Sure....Jay was a co-founder and pretty creative guy. He designed what has remained to be the Vudoo logo. He worked at Barry's in St George and had never built a rifle in his life and neither had Paul. At any rate, following what ended up being a product launch at the NRA World Championships at Peacemaker in Sept 2017, I completed the manufacturing package and stood up the machines that were in St George at the time. It wasn't much, just a Haas TL1 and Bridgeport style manual mill with a cadre of finishing type tools.
Within a short time, Jay and Paul were building some of the best rifles that came out of Vudoo. At the time, the CNC lathe work out ran the extractor cuts in the manual mill, as would be expected, and most of that work was done by Jay. In parallel, I was also the Director of Engineering at Savage and made regular trips to St George. It was pretty awesome times as Vudoo literally became one of the top five hottest names in the industry in a very short period of time.
Paul then brought in a sales guy and that didn't work out so well, so he was terminated, and Jay didn't make it much longer after that. I'm sure
@jbell remembers Jay....he was a good Dude and for a while, his son continued to work at Vudoo as a builder after senior departed.
As far as what started the journey....During the 2009/2010 timeframe, I was playing with a few things in rimfire after having built quite a lot of CF rifles. I tripped over a group in Colorado that eventually called themselves the "40X Mafia;"
@Hoser seemed to be their ringleader, and they were on a path with single shot 40X's that sent me in the direction of developing a 40X repeater that actually worked. The project was deemed a success in 2010 after the magazine design and testing was completed.
So of course, what better place for this functional 40X Repeater than Remington Arms, right? Well, this was all at the beginning of Remington becoming very adept at declaring bankruptcy, but the window opened with them in 2012. Frankly, they doinked me around for four years and missed my final deadline in September 2016, so I departed the sandbox with my stuff and ventured out into the same unchartered territory that you found yourself in. And believe me, there was a lot to overcome between 2012 and 2015, but being tenacious paid off.
The interesting thing is, falling back on what I said earlier about how interconnected things are, Jacob Herman and I were in AZ at what was at the time, the new Surgeon Rifles facility. Part of what I discussed with Mark Johnson was any interest he may have in launching a high end rimfire. They politely chuckled and said no, but Paul Parrott was in the room, but didn't say much. So, I left and continued on my way but a little while later I ran into Paul in the SAC booth at NRA and he asked if I ever did anything with my rimfire. It was during this time that things seemed positive with Remington, so I told him I was working on something with Remington but the deadline was near and I'd let him know if they missed it, as I'd be walking away from them for good.
Sure enough, as they had so many times before, they missed the deadline and I called Paul. By August 2017, we had TEST actions produced and I started this thread on the day I built the first rifle to be tested, which is pictured on the first page of this thread. After building that rifle and it getting a bit of press, and this happened because of Jay Phillips, Lapua called and asked (because I designed the 22LR RAVAGE chamber around Center X) if we'd be interested in working with them at the NRA Championships and we immediately said, "YES!"
But, there was one test rifle and the parts weren't heat treated, and no "production" rifles and no functional shop yet in St George, but I had the CNC Lab in my garage in CT. We were able to get a few actions made and I built nine rifles in seven days, fired them into the ground out the back door of the shop, packed up a rented Suburban and drove to WV with largely untested rifles with no finish on them and they were the hit of the entire event. That's how we launched and the rest is history....
MB
