doublegunshop.com - home
Posted By: 375whelenIMP More info about Roberts & Kimball - 02/23/21 12:41 AM
I have been looking into this company a bit more, I noticed there is very little published about it and some of the info seems a bit incorrect. You commonly see reference that Roberts and Kimball only made rifles for about 1 year. Roberts and Kimball was announced in the American rifle June, 1935 edition as a semi-custom rifle company formed by Ned Roberts of .257 Roberts fame and WGC Kimball of Baker and Kimball a mail order antique firearm dealer and President large sheepskin tannery. Inserted below are some of the period ads
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
Here we see an advertisement stating they will be going out of business this was published in American rifleman july 1936
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]


In December of 1936
We get a notice that Kimballs 2 firearm companies will be merging into the new "Kimball Arms Company"
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]


The Roberts Target Model and Kimball Sporting Mauser would be advertised in Kimball Arms catalog up in till the Ninth edition circa 1942. I believe this is when the company had finally run out of the 98 actions they had been sourcing from Bayard in Belgium.
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]



As well we commonly see reference to SA Leonard being the stock maker but I think the work was also done by another as well.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

I have seen Ned Roberts write about J.E. Morrell doing some target shooting with him one weekend but no other information.



These pictures are both from a "Kimball Arms Company marked rifle


Does anyone else have some more info?
Posted By: 375whelenIMP Re: More info about Roberts & Kimball - 03/15/21 06:44 AM
I think it seems like J.E. Morrell is Joseph E. Morrell who I found helped Ned Roberts with early testing of the .257 cartridge

https://archive.org/details/sim_american-rifleman_1931-12_79_12/page/10/mode/2up?q=Morrell
© The DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com