Jan 9, 2016 4 min read

Many things come and go and the younger generation doesn’t know that some of them existed.

We not only churned butter way back when I was a kid, margarines did exist. But unlike today, they came in white and the yellow color was added by mixing in a powder that came with the package.

Many restrooms were outside and were cold in the winter and hot and smelly in the summer.

Deer rifles were a mix of 94 Winchesters and whatever else could be found in the family closet. But things change and among those things that go forgotten is the now-defunct Eighty Four Gun Company.

There did exist a company that built high-grade rifles just down the road from where I still live. A drugstore and pizza shop can be found at the location of the Eighty Four Gun Shop today.

Of course, that was some time ago and tells the reader just how old I am. The company was formed by Dick Bortmess, Buck Shoemaker and a handful of local businessmen invested in the endeavor.

Before that, Bortmess had been a key figure in another firearms company in Florida named Winslow Arms.

Creation of a new gun company and nurturing to success is not easy, and attracting conservative firearms owners away from older established names such as Remington or Winchester and such was not easy.

Perhaps the company was on the right track. They were building high-grade firearms, which avoided competition from the common Remington, Marlin and Winchester. Instead, they competed with companies such as Weatherby.

Bortmess was a craftsman with wood but his designs were along the more modern thinking. While I dislike a stock other than those that have a classic design and beautiful good wood, his designs had beautiful inlays, roll-over cheek pieces and wide, flat fore-ends that were ahead of their time.

Shoemaker and Bortmess were the primary figures, but there was another fellow from Hickory who did some of their stock work, including the checkering, who was an excellent craftsman. Reggie Crowley sure could checker, but sadly, like the others involved with the company, is deceased.

All the records of numbers built and other data are assumed lost. Just the other day Keith Jacanin of Signature Printing and I were discussing just how many rifles were built and sold by this 1970s company but no one seems to know.

I spent many hours swapping tales with people from the company and I don’t have any idea. I doubt though if they reached the 200-gun mark.

While it was their stocks that stood out, they did build their rifles around quality actions from Saiko and the bluing on the rifle was dark and even. Over the years since the demise of the company, I have seen but maybe four Eighty Four rifles that I can remember, and I live in the hub of their home base.

Shoemaker went on to a successful career raising livestock and doing some outside work for the local mine. Bortmess went on to do what he did best: build rifles at various locations.

I believe the last of these was in the Scenery Hill area. As I said earlier, they are all gone now, but when you stop at Danny Jr’s Pizza in 84, remember at one time there were fancy high-grade rifles being built in the building during the 70s.

I guess it would be safe to say the present business is in the dough, while the gun company had trouble with the dough. Presently, there are a handful of gun companies nearby, but not in Washington County.

Henry Rifles produces many of the parts for its rifles within the region, including Lesley Precision, which was based in Washington County before moving to a larger building in Belle Vernon.

E.R. Shaw is located in Allegheny County, and there is always that builder of high-grade 1911 style handguns, Cabot Guns, located in the Pa. town of the same name.

Regardless of the others, Eighty Four Guns were built right here at home.

George H. Block writes a Sunday Outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter.