doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com L.E. Wilson -- Gunsmith

If you search this name you will turn up thousands of hits for a company of the same name that makes reloading equipment.

Is this the same Wilson?

The Arrow is a wildcat, but kind of a boring one.
Doesn't go any faster than the parent .220 Swift.
Case life should be better.

.220 Wotkyns Wilson Arrow, Yes The reloading company he started is still in business.

https://lewilson.com/about

Yep.
Trying to find information on the gunsmithing history online is overwhelmed by thousands of hits to the L.E.Wilson company.

Was he a professional gunsmith building rifles for others, or focused on the making of gages and tooling?

I found this in google books, I hope the link works

discussion of L.E. Wilson and the 220 Wilson Arrow

Doc,

Link worked! Thank you.

Interesting read. I even have some of those Sisk bullets.

Reading between the lines he was gunsmithing, but it doesn't give enough information to know when or for how long.
That article is from the WWII era so prior to that time??

The rifle appears to have later styling cues and what appears to be a Bishop stock, but it could have been restocked at a later date.

Rifle magazine did 2, I believe, articles concerning Wilson. One was a profile of him. The other was an article by Layne Simpson about a rifle chambered for the 220 Arrow he bought, it included some conversation Layne had with Wilson concerning the Arrow. I seem to remember the rifle was an Enfield built by Wilson. If I get a chance, I'll try to dig them out.

Tim

Adding "Layne Simpson" to the searches turns up some reading material.
https://www.amazon.com/Handloader-Magazine-March-Issue-Number/dp/B0087GTXM0

I have both the Rifle and the Handloader complete sets. I can pull the relevant issues and copy and scan the articles if someone can tell me which issues I need to find. There are too many of each and no cumulative index and every time I go paging through them looking for something I get sidetracked for hours.

Bumping this question.
From what little I can find that isn't buried in the multitude of links to modern L.E. Wilson reloading supplies, he was also a gunsmith.
Assuming the L.E. Wilson built this rifle, what era is it likely to be from?

Still waiting for the rifle to arrive so can't pull it apart yet looking for any additional information.

Personally, I kind of wonder if he only rebarreled and rechambered rifles and let others do the stocking, which wasn't uncommon.
After reading what Hosea Sarber wrote, it sounds like an interesting improvement on the 220 Swift that increased the barrel life.
Just guessing from the articles, he was active both before and after WWII.