "We
had the machinery and the know-how— and frankly I
find the gun business far more exciting than molding salad containers."
Ithaca Gun LLC, which was formed in 1995 to
purchase the company's name and assets following
the failure of Ithaca Acquisition Inc. in King
Ferry, failed itself last summer.
The company moved from its rented factory
quarters in King Ferry last spring in
anticipation of being purchased by a Rhode Island
entity. When the deal fell through, Ithaca Gun
LLC — which had defaulted on a development loan
from Cayuga County and faced significant federal
and private debt — closed its doors.
The company's barrel machine was lost as
collateral and most of the remaining tooling was
sold off, but netted just $8,200. The Marshalls
entered the picture in the fall with a purchase
offer, and a deal was was finally negotiated a week before Christmas.
"I think the former owners deserve credit in that
they turned down a larger offer to assure that
manufacturing would remain here (in the United
States) and quality would be maintained," Marshall said.
The guns are identical to those made in the past,
but Marshall notes that the use of better steel
and new manufacturing processes will improve the
quality. The company is building variations of
the Model 37 bottom-ejection pump and has plans
to eventually redesign and build the Model 51
autoloader, the NID double and possibly the
elaborate Knickerbocker trap design.
They have a service department in place that will
service all Ithaca models with the exception of
the SKBs. The new company cannot honor the
warranties on guns built by Ithaca Gun LLC,
however, because of pending legal consideration.
Ithaca Gun was founded in the 1880s and was
managed for nearly 100 years by the Smith family
until it fell on hard times and sold out to the
company that owned Brunswick/AMF in the 1980s.
That Ithaca Gun entity went bankrupt in 1986 and
a Rochester-based corporation, Ithaca Acquisition
was formed to buy the assets in 1987. That
company moved the manufacturing plant from its
original site on Fall Creek in Ithaca to a school
building in King Ferry in 1989. Ithaca
Acquisition failed in 1994 and Ithaca-based Ithaca Gun LLC was formed in 1995.
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