Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 1964 gun Digest

As I mentioned in another thread, I just got a copy of the 1964 Gun Digest. What a treasure trove! Must be a couple of hundred small-font pages of articles by mostly departed gun scribblers on all sorts of stuff. The prices in the catalog section really gave me the vapors.

I just got started on it, but the one thing that stands out so far is a couple brief blurbs on the new, improved 6mm Remington. We've all read the story, maybe multiple times, but these bits show that Remington stepped on its own winky again when they tried to fix the mistakes made with the .244. The new bolt action came with a 20" light barrel, and accuracy was disappointing（time constraints prevented the development of handloads or checking for scope issues). It was also suggested that the cartridge should have gone into a long action, and that perhaps the twist should have been tighter than even 1-9". Sounds familiar. The other rifle mentioned, but not tested, was the 742.

Based on this example, I'm going to order some more of these old issues. There's a lot of good reading to be enjoyed for $8.

I've got a 1967 Gun Digest that somehow survived and it makes for pretty neat reading. The prices back then were pretty darned attractive, but then gas was $.24 a gallon and I was making $1.67 an hour summers working at the packing house. It is all relative.

I have a 1968, 1972, 1976, and 1979 Gun Digest.

I have a somewhat incomplete collection going back to about 1961 IIRC.

The annual Gun Digest was highly anticipated back in the day and would be read cover to cover within a couple of days. If I have a good general knowledge of firearms and developments over the last 60 years it's from GD. They had articles on everything from modern and historical firearms and the latest things Elmer, Jack, Bill, George and others were doing to articles on obscure gun proof marks from 1860's OstPodunk, Bavaria.

Like a lot of gun related literature back then they didn't assume the reader had a Twitter like attention span and did assume they had an education and common sense beyond a 6th grade level. Obviously some of the information is dated but I still refer to several of those old articles for practical advice which has stood the test of time.

I have the entire set of Gun Digests going all the way back to number one, which I believe was published in 1944. I still go back to them from time to time as references and sometimes just pick one off the shelf to read for pure pleasure. They are great publications.

I too keep a set both for research and enjoyment.

In 1967 when I was starting high school I saw an ad in my dad's American Rifleman for binders to keep your magazines in.I thought it would be cool to be the only one to have an American Rifleman binder at my school. However it wasn't a 3 ring binder but had vertical bars to hold magazines so I did the next best thing and put all of the issues from 1967 in it. Makes for some interesting reading. The prices have changed dramatically but the gun control BS is just the same.

I've got a copy of the 1964 Handloader's Digest. Intro on the inside front cover by Joyce Hornady. The item prices have sure increased a long ways!

Here are some bits of Gun Digest trivia:

My set also goes back to the first edition, dated 1944, although my copy is a reprint Ⓒ1963 by the Gun Digest Co. The original first edition, Ⓒ1944, had no cover date, but the reprint added a 1944 cover date along with a subtitle "First Annual Edition". The second, third, and fourth editions, Ⓒ1946, 1947, and 1948, have corresponding subtitled 2nd, 3rd, and 4th annual editions, with the latter including "(1949)" in the subtitle.

In 1949, something apparently happened in the editorial offices of the book because it's publication skipped a year. The first four editions were edited by Charles R. Jacobs and published by Klein's Sporting Goods of Chicago. The fifth edition is Ⓒ1950, the cover is dated 1951, and John Amber is the editor. (NOTE: My copy of the fifth edition is the reprint Ⓒ1977. If you own an original fifth edition, could you check whether the book comes from Klein's or from DBI? I suspect the latter, but please let me know by PM. Thanks!)

Jacobs immediately began to edit a competing annual titled Offical Gun Book. The first edition, Ⓒ1950, was published by Crown Publishers of NY. The blurb on the back cover indicates some possible acrimony at his being displaced from Gun Digest: "Charles R. Jacobs, creator of [i]The Gun Digest, decided to issue instead of a new edition of that work, this larger volume which includes more material, more pictures and more essential data on every type of American and foreign arms and ammunition than ever before assembled.[/i]"
Some articles in the book were written by writers whose names are relatively familiar, including Al Barr, Pete Brown, Julian Hatcher, Elmer Keith, Warren Page, and Phil Sharpe.

(For the record, the Gun Digest of the same date had 225 pages vs 179 of the competitor, and Amber's list of authors included Hatcher, O'Connor, Weatherby, Keith, Whelen, Landis, Askins, and Sharpe.)

The Official Gun Book lasted through six annual editions, with the names of the writers becoming progressively less well known.

There exist a couple of editions of Gun Digest[/] of which some copies don't have [i]Gun Digest[/] covers, but have rather plain covers reading "gun guide". The first is Ⓒ1950 and internally is the fifth edition of [i]Gun Digest. The copyright notice is by Klein's Sporting Goods. The other, Ⓒ1953 by DBI, is dated 1953-54 on the cover. Inside pages are identical to the 8th annual Gun Digest, except for the table of contents. Because both front and back covers depict flossy J. C. Higgins guns, I'd guess that these books may have been a special order publication for Sears.

Images of covers of various editions of Official Gun Book and of the gun guide are readily found online.

--Bob

The 1964 gun digest is one of my favorites. You should check out the accuracy article in that one. You guys that think old rifles and old bullets weren't/aren't accurate, might be a little surprised.

Like a few others who've posted, I have a complete set of GUN DIGESTS, which have proven very interesting and useful over the years for many reasons. One of the more obscure is the articles on the firearm proofmarks of various countries, which have both helped solve zome mysteries and start others.

Among the more amusing articles have been one reviewing the then-new Remington 721/722 rifles, which except for the somewhat dated language sounds a lot like the Campfire's reactionary and insulting opinions about many of today's very accurate yet inexpensive rifles. Yet today the 721 and 722 are considered "classics" by many shooters.

I enjoy any of the old shooting publications. The early Handloader and Rifle magazines are amazing. And let us not forget the Herter's catalogs.

The 1962 Gun Digest contains, what I consider to be the best twist rate calculator out there. John Maynard is the inventor/author. I have used it with unfailing good results to help customers select the right twist rate for their project. Ease of use, to me, is it's best feature, for someone with limited computer skills. It is in a graph form, and once you use it, it's easy to just move a ruler across the graph to experiment with different variable inputs (bullet length, weight, velocity etc.) and conversely you can take a given twist rate and calculate what bullets will work.

I painstakingly built a complete set of Gun Digests a few years ago. Then I got a "I'm getting older, time to start downsizing" stupid idea idea in my head and sold them. Made money on them, but what a maroon I was.

My copy came from Klein's, copyright 1950.

I have a complete set of GD (a couple of reprints) and I enjoy the old ones. I keep buying the new ones, but am almost always disappointed. The real treasure trove is Shooters Bibles from the forties and early fifties. The various sight, scope, and other accessory sections have invaluable information on which sight fits which rifle, etc.. I brought all but one of mine to be door prizes at the last Savage Fest in Wisconsin.

As a teen birthday and Christmas presents were often Shooter's Bible and Gun Digest. I subscribed to Rifle and Handloader magazines from about the time they first appeared and always looked forward to the arrival of Herter's catalogs and Brownell's. Herter's was an excellent source for gunstock blanks, I purchased several exhibition grade American black walnut blanks in the early 1970's. Price was a little more than $100.00 per blank.

In 2012 I moved for the first time in 34 years. I threw out I don't know how many Gun Digest books and some Handloader Digests to lighten my load of materials to be moved to my new residence. I still have a few Handloader Digests but haven't referred to them in a long time.

Jim

I used to see old Gun Digests and all sorts of well worn magazines at gun shows. Years ago, there was an older fellow who went around collecting and reselling them for .10 ea. at the shows. He said that he only did it for the chat and all the dimes did was pay for his table. I think he was a widower and did it for the company.

Payola wasnt as big back then either........every product wasn’t great and they said so.