Following a courageous fight with cancer, Michael Petrov died February 17th, 2014 at the Providence Medical Center in Anchorage, Alaska.
Micheal was born in 1946 in Oregon and grew up in Colorado. In 1963 he joined the Army and was discharged in 1966 as a Sergeant E-5. He returned to Colorado and stayed long enough to earn some money to buy a pickup truck and head North. He ran out of road in Alaska and lived there ever since.
He spent his career working in a remote location with a schedule of one week at work then one week at home. With all the time off he started doing historical firearms research. His specific area of research, study and collecting was pre-1940 American custom rifles using the 1903 Springfield and Mauser actions.
At first he did research for other writers but then started writing himself. He had been retired for about ten years and wrote about three to four articles a year for Precision Shooting magazine. His first book was published by Precision Shooting and is titled
Custom Gunmakers of the 20th Century (click here).
Michael was a highly valued member of our Milsurps
Advisory Panel
and his many contributions to 1903 Springfield research with be sorely missed by our community. Fortunately, his articles and books live on, creating an everlasting legacy for this wonderful man.
PM
