What I remember of an article on Melvin Johnson was that in the early 50's, he went to work for Winchester as a designer and some sort of advisor. An agreement with John Olin at the time was made that Winchester purchase his 'Johnson Automatic Rifle Company' and what ever parts, inventory, ect remained of it.
(That inventory and parts were later bought by Numrich from Winchester, which then sold the entire lot to Winfield Arms. Winfield had bought and imported the Dutch contract Johnson rifles from Holland and the small lot of USMC remaining rifles that Johnson bought back from the USMC after WW2.
Winfield was in the Johnson Auto Rifle Biz.Both Military and Sporter types)
While Melvin was working his 'job' at Winchester, (now relieved of the Johnson Automatics Rifle Co of WW2) he also ran a small gunsmithing shop (out of his home I believe) in Hope Valley, RI.
Here he concentrated on rebarreling and restocking mostly WW2 surplus MAusers into sporters. He supposedly made the bbls and were marked Johnson Automatics.
270Win was one of his favorite calibers for those, if not his favorite.
He had many business contacts and was not shy about finding outside sources to make parts and bbls for his projects.
When the Chilean Gov't placed and order for 1000(?) of his Model 1941 SemiAuto Rifles in 1943(?) but in 7mmMauser cal,,be attempted to get the Hoffman Rifle Co of Amarillo to make the bbls for them. Just business.
So perhaps the bbls on his small shop custom projects were from an outside source,,I really don't know. But he was certainly knowledgeable enough to have either made them himself or known enough people to have them made for him.
The Johnson Automatic Rifle Co of WW2 era did make replacement bbls for 1917 US Enfield rifles that went through rebuild in US Arsenals. MArked JA at the muzzle,,2 groove. I don't know if they made replacements for the 1903 or other US small arms also.
That's about what I recall. Interesting man, career, and weapons designs.
