A modern-day task for old-time shootist
By Ken Grissom
Outdoors

The following article Appeared in The Houston Post, Sunday, July 8,1984. It has been retyped verbatim from an old copy for your convenience.

Excerpt from the article: 'Because Golden Powder cannot be detonated by concussion (to prove it, he spreads it out on an anvil and smacks it with a hammer)...', The complete article can be read below.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. - Skip Kurtz looking for an old style "shootist" like Annie Oakley, Ad Topperwein or Ed McGiverns to promote his revolutionary gunpowder is a little like Dolly Parton looking for a buxom blonde to help her sell her songs. As long as he's peddling fuel for the likes of Kentucky rifles and $$ thumb busters, Kurtz is unquestionably his own best salesman.

He carries his middle-age bulk like Johnny Cash and has the same ragged, good-looking homeliness. He wears his dark hair like an Apache, bound with a thin leather headband. The wispy mustache and goatee, the silver-and-turquoise Indian jewelry around his neck, and the .45 Colt SAA in the worn holster at his hip - all suggest a man moving frequently and easily between the Old West and this glittering new one.

Kurtz, in fact, used to be a trick shooter(as well as a singer, songwriter, actor) on nightclub stages and movie locations.

An amateur historian

He remains an avid gun collector, recreational shooter and amateur historian. This explains why he would seek to promote his invention, Golden Powder, the way gun and ammunition were promoted 70 to 100 years ago.

And it goes a long way toward explaining why on earth a man would concentrate on marketing fodder for muzzleloaders and guns built for black powder cartridges when he could be sitting on a bona-fide synthetic fuel for everything from lawnmowers to the space shuttle. (It's not the whole explanation. Kurtz is extremely guarded about Golden Powder's other potentialities, and the Colt on his hip isn't for casual spies from the likes of Goex or Hodgdon.)

Kurtz said he and his sons, Joe 25, and Timm, 23, stumbled onto the formula about 12 years ago while they were casting about for a better means of reloading ammunition. None of them has formal training in chemistry, physics or ordnance.

"Any chemist, if he knew what we were working with, would tell you it can't be done." Said Kurtz, "We did it because we didn't know we couldn't."

Naturally, Kurtz isn't saying exactly what it is they have done except that they have discovered an "organic-inorganic" mixture , made from raw materials commonly available, that is non-toxic, (it better be - I drank a big slug of it in liquid form), non-corrosive and non-polluting.

And it will shoot a gun.

Kurtz volunteered a long list of things that Golden Powder is not - including petroleum, sulfur, phosphorus, mercury, peroxide, perchlorate, aluminum, iron, nitrocellulose, charcoal or carbide - which is to say it is nothing that gunpowder or explosives normally contain.

Because Golden Powder cannot be detonated by concussion (to prove it, he spreads it out on an anvil and smacks it with a hammer) the way Black Powder and other explosives is, Kurtz says he expects it to earn the same classification as modern smokeless powders, meaning that it can be shipped and sold like so much Unique, with none of the Class A headaches that keep black powder from being widely available.

There is also a patent pending, and in that respect, Golden Powder is ready to be marketed.

'Kitchen-sink' lab

But right now, Kurtz and his crew are operating out of what he himself describes as a "kitchen-sink" lab, In the shadow of the Strip. Oro-Tech Industries, Inc., the parent company, is in the process of issuing stock to capitalize a plant and Kurtz says his product should be on shelves in gun stores by next Spring.

(Another configuration, available about the same time or sooner, will be a substitute for dynamite that can be set off with nothing more than a standard car battery.)

In the meantime, Kurtz's marketing scheme for the new gunpowder is to evoke the nostalgia that causes many of us to want to shoot the old-time guns in the first place. The logo, designed by Timm Kurtz, looks like it belongs on the shelf of a 19th century hardware store. And the talent search is already on for a team of modern-day counterparts to the Annie Oakleys and Ed McGiverns of yesteryear.

If you think you've got what it takes to be a "shootist", and don't mind traveling around the country exhibiting your skills - and Golden Powder - at rodeos, rendezvous and gun shows, send a resume, along with a recent photo to Oro-Tech Industries, 1701 W. Charleston Blvd., Suite 510, Las Vegas, NV. 89102.

Back