Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Kimber of Oregon - photo and link dump

Been meaning to do this for some time now to compile some Kimber of Oregon information in one place. I'll be posting up some KoO pics gathered from the web and I'm posting in the Hunting Rifles sub-forum as that's what these were all about. My intent here is to welcome any discussion, links, or references, good, or bad if you must, of the old Kimber of Oregon (pre-1991) or Kimber of America (1994-1996) including the sporterized Mausers. I'm linking to this thread on the main page 'reference' thread.

This is not for discussion of Kimber Manufacturing Co, Yonkers NY - 1996 onward. While the auto pistols were being prototyped in '95 I don't think they're of the right vintage for this. No Daewoos, no Montanas, no 84 30-06s, no Costa Rican woodshops...

I'll be including links to past 24hourcampfire.com threads too as time allows. If any heartache develops, please GFY.

For starters, here's mine, it's a Model 89 BGR 270 Winchester made in later '90. Has the Colton barrel stamp, my hometown, which the earliest 89s did not, they were stamped Clackamas as were all previous rifles before, IIRC summer 1990. It's very smooth operating, although I've not tamed it with handloads yet. I purchased it from a lying Texan SOB on Gunbroker who did not divulge a break in the stock... But, it is what it is and cost me about what they went for back in the day. I was only affiliated with the company as a lowly hourly employee during periods in '88-'91 and '94-'95. At times I worked directly with Greg and Jack Warne and developed a lot of respect for Jack. It was a rockn' good time of my life which I don't intend to divulge much about here, LOL.

When things KoO get brought up here on the Fire, I feel a desire to say a few things: I did not work on prototypes, I was not in the executive loop, I am not a Kimber of Oregon expert, I met but did not really know Dan Cooper, I did not know anyone that tested customer returned rifles prior to late Summer 1988, we in the woodshop did party A LOT, I mean A LOT, it was [bleep]'d but at times the Company had no choice (financially) but to ship rifles that we knew were not right, many KoO rifles were freaking awesome, we went thru a lot of Claro - over 500 blanks a week, the first Mod 89 BGR stocks that went out were fat phugging clubs shaped by one of the ol'timers of the company, I was freaking awesome at machine sanding, laminated 84 Varmint stocks caused our noses to bleed, the most accurate centerfire rifles I've ever shot were Remington 700s, the most accurate rimfire I ever shot was a Kimber of Oregon 82, Looks Feel Function and Accuracy were all top priorities, these were the finest Production rifles of the time, if it doesn't have a shadowline cheekpiece it ain't a Super... Always good to clear the air. Hope you got high speed!