This is an excerpt from my new book "101 Classic Firearms." It's a capsule summary of the history of the Remington Nylon 66. I hope you enjoy reading it.
John
The Remington Nylon 66 .22 semiautomatic rifle was revolutionary when it was introduced. The stock and most of the rifle itself was made of plastic. It needed no lubrication. It was accurate and boringly reliable right out of the box. It was virtually impervious to the elements. Critics said it would never sell well. It sold phenomenally. Now that it has been long gone from production, used examples sell for escalating prices unheard of just a few years ago. Light, handy and nearly indestructible, the Nylon 66 filled a niche that no other rifle has since. It spawned a variety of limited-manufacture spinoff arms that are nearly unobtainable now and extremely expensive when found on the collector market. There’s never been anything like it.
Let’s rewind the calendar back to the late 1950s. Remington’s research and development department had conceptualized a .22 rifle made almost entirely of plastic, to be designed as a light, reliable and durable semiautomatic. Luckily, Remington had the resources of its parent corporation, DuPont, to come up with a plastic material that would meet stringent criteria. The synthetic material had to be moldable to any shape. It had to have high tensile, impact and flex strength. It should have high abrasion resistance and withstand extremes of cold and heat. It should not burn when an initiating flame would be removed. It should be fungus-resistant, and unattractive to rodents and insects. The finish should be easily repairable. And finally, it had to be self-lubricating and hold its dimensions indefinitely. DuPont’s solution was a blended Nylon formula christened “Zytel 101.”
Wayne E. Leek headed the Remington R&D department. Assisting him was a crack team that included Charles H. Morse, Homer W. Young, Robert P. Kelly, and James S. Martin. This team machined a prototype framework out of a solid bar of the new material for test purposes. They were thrilled with the results. The new gun was fired 75,000 times and exceeded all their expectations for suitability and durability.
Now it was 1958. Wayne Leek actually had two big challenges. One was designing the rifle, using a large number of metal stampings that could be made inexpensively and yet interact together reliably and consistently. The second challenge was even larger. The Remington management was unconvinced that the radical new rifle would sell. Leek had to become a crusader, selling the concept to the Remington brass. He lobbied hard, and finally got his way. The result was outstanding. The new rifle, finally called the “Nylon 66”, was named after the specific color mixture which produced a wood-like appearance. Production started in November of 1958, and in 1959, the new rifle took the market by storm. It was to become one of the largest selling .22 rifles of all time.
The new semiauto had no conventional stock and action. Instead these were molded together in two halves which were joined together laterally. This formed one sturdy and warp-free unit. The action parts were placed within this framework. The barrel was inserted from the front and held by a yoke in the proper position. A sheet metal action cover gave the visual illusion of a separate receiver, and was grooved for “tip-off” scope mounting. A tube in the buttstock held fourteen .22 long rifle cartridges that were fed forward into the action by a spring. The reciprocating blowback bolt rode on nylon raceways, and needed no lubrication. This was a big advantage, as oil would tend to attract unburned powder granules and other firing residue. A light coating of oil on the metal parts for protection was all that was needed. The stock looked like finely finished wood. It was first introduced in “Mohawk brown,” followed in early 1959 by “Seneca green,” which was actually a green-tinted brown. This version was only made from 1959 to 1961, with just short of 45,000 bearing this unique color. It’s a collectors’ item today.
The rifle had a “space age” look with its sleek lines and racy front sight. It weighed about four pounds and was easy to carry and handle. Its tubular magazine was well-protected within the stock. It proved to be utterly reliable and amazingly accurate. The first models featured a fully-adjustable notched rear sight, with both elevation and windage knobs that contained screw slots. The windage knob was exchanged in 1964 for just a screw slot in the end of the windage screw. The rifle illustrated is an early one made in September, 1959, and is complete with the windage knob. All Nylon 66s, by the way, have date codes stamped on the barrel which are easily found and deciphered on the internet, yielding the month and year of manufacture.
To induce the public to break with the tradition of wood and steel, Remington went all out with an advertising campaign. As part of this, Remington field representative Tom Frye, an accomplished exhibition shooter, used two weeks of his vacation in October, 1959 to set a new world record at the Holiday hotel in Reno, Nevada. Fifty-three years earlier, the legendary Ad Topperwein had shot at 72,500 2.5-inch square wooden blocks which were thrown in the air, using Winchester Model 1903 .22 semiautos over a period of 12 days. He shot all the blocks except nine. Frye was up to the challenge. Alternately using two to four Nylon 66 rifles, Frye shot at and hit all but six of 100,010 similar wooden blocks. The rifles and the Remington-Peters rimfire cartridges performed without a hitch of any kind.
In 1962, the “Apache black” variation of the 66 was introduced. This had a black stock with white inlays, and a chromed receiver cover and barrel. It sold well. 220, 564 units were made until it was discontinued in 1983. Also in 1962, the “Gallery Special” came on stream, modified internally to fire .22 shorts only. It’s easily identified by the sheet metal shell deflector plate on the side ahead of the operating handle. It was part of the line until 1981, and with only 16,474 made, it’s now a valued variation among collectors.
Flushed with the success of the Nylon 66, Remington came out with quite a number of spinoff rifles featuring the use of Nylon stocks. These came on the market in 1962, but never enjoyed the popularity of the “parent” Nylon 66s. There were bolt action single shots, bolt action tubular feeds, and bolt action “clip fed” types. There was even a single shot smoothbore for shooting .22 LR shot shells. Nylon-stocked lever actions (Trail Riders) in Mohawk brown and Apache Black were also made, as well as some limited all-black lever rifles with matte receiver covers that were uncataloged. All of these are now in the collector category, and they were discontinued in 1964.
In 1970, a detachable-magazine variation of the Nylon 66 came out. Called the Nylon 77, its plastic magazine held five rounds. It was not popular, and was soon replaced by the Mohawk 10C; the only change was a 10-round plastic magazine. This was not a catalog item and was sold at cut-rate prices through distributors. In 1978, the “Black Diamond” Nylon 66 came on stream. It had a black stock, but unlike the “Apache Black” version, the receiver cover and barrel were the standard blue. Instead of a white diamond stock insert, it had a black one, hence the name. It was discontinued in 1989. Two commemorative Nylon 66s were made, one to celebrate the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976, and one to mark the Remington 150th anniversary in 1966. Both had stamped bronze-filled roll-marked “engravings” on the left of the receiver cover. The final variation of the Nylon series was the Apache 77, sold only through K-Mart. It had a green “clip fed” stock, and unlike all the previous versions, no white line spacers were used. It used the same plastic magazine as the Nylon 10C.
Finally, the molds used to produce the stocks had become worn, and Remington decided to discontinue the Nylon rifles. They are no more. The last 66s were probably shipped in early 1991. It's been estimated that over 1,050,000 were made. Some of the tooling was sold, and a few clones were produced in South America for a while. There’s much more detail involved in the Remington Nylon saga, but space considerations preclude it from being covered here. It’s a subject for a future book – maybe when I find the time and a publisher! At any rate, used Nylon rifles are now in high demand, and besides their collector interest, they still make fine rifles for shooting. If you have one or more, you know that!
(c) 2014 JLM