Saturday morning, beautiful day, me and the missus are at Lowe's, spending money. As we're checking out and heading towards the exit I notice an older gentleman ahead of us, wearing a Husqvarna T shirt. In my head a voice shouts; OMG, a brother...HIYO!!! So I "get the steppin' " to catch up to him so we can converse about our beloved motorcycle brand. " I like your shirt there Sir. - Oh thank you. Do you have one of those motorcycles? - Huh? ...Oh, yes I do. NICE, which one? - A heritage softail. (?!? Hmm...) Wait, that sounds like a Harley?! - Yeah. (At this point I'm beginning to think that maybe we're not on the same wavelength...) Oh, I actually have one of those bikes. - Oh really, I didn't know they made motorcycles. Oh yeah, I think they even made motorcycles before Harley started (I was wrong, even though both companies started making motorcycles around 1903, true Huskys, engine and all, didn't come till 1918). - Really? I didn't know that. Yeah, I saw your shirt and thought you had one of them. - Ah, this shirt, yeah I got it in a chainsaw competition. Oh...got it, hey man, you enjoy the rest of this great day. - Yeah, you too.
Oh well they cant say you are not a friendly forthcoming chap. Pre bikes, Husky made guns and rifles for the Swedish military from the 1600's (you probably knew that, also the logo is a sight and barrel end of a rifle-you probably knew that too).
Yeah, a ranger in the national forest saw my Husqvarna sticker on the back of my Jeep and asked if I owned one. I told him that I owned three of them. He told me that he owned a Husky and a Stihl...
They also made sewing machines, my older brother had huge "Team Husqvarna" stickers on his van in the 70's, when he raced for them. People would come up to us in a parking lot, in a food store lets say & be like I didn't know they had a sewing machine team? After the 1st time, we played along & started saying oh yes, they have a World Champion sewing team...
Oh and don't forget my personal favorites. After their motorcycles of course they made some cool hand cranked meat grinders, made in Sweden by Husqvarna in a few different sizes. I have picked up a few of them and will try to buy them when ever I see them at garage sales and flea markets. If you are going to make Swedish meatballs the old fashion way you need a Husqvarna meat grinder. Or how about this confusing picture. Maybe the Meat grinder foundry and Husqvarna firearms guys got together for this one ?
My ex's mom had a CNC Husky embrodery machine. The thing was seriously cool. Could convert pictures to GCode and everything.
Ricky D that's an atrocious pun-might have you demoted to single A Class if you keep that up. (Aussie humour)
The thing is, as a kid, looking at motorcycles magazines that my dad had I was always under the impression that Husqvarna is some European motorcycle company that specializes in building racing machines. Only later in life I found out about all the other things that were made under this brand logo. At the same time I thought the Husky logo symbolized a Swedish crown and only later learned about the armament beginnings of Husqvarna and that the logo is actually a gun sight on a musket barrel. It's just that I always find it weird when people don't know that Husqvarna has been making motorcycles for a long time now.
