JMB, Dieudonné Saive, Bill Ruger. . . George Kellgren?

[Boats]

Before anyone laughs, this is a thread about influential firearms designers who were not one trick ponies (Gaston Glock, Eugene Stoner, Mikhail Kalashnikov). The following gentlemen are not all equivalent in terms of design production numbers, but they all did produce viable pistol and long gun designs.

JMB, too numerous to mention really. Levers, shotguns, machine guns, the 1911, partial credit for the High Power.

Saive, most famous for the BHP in its final form, improved the rate of fire of the M2 machine gun, and designed the FN-49, which became the basis for the FAL rifle.

Bill Ruger, made the everyman's .22lr auto pistol, single handedly revived the single action revolver market, clean sheet DA revolver, developed the 10/22, the Mini-14, and he pioneered investment casting technology into firearms production.

George Kellgren, following in the footsteps of the greats in my opinion, and I don't own any of the products. He designed the Tec-9, the Grendel .380, the P3AT, The P-11, the SU-16 rifles, and now perhaps the world's first bullpup rifle with a useable trigger. He is not in the pantheon of versatile small arms designers quite yet, but he is making strides to be there if he keeps innovating.

Does anyone disagree or think there is another designer currently alive who has a shot at becoming one of the greats?

 

[NinjaFeint]

Kellgren: I think he is an awesome idea guy. I am not sure the execution of his ideas are always the best but we need people like him to get the ball rolling on innovations.

The three that you call one trick ponies, made one tricks that changed the firearms landscape. If that is not great, than what is?

 

[Boats]

The three that you call one trick ponies, made one tricks that changed the firearms landscape. If that is not great, than what is?

A separate conversation on a different kind of greatness?

 

[Owen]

Stoner was hardly a one trick pony.

AR-3
AR-7
AR-9
AR-10
AR-11
AR-12
AR-15
M16 rifle
AR-16
Stoner 62 / Stoner 63
TRW 6425 25 mm “Bushmaster” auto cannon
Ares FMG (folding machine gun)
Ares Light Machine Gun (aka the “Stoner 86”)
Advanced Individual Weapon System (AIWS)
Future Assault Rifle Concept (FARC)
SR-25 (U.S. Navy Mark 11 Mod 0 sniper rifle)
Stoner 96
SR-50

 

[Mikee Loxxer]

Didn't Kalashnikov also design the PKM? Don't know that I would call him a one trick pony.

 

[earlthegoat2]

And here we go.

Thats what you get for trying to start a decent thread. You make a quip about one trick ponies and it turns into the usual THR bickering and nitpicking.

Blah blah, I know Mikhail, and Stoner may have had a few hits but what of all that is remembered by most of us. Oh yeah I always see AR-11s at every store and the Stoner 63 had such a storied history in modern conflicts....before you flame me for this you might want to question just what you THINK you know and what you THINK I know.

Endless squabbling will result from this.

I personally like Saive. I give him nearly full credit for the HP since the Browning design was striker fired and every other way different. Saive may have capitalized off the 1911 patents expiring and maybe not. He still produced the first high capacity pistol. The FN 49 was also an underrated but great advancement in rifles. Some may say Garand but I am of the opinion that the 49 and the later FAL are the only true battle rifles.

 

[Owen]

ok, on topic, I don't think you'll see many designers with known names. There are alot of guys out there that have had their fingers in 15-20 different guns, but you'd never know who they are, because they were working on teams.

Developing a production ready gun is an extremely expensive proposition, and these days you pretty much need to have a corporation behind you, just to pay for tooling up. JMB was lucky, because he came into the field just as the technology was changing over, and he didn't have to follow his own act. Now the technology is very mature, and the improvements are fairly small and incremental.

Look at SHOT show. When was the last time there was an earth-shattering revelation there? All the big advances in small arms are in the accessories, like the soon to come sensor-fusion sights that are both image intensification and thermal sights, overlayed on the same plane. That kind of device doesn't have a single designer, but rather dozens of people working on a team.

I don't know how many people George Kellgren has working for him, but I would be very surprised to find that his design shop is a one-man show.

 

[John Wayne]

JMB and Ruger produced designs that actually worked and have stood the test of time. Kel-Tec is innovative, but none of the 3 that I've owned actually worked.

 

[Hk Dan]

Robby Barrett has a shot at greatness. I'd have to tip my hat to Gene Stoner, too. Far from being a one trick pony, that guy was prolific. Helmut Weldle would have to go in there too.

 

[Jim Watson]

Mr Browning has been quoted as admiring J.D. Pedersen as a first rate firearms designer. He not only had to design functional guns, he had to work around Browning patents. Likewise T.C. Johnson pretty much carried Winchester for some time after they lost Mr Browning's services.

Ever hear of Horst Wesp? Worked for Glock, Walther (P99), and Steyr (AUG.) Although undoubtedly part of a modern engineering design team, he looks pretty versatile.

 

[19-3Ben]

I know I'm gonna get flamed for this, but I'd consider John Garand as another one hit wonder.

I'm inclined to agree with you Boats. Kelgrenn has done a lot for the firearms industry in that he conceived and developed the guns that began the whole micro-pistol craze that we see now.
I mean, we had pocket pistols before, but they were all in .22lr, .25acp, and the big boys packed a .32acp. But his P3AT was revolutionary as a polymer framed, .380 that was lighter and smaller than all the precedent pocket guns in much smaller calibers.
Used to be that if you wanted a .380 it meant going to something the size of a Walther!

I think Kellgren changed our perspective on things. I think that thanks to him we can now reasonably expect bigger punch from a smaller package.
As for his other designs, he really does think outside the box. I mean a folding pisol-caliber carbine? and folding 5.56 rifles? Neat ideas. Certainly not a straight line thinker!

Justin Moon did a similar thing with the Kahr line, but since those guns are all based on the same operating mechanism, i'd consider him another one hit wonder.

Edit to add:
I don't know that I'd give Bill Ruger credit for the Mini-14. As far as I know, he just scaled down an M14.

 

[eye5600]

I don't mean to diminish his achievements, but I see Ruger's contribution to gun design as evolutionary, not revolutionary. His revolutionary contributions were to manufacture.

He was also very insightful about the gun marketplace, and made great successes by introducing products for which popular opinion would have said would have no buyers.

 

[PTK]

Yes, I would personally include people such as Kjellgren with the greats. Stoner, Kalashnikov, Nikonov, Stetchkin, etc. are in there too.

 

[Oyeboten]

Samual Colt

James Parris Lee

Eugene Reising

David Marshal Williams

Aimo Lahti

Iver Johnson

 

[RedLion]

Hiram Maxim was pretty cool, and don't forget Richard Gatling or Wilhelm and Paul Mauser.

 

[GRIZ22]

Does anyone disagree or think there is another designer currently alive who has a shot at becoming one of the greats

Firearms design today are usually the work of a panel of engineers and not one or two people as they were designed in the past. Thomas Edison really didn't design a lot of things he is credited with outside of coming up with the concept and other people making it work.

I doubt you will ever see firearms designers like Browning, Stoner etc.

Garand only designed a machine gun before the M1. He never made a dime on anything other than his paycheck as he was an government employee at Springfield Armory. His design of the first general issue semi-auto rifle nonetheless is a significant event.