Sad day. I hope Winchester starts looking at creating their own brass and bring consistency and quality control under their roof. The 17WSM is a spectacular round, but needs to break-away from the Olin made RS brass. As of the publish date of this article, Franklin Armory and JARD, Inc are the only companies producing semi-auto 17WSM rifles.
As a point of fact, our hunt report using the 17WSM Volquartsen semi-auto rifle that was published in 2016 is still one of our most popular videos, bringing in thousands of views a month!
A Tough Announcement For Us To Make
“How do you decide what product to build next?”
For us, the answer has always been simple. We build firearms that we are excited to shoot. Firearms that we ourselves would buy. For this reason, it’s always been our mission to build products to what we consider the best they can be. That doesn’t mean we ever try to stop innovating and improving upon an existing design, though.
For this very same reason, it’s extremely tough for us to discontinue a product due to factors other than product demand.
Unfortunately, we have made the difficult decision to not proceed with the manufacturing of our 17 WSM Summit rifle.
This decision has not come easy. Believe me, we have done everything within our abilities to get these rifles to perform up to our standards and expectations. We have invested a lot of time and money in an effort to avoid this outcome.
So what’s the issue?
The 17 WSM is an awesome concept with ballistics unmatched by any other rimfire cartridge. A rimfire cartridge generating over 3000 fps at the muzzle is no small feat. Without a doubt, the engineers behind this round had to think outside the box in order to accomplish these velocities from a rimfire round.
The downside of this round is that the variance from one round to the next, in particular in the rim dimensions. We have tried to overcome this issue in a multitude of ways and design changes. After testing our most recent design changes, we thought we had the answer. As our testing continued from one lot of ammunition to the next, our excitement was short-lived. Upon changing from one lot of ammunition to the next, the issues we had been working hard to correct soon resurfaced.
Initially, we thought maybe something had changed within the rifle itself. However, after switching back to the previous lot of ammunition, the problems disappeared. Unfortunately, this process has repeated itself more times than we would care to count.
We don’t give up easily, and I can’t recall a time that we discontinued a product under these circumstances. Yes, we have discontinued products that were replaced with newer products or were no longer relevant, but never for this reason. We are as stubborn as they come, but at some point, certain factors are simply out of our control.
We are extremely disappointed at having to announce this decision. We know many of you have been anxiously awaiting your order.
As a company, we are always looking forward. We will be redirecting our efforts towards several new projects that we can’t wait to show you.
If you currently have a Summit 17 WSM on order with us, your order will automatically be canceled. If you have paid a deposit, this can either be refunded to you or applied to a new order. Please email us with any questions you may have on this. Our sales team will be following up with you regarding your order.
Additionally, as a result of these ammo variances, we will no longer be taking orders for our semi-auto 17 WSM rifles. If you currently have a semi-auto 17 WSM rifle on order and would like to inquire about order status or make a change to your order, please reach out to us.
Sincerely,
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