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Wilkenson Arms
At 19 years old, I worked for Ray fabricating all the parts that went into the Linda, Sherry, and Terry. I was never allowed to completely assemble and test fire his babies. They were literally his babies as they were named after his daughters.
I can say that these pistols frames were made from high quality aluminum alloy extrusions and the tolerances were kept + - .002. The barrels were drilled and reamed with a new reamer every time barrels went into production. After 50 barrels, the reamer was replaced and a new one took its place. We would then pull a new broach through the barrel producing very nice rifling, without chatter.
When I was working there, Ray had a contract to produce a full auto version that was sent abroad to some South American country. The BATF allowed this for only one year.
Ray was a very proud man and would spend a little more money than most
when it came to manufacturing. He would scrap parts if they were just .0005 off. Boy do I remember that, I got chewed pretty good one day for fly cutting the frames out of tolerance. Those aluminum extrusions were obviously high dollar and I had even seen him reject them right on the truck due to them being slightly twisted.
Bottom line, It was an extremely well manufactured firearm that was all fit by hand, none of this CNC stuff.
Thank you,
Trdinput
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