When he was 5 years old, Ed Kukelkorn’s uncle had a target set up in his basement.

“A little bell would ring when the bull’s-eye was hit,” Kukelhorn said. “My uncle had a little rifle, and he asked me if I wanted to try it. He shouldn’t have, because I went crazy over it.”

And Kukelkorn, who now lives in Orangeburg, says he’s been “gun crazy” ever since, for almost 60 years.

He started working in a gunsmith’s shop when he was 10 years old, sweeping up the shop.

“I got 50 cents a week, but that was pretty good for a 10-year-old boy during the Depression,” Kukelkorn said, “and when I was a little older, I started learning how to actually work on the guns.”

In 1943, he enlisted in the Navy. When he went to boot camp, he wanted to sign up to be a motor machinist, but when they saw his background with guns, the powers-who-be said, “You’re going to gunnery school,” Kukekorn said.

At one point, he was stationed at an ammo depot in Hawthorne, Nev., in the middle of the desert.

“This is a heck of a place for a sailor,” he remembers saying. When he was asked if there was anything he wanted to do, Kukelkorn said he replied, “Yeah, I want to find out how I get a transfer outta here!”

For the remainder of the war, Kukelkorn was a gunner’s mate striker, which is the equivalent of an apprentice gunner’s mate. He was on his way to the Aleutian Islands when word came that the war was over. He actually ended up in New York Harbor on V-J Day, when President Truman arrived on the destroyer Isherwood.

When Kukelkorn got discharged from the Navy, he went back to New York, but “it was no place for a gunsmith,” he said. He had an opportunity to buy the gun shop he had worked in as a youngster, but couldn’t afford it, so he moved to South Carolina.

In 1952, he bought a house in Orangeburg, and built a shop in the back.

“I worked as an insurance salesman and as a millwright, and took in spare work as a gunsmith,” Kukelkorn said.

He later worked as a small arms technician at Fort Jackson, repairing and maintaining machine guns, pistols and M1 rifles. Over the next 20 years, he worked as a model maker, a machinist who made prototypes of tools, and as a toolmaker and tool grinder.

Kukelkorn got laid off in the early 1980s, so he decided to go into the gun business full time.

“I bought some machinery and started making my own guns,” he said. “And then I started making guns for the public. I build some pretty crazy guns. I took a 30-06 rifle and nicked it down to a 25-06. This built the pressure up a lot higher so it shot a lot flatter. I still have that gun,” he said.

Kukelkorn said his entire family used to shoot. When his daughter was 12 years old, he said he told her, “If you can trim me with a 30-06, I will build you the fanciest varmint rifle in Orangeburg.’ About two weeks later, she did just that.”

One type of specialty rifle that Kukelkorn has built is called a Schuetzen.

“The sport came over from Germany after World War II,” he said. “It is a single action rifle that is very accurate. You can shoot a hole right in the center of a 50-cent piece at 200 yards.

“I can’t make pistols or shotguns, because it requires too much machinery,” Kukelkorn added.

In 1963, he became a charter member of the South Carolina Arms Collectors Association, although he has not been active in it lately. He still enjoys target shooting and deer hunting and has built miniature cannons of various dimensions that actually work.

Kukelkorn continues to repair and build rifles in his unique backyard shop. He has a repair room, with machinery everywhere and tools of all kinds lined up on the walls. He also has a machine shop.

Although his wife says the shop is a mess, Kukekorn said, “It’s my mess, and I like it.”

T&D Correspondent Loretta Demko can be reached by e-mail at eeshtenem@yahoo.com. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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