RCBS History

RCBS was founded from a hobby by Fred T. Huntington in the early 1940’s. Originally located in the “back room” of his father’s Oroville laundry on High Street, RCBS soon outgrew this modest beginning and was relocated in Fred’s garage on 7th Avenue in 1947. The business continued to grow quite rapidly, and in 1954 a new building was constructed at 730 Bird Street. In 1959, a 5,000 square foot building was completed at the present location on Oro Dam Blvd. Today RCBS is housed in about 110,000 square feet of building. The very first RCBS dies were specifically designed to form jacketed bullets from fired .22 caliber copper cases. Because these bullets were used to shoot Rock Chucks – a varmint of the Western United States – we named these dies Rock Chuck Bullet Swage, later shortened to RCBS.

Although we no longer manufacture bullet-swaging dies, RCBS is the leading manufacturer of ammunition reloading equipment for rifles and pistols. The brass case is the most expensive part of a loaded round and when reloaded (replacing the primer, powder and bullet) offers savings of about 60% over factory-loaded ammunition. RCBS sells reloading equipment throughout the world and currently has a work force of 100 employees.

RCBS was acquired by Omark Industries in July 1976 and became part of the Sporting Equipment Division. In 1985 Omark Industries was in turn purchased by Blount, Inc.

In December of 2001, Alliant Tech Systems purchased RCBS. ATK is a leading provider of advanced weapon and space systems with approximately 15,000 employees and operations in 22 states. The company is the worlds leading supplier of solid propulsion systems and the nations largest manufacturer of ammunition. RCBS is now part of ATK Civil Ammunition Group.