One of the best firearms museums in the world, the Cody Firearms Museum in Cody, WY, has launched a new book shining a light on a part of their incredible collection which rarely gets displayed!
Did you know that alongside thousands of historic and fascinating firearms the Cody Firearms Museum is also custodian of an incredible collection of factory design drawings? The Museum, together with the McCracken Research Library, hold a collection of approximately 30,000 surviving drawings from the Winchester engineering archive.
‘Drawing Fire: Technical Drawings from the Winchester Factory Collection’ is set to be published by Helio House Press and a new Kickstarter has been launched to help fund the project. The book will draw on unique hand-drawn design plans covering the Winchester’s work from the 1880s through to the 1940s. This will include blueprints for everything from individual screws to entire guns to the tools used to make the guns to the buildings in which to make them.
Incredibly, some firearms are fully documented in the archive from concept through to final product, complete with drawings of each individual part, while others only survive as partial technical records. Nearly all of the plans were drawn on oversize drafting sheets that enabled designers and engineers to visualize even the small parts easily. This creates a unique challenge to digitise and present the drawings in book form.
Helios House Press say that the drawings will be “presented in a large-format smythe-sewn hardcover volume with a landscape orientation designed to highlight the expansive nature of the original drawings.” They also note that ‘Drawing Fire’ is “an essential item for the Winchester aficionado, a fascinating resource for anyone with an interest in American industry and manufacturing, and a beautiful work of art in its own right.” The sample images of the book certainly do look beautiful.
Design drawings are incredibly delicate and difficult to display to the public due to their size and fragility. This new book from the museum offers a glimpse of a part of the expansive collection that most of us would never get to see.
The Kickstarter page explains what the book covers and offers more detail on how it will present the drawings:
“together a selection of highlights from this archive, including key drawings for iconic firearms such as the M1 Garand and Winchester 1895, for which there is extensive documentation, as well as a number of lesser-known and prototype weapons, as well as tools and factory drawings. Drawings and other archival sources are supplemented throughout by beautiful original photography from Helios, and short-text summaries from the Cody Firearms Museum and Helios staff.”
If, like me, you’re an patent or engineering drawing nerd or just someone who appreciates the aesthetics of firearms head over to the Kickstarter page to find out more about ‘Drawing Fire’, check out a video showing the storage vault where the design drawings are held and find out about stretch goals for the project. At the time of writing the project is almost half funded after launching on the 21st September.
Find out more here www.kickstarter.com/projects/helios-house/drawing-fire
