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Thread: From the Guns.com Warehouse: The Atomic Age Whitney Wolverine

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    Team GunsNet Gold 07/2012 / Super Moderator Gunreference1's Avatar

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    Post From the Guns.com Warehouse: The Atomic Age Whitney Wolverine

    https://www.guns.com/news/2019/04/11...tJL71o16kw2RpU

    Steve

    Poster's Note: I believe someone who posts here has one of these.
    After today, it's all historical.

  2. #2
    Senior Member

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    I actually owned two over the years. I wish I had kept the one in the original box with the Alcoa Aluminum sticker on the bottom.
    They were totally reliable, accurate, and had a fast action.

    These were a low priced pistol but you got the performance of a far more expensive gun.
    It had the best magazine design ever done for a .22LR.
    They had plans to introduce a version with an adjustable sight and a bolt lock.

    What killed the gun was a mistake they made when they signed a contract with J.F. Galef to be the sole distributor.
    For unknown reasons Galef refused to advertise the gun. Since he had the exclusive contract and the guns were being sold, Whitney had no choice but to close the doors.
    This was a shame because they had plans to offer big retailers like Western Auto, Sears, Wards, Gambles, and others to allow them to sell a model with a specific look just for them.
    Since the outer part of the gun is nothing more then a shell to hold the action, they could make the exterior look like almost anything they wanted.
    So while a gun would have a specific look for a retailer, the heart of the gun would be the same.

    When Whitney attempted to follow through with this Galef threatened to sue because he had the exclusive contract.

    The Whitney would be a nice gun to make today, but the one company that was planning on reintroducing an aluminum gun never did, and the plastic gun made by Olympic was unreliable.
    This was simply poor quality since the original Whitney was known for reliability and a super fast action.
    In fact, Galef wanted to rename it "The Lightning".
    Due to the extreme simplicity of the design it's hard to understand how they could screw it up but they managed.

    As an interesting note, Whitney bought the plastic for the grips as scraps from a plastics manufacture who had left-overs from other contracts.
    While the standard was brown grips on blued guns and white on nickel, Whitney used whatever colors they could get, and guns with red, green, yellow, and other colors are known to exist.
    Last edited by dfariswheel; 04-12-2019 at 05:57 PM.

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