Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Winchester 88 accurizing: Rogue River Rifles?

Gratuitous name-dropping here, but a number of years back at the Shot Show, I shared a dinner table with Chuck Yeager, and he bragged to me about his 88 that an outfit accurized for him.

I seem to recall their name as "Rogue River Rifles" or similar. Google search comes up with an outfit "Rogue River Rifle Works" in Paso Robles, but I thought Yeager said this outfit was in southern Oregon, and specialized in accurizing the 88.

Can anybody help? Did they go out of business? Is the Paso Robles outfit what Chuck talked about?

I don't know of them ,but I have awrite up I did of accurzing and smoothing the action up on several of them.

PM me with your email address and I will send it if you feel like tinkering with one yourself.

I think Boddington had a couple of rifles built/rebuilt by them, but I remember no specifics. Maybe some sort of tie-in with Rigby?

I live near Rogue River and I think they are out of business, the old boy must of retired. We do have plenty of good gunsmiths around just none with that name that I know of.

I remember seeing some pics of his (thinking it was a 358 in a Winchester 100) with a custom stock done by them and it was real purty.

I had Doc at MPI in Oregon rebarrel an 88 with a Douglas barrel in .358 win and put on one of his stocks. First rate work and much less expensive than Rogue River rifle quoted me for it when they were in business. I remember a Boddington magazine article where he talked about the Paso Robles Rogue River Rifles work they did for him. Check out MPI stocks if you are interested.

Years ago I acquired a M88 308 which I REALLY liked except for the horrible trigger. I read/heard that Rogue River could fix the trigger. I spoke with them about it. Don't recall the price they wanted, but whatever it was, it was high enough to convince me to just sell the rifle.

If I remember correctly, RR would rebarrel an 88 to 7mm-08 if
you wanted one.

Found a pic of one..

Maybe do a search on the innanet?

I too remember an article that mentioned Rogue River from about 4 or 5 years ago, but I thought it was in Rifle or Handloader, which are nicely indexed and accessible via the web or the CD/ROMs that Wolfe Publishing sells.

My M-88 was rechambered by a (now retired) gunsmith from Grand Junction area. He also sold me a trigger job that I can live with. That was a good investment, although it took a while to get it all working right.

a trigger job sure "accurized" mine. with the factory trigger I could only shoot 2" with it, had the trigger tuned to about 4#'s and 3/4 to 1 moa was common

I have a '57 M88, would love to find a gunsmith to do a good trigger job.

Yup a 358 win

Thanks for your kind replies, and I did take saddlesore up on his offer. Sounds like Yeager's smith folded.

I found on the internet an entry from some years back on shooters forum by "EDip", where he showed a bedding method. I also have "Gunsmithing Tips and Projects" (Wolfe Pub.) that has an entry there.

I have "pad-bedded" on either side of the barrel screw (and floated all else on the barrel), but have not tackled the breech block bedding. Some improvement was realized.

Smiths sort of roll their eyes and rub their thumb and forefinger together when I talk about trigger improvement, so I haven't gone there yet, although I do believe that is a significant contributor to the gun originally shooting 2.5" average. Now with the barrel bed job, and some load workup it's 1.5-2.25 average.

I am socially aqcuainted with Doc at MPI here in Oregon, and have had good work done by him. This '88 is a .243 (Post 64) that has already been restocked with a Fajen, and done rather well, so I don't want to trash the wood for synthetic.

Yeager's gunsmith was Geoff Miller of Rogue River Gunworks in Paso Robles CA (805-227-4706). He puts custom stocks and barrels on model 88s, and fixes the abysmal triggers. He did a trigger job for me, which cost about $200. It was worth every dollar to have a 3 pound crisp trigger.

After the Boddington article, I called Rogue River to ask what it would cost to get my 308 Model 88 rebarreled to 7MM-08. Turned out my four digit serial number made it not an acceptable candidate for them. Something about later models being stronger. Saved me a bunch of $$$.

I believe that this is the current reincarnation of Rogue River Gunworks, and they no longer work on 88's:

John Rigby & Co.

Yeah, Rogue River was the company that became "John Rigby", which I always thought was blasphemy, not that I could EVER afford a Rigby anyway. If all the rumors that have been circulating lately about Geoff Miller are true, he's probably in hiding somewhere.

Conflicting info here, although I am somewhat familiar with the "John Rigby" controversy. Didn't realize it was the same guy.

Thanks for all the input,and for DrHJH, how long ago did you have that trigger work done?