I bought a rifle from a relative she said it was made in the mid 1950s for her father . they picked it up in Arapaho Co.
At the shop where the rifle was made. Its a CZ VZ24 action. the stock is French walnut full-length. High cheek piece. the barrel. Is marked 30-06 .Nothing else. a gun smith said that the barrel looked like a surplus Johnson military barrel.(He has worked on them) she said her father picked up the rifle early he was going hunting in Canada. he was supposed. to tack the gun back to have the stock checkered. but never did I've had the gun apart there's no markings on the stock or on any metal. the gun was made by a very skilled craftsman .but no marks . Any one have any info or a opinion off who made rifles in that area of Colorado. back then.
It could be almost anyone. The used-gun market was crazy after WWII because GI's who hadn't been able to hunt for years were suddenly back home with time and money on their hands. Sporting arms production also had not yet returned to pre-war levels and wartime price controls on new goods had not been lifted.
Under those circumstances, a lot of GIs studied gunsmithing on the GI Bill, then hung out a shingle. Some were good, others went out of business quickly. Mauser bring-backs were a common starting place, and a lot of them used surplus American military barrels because they were cheap, they had .308" bores, and quality was good. Also, not all of these guys built entire rifles--some did only metal work and others did only stocks, so it could have been a group effort. But without pics, we can't tell you much more.
Okie John
