doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com 1917 sporterized marked Shivell

Don't forget the PO Ackley owned a gun shop with employees. Most guns leaving Ackley's shop probably never touched his hands during reworks. Maybe early on he did the work, but after some fame he mainly oversaw work, and didn't do a lot of it himself.
I had a good friend whose father worked for PO Ackley when he had his shop in Oregon prior to WWII. He wasn't famous then, and my friend's father didn't regard Ackley as highly as most do today!

To me, Ackley is mainly important as an experimenter and innovator. He was mainly interested in how/whether a new wrinkle would shoot, not how it looked or handled. Most of his guns were good enough to use, and therefore good enough to sell.

And he was very interested in what happened when his customers used his creations--I still have a few of his letters responding to me regarding my experiences with a couple of AI ctgs. when I was a kid.

He also installed barrels, on request, with the stock, and other finishing done by the customer. I have a 338-06 AI with only the barrel done in his shop. If a whole rifle is credited to him, I would expect something more than a small barrel stamp, to ID it.
Mike

.338-06 AI. Worth a whole passel of mag-numbs.

I have PO Ackley's 2 set books on his various AI cartridges. I'm uncertain how much of an innovator or experimenter he was myself. It seems he simply took every known cartridge of his era and changed the shoulder to a much sharper angle to provide more support, and case life. Once he did the first AI cartridge, the rest seemed to simply follow suit.
There were those who came up with totally different cartridge designs that I consider real innovators. Just changing the shoulder angles and working up some loads is good, but not earth shattering research.