The Arms Room

Sunday Smith #50: Number 2, 1863

2011-03-27T22:47:00.005-04:00

Smith & Wesson did not invent the metallic cartridge revolver but, by buying the Rollins White patent and manufacturing it on a wide scale, they did make the first commercially viable cartridge revolver in the United States.

The tiny Smith Model Number 1 sold like gangbusters, but there were those who wanted more. The Number 1 launched a tiny .22 caliber, 29-grain bullet, seated over 4 grains of black powder. While it beat a handful of nothing, there was obviously a market for a revolver that combined the ease of metallic cartridge reloading with a chambering that packed a bit more wallop. Enter the second offering from S&W, imaginatively labeled the "Number 2".

The Number 2 was a physically larger revolver than the Number 1; in the terms of the day, it lay somewhere between a pocket gun and a belt gun. The most common barrel lengths were five or six inches, which meant it could be carried in the deep pockets of a frock coat or in a small belt holster. It used a .32-caliber rimfire cartridge, launching a 90-grain bullet over some 13 grains of black powder, for a muzzle velocity of more than 800fps. This gave it a muzzle energy roughly equal to the modern .32 ACP cartridge, which fires a lighter bullet at higher velocities.

The timing of the Number 2's launch could not have been more propitious, coming as it did shortly on the heels of the shelling of Fort Sumter. Although it was never officially adopted by the U.S. Army, Yankee soldiers spent their own money ordering them to the point that S&W had to close their order books only a year or two into the war, and the revolver to this day is informally known as the "Old Army" model, despite its lack of official contracts.

Manufactured from 1861 to 1874, roughly 77,000 Smith & Wesson Number 2s were shipped from the factory in Springfield, MA. They represent a fairly obscure field of S&W collecting; pristine examples bring well into four figures, and even rough shooters will command prices not too far south of a grand. The pictured example, made in 1863, is practically worthless as a gun, missing a couple of parts, and was picked up for just over $100 at a gun show in Indianapolis in early 2011.

Incidentally, the existence of the Number 2 explains an oddity in S&W nomenclature: Having launched the tiny .22 cal Number 1 and the larger .32 cal Number 2, Smith realized that there was a market for a small vest-pocket sized gun that chambered a more formidable round than the .22 rimfire. They produced a five-shot vest pocket revolver chambered for a shortened .32 round, but since it was bigger than a Number 1 and smaller than a Number 2, the only way they could keep their frame size labels consistent was to dub it the Number One-and-a-Half...

Sunday Smith #49: .32 Safety Hammerless 1st Model, 1891

2010-10-25T17:42:00.010-04:00

The real story behind the Safety Hammerless revolvers from Smith & Wesson is as hard to track down as many myths that predate the little revolvers by millennia. The popular lore is that Daniel B. Wesson was horrified by a newspaper account of a child who accidentally shot himself with daddy's revolver, and so he set out to design a safer handgun. An alternate explanation is that, with an increasingly urbanized population that was less likely to go openly "heeled", the American gun-buying public would respond to a small revolver with an enclosed hammer that wouldn't snag on clothing when drawn from coat pocket or purse, and which couldn't discharge if the hammer spur were struck on the pavement or bumped on the edge of the nightstand drawer.

Whatever the reason, the first S&W Safety Hammerless revolvers hit the market in 1887 in .38 S&W caliber. Officially termed the "New Departure", and known in popular slang as "lemon squeezers" for the grip safety on the backstrap, they were followed by a smaller .32 S&W caliber version the very next year.

The first .38 Safety Hammerless revolvers used a complex "Z-bar" latch that used lateral movement to unlock the downward-tipping barrel-and-cylinder assembly. This was replaced in the second year of production with a push-button mechanism that was shared by the first .32's as well. In an interesting note to our modern sensibilities, which are trained to flinch at the thought of lawyers, the "lemon squeezers" were originally shipped from the factory with a pin that could be used to disable the grip safety.

The push-button barrel latch was hardly a triumph of ergonomics. After all, as the shooter's support hand was trying to tip the barrel down for unloading, the tendency was to use the thumb of the strong hand to actuate the latch button, inadvertently applying enough pressure to hold the pistol shut. It was replaced in 1902 with a simple "t-bar" toggle that was intuitively operated by the support hand.

The Safety Hammerless top-breaks were wildly successful for Smith, continuing in production long after the more modern Hand Ejectors had supplanted the more conventional top-break revolvers. The .32 Safety Hammerless remained in production until 1937, and the .38 version wasn't discontinued until the eve of World War Two, in 1940. Even so, the concept of a small, pocket revolver with an enclosed hammer to avoid snagging on clothing is one that has yet to go out of style. It is interesting to note the similarities between the .32 Safety Hammerless 1st Model of over a century ago and the Model 432 .32 Magnum Centennial Airweight I carry in a coat pocket today. (The latter is the one with CTC Lasergrips...)

One of the most striking things about the old .32 top-breaks to our modern eyes is their almost lilliputian size. The cylinder of the .32 is about exactly half the length of the cylinder on a J-frame magnum, and the whole gun, 3" barrel and all, will lay in the palm of my hand without the barrel overhanging my fingertips, and I'm a long way from palming basketballs or playing concert piano.

The .32 Safety Hammerless 1st Model in the photos is in probably the most common configuration: Nickeled, and with a 3" barrel, the gun shows signs of hard use and a rough re-nickeling. I picked it up for a song, just barely over $100 at a gun show in late 2010, and the serial number dates it to the very early 1890s. It still times decently and locks up well, even though the bore is about as ugly as you'd expect for a well-used piece of its vintage. A nice one could bring four or five times that, easily, or more if it were in an unusual configuration.

Continental .32 Pocket Pistols, 1900-1914, Part II

2010-09-08T19:01:00.004-04:00

A quick vignette of three more European .32 autos:

The top one, in the white, is an Austrian Steyr-Pieper M1908/34. Not content with the bizarre designs churned out by their native sons, Steyr licensed a design from Belgian gun maker Nicholas Pieper. Featuring a tip-up barrel (released by the lever above the trigger guard,) the mechanism was unusual in that the recoil spring was located above the barrel and pivoted with it, being fitted with a hook on the back to engage the slide. The example shown was made in 1920 and was issued to the postwar Austrian State Security Police.

The second one down is a Mauser M1914. A nicely-fitted pistol, the 1914 was a scaled up version of the company's M1910 .25 auto. An odd feature by modern standards was the removable sideplate in the frame, allowing access to the lockwork. The M1914 was a common substitute standard issue pistol in the imperial German army during the First World War, and the example shown sports military acceptance marks and came to America as a war trophy.

On the bottom is the one that started it all: The FN M1900, John Browning's first commercially successful self-loading pistol and the original home for the 7.65 Browning Automatic cartridge, now better known as the .32ACP. The pistol has several unusual features for a Browning design: The recoil assembly is above the barrel, rather than being concentric or located beneath it; also, the pistol requires tools, or at least a screwdriver, to disassemble for cleaning. The successors to this ur-Browning, the Colt M1903 and FN M1910, were vastly less baroque in their construction and seem quite modern by comparison.

The Thirty-Two and I.

2010-07-12T18:11:00.003-04:00

At first glance, "early .32 Auto pocket pistols" seems to be a strange collecting niche. I mean, why? What's the fascination? How did I wind up here? Well, there are several reasons, many of which I didn't understand until I was halfway down the rabbit hole, so to speak: It wasn't until I'd already accumulated a few that I really began to grasp why I found them so interesting.

For starters, the .32ACP, or 7.65 Browning as it's termed across the pond, is a strong candidate for the oldest autopistol cartridge still in common use. John Moses Browning developed the round for his first commercially successful self-loading pistol, which went into production at Fabrique Nationale in Belgium at the close of the 19th Century, and it's been in constant usage ever since.

Further, it was one of the first “standard” pistol chamberings. It was common practice with early autos to design a new cartridge to go with a new pistol. With the strong sales success of the FN M1900 and its associated round, later manufacturers of small autos found it convenient to design their offerings around this already extant cartridge, assuring their customers of widely available ammunition.

Thirdly, the guns themselves are often very interesting from a mechanical standpoint. The early 20th Century was a time of rapid change and broad experimentation. Unlike today, when the self-loading pistol is a decidedly mature technology and most advances are incremental and usually revolve around new materials, the early 1900s were a time when the best ways to build a working pistol were still being felt out by trial and error and dozens of designs, ranging from the familiar to the baroque, were tried. Blowback, blow-forward, short recoil, long recoil, striker ignition, exposed hammers, enclosed hammers... all were represented somewhere.

Additionally, the very construction of the pistols approached the status of metalworking art. Casting, stamping, injection-molded plastic... none of these techniques had been applied to firearms production yet, and so everything is intricately machined from forged steel and often fitted to a level of precision that would satisfy a watchmaker. These are not characteristics associated with mass-produced items in our day and age.

Also, these pistols are tangible artifacts of a very different era. They are from a time when, through most of the Western world, there was nothing terrifically unusual about a gentleman owning a small pistol which he could slip into a coat pocket, should he feel the need for a little insurance. They are also from a time when a small, .32 caliber pistol was considered adequate for police, gendarmes, or even the military: The original .32 M1900 from FN was adopted as the official service pistol of the Belgian army.

Lastly, they are very accessible. Some of the rarer models, or guns in outstanding condition, may bring moderately high prices, but working examples of many of the most interesting ones can be had for $300 or less. Thanks to their durable steel construction, they are generally still quite functional. And thanks to the ubiquity of the .32 ACP cartridge itself, spending a pleasant afternoon at the range with one of these living fossils is well within the reach of most collectors.

Small-Frame Smith Top-Break Taxonomy:

2010-05-10T14:27:00.008-04:00

Although Smith & Wesson introduced their centerfire top-break revolvers, complete with automatic simultaneous extraction and ejection, in 1870, they were only available as bulky holster pistols for over half a decade. It wasn't until 1876 that they brought a smaller model, suitable for concealed carry, to the market.

The smaller models, however, had much wider appeal on the civilian market and, in one form or another, continued in production long after their more martial bigger siblings had been discontinued. With the last .38 caliber models shipping in 1940, these little guns had been in production for over sixty years and hundreds of thousands had found homes, making them easily the most common and affordable antique Smiths on the market today, so a quick overview of the most common variants may be helpful.

The first to show up was the .38 Single Action. The earliest variants had the complicated rack-and-pinion ejection system of the bigger .44 Russian models, complete with its long underbarrel housing, earning them the nickname “Baby Russians”. There were obvious differences, however.

Their smaller size dictated a five shot cylinder, chambered for the new .38 S&W cartridge. Further, as a single-action pistol intended for boot or pocket carry, they lacked the usual trigger and triggerguard arrangement of the bigger guns, having instead a “spur” trigger; a protruding nubbin protected by flanges integral to the bottom of the frame.

In 1878, they were joined by the similar, yet even smaller, .32 Single Action. The .32 enjoyed a couple of mechanical refinements, namely a simplified and more compact actuation system for the ejector and a rebounding hammer that kept the firing pin from resting on the primer of the cartridge, both features shared with the larger New Model Number 3 .44 revolvers that debuted the same year. In 1880, these features were added to the latest version of the .38 Single Action.

LEFT: .38 Single Action 2nd Model (top), .32 Single Action (bottom)

The .32 Single Actions were discontinued in 1892, but the .38 received a conventional trigger and triggerguard in 1891 and remained in production until 1911.

Also in 1880, double-action variants of both the .32 and .38 were introduced. These are immediately distinguishable by their conventional triggerguard, with the trigger sitting about halfway forward inside the guard. The .32 Double Action remained in production until 1919, while the conventional .38 DA was discontinued in 1911.

RIGHT: .38 Double Action 2nd Model (top), .32 Double Action 4th Model (bottom)

In 1909, however, an interesting variant of the .38 Double Action was introduced, known as the “Perfected Model”. In addition to the topstrap-mounted latch shared with other Top Break Smiths, it had a knurled thumbpiece latch like the newer solid-frame Hand Ejector models. Because of this second latch, they were the only Top Break S&W revolvers with their sideplates on the right-hand side of the frame. The Perfected Model was discontinued in 1920.

The final variant of the small-frame Top Breaks is the “New Departure” or “Safety Hammerless”. These revolvers, in both .32 and .38 forms, are not actually hammerless, but rather feature an enclosed hammer, which makes them less likely to snag on clothing when drawn from concealment in a pocket or purse. In the rapidly urbanizing America of the late 19th Century, when gentlefolk were not prone to go about openly “heeled”, this was an important consideration.

The .38 Safety Hammerless debuted first, in 1887, followed by the .32 caliber version a year later. In addition to the enclosed hammer, which rendered them double-action-only, they also had a grip safety on the backstrap, which blocked the movement of the hammer unless depressed by a proper firing grip, which feature lent them the nickname “lemon-squeezers”.

The Safety Hammerless models were very successful. Almost a quarter-million .32 New Departures were made between 1888 and 1937, and by the time the last .38 shipped in 1940, over 260,000 of the larger model had found homes.

Thus, despite the more modern Hand Ejectors with their swing-out cylinders and more potent chamberings having been on the market since the last decade of the 19th Century, it wasn't until the eve of America's entry into the Second World War that Smith's last Top Breaks left the catalog. As a result, plenty of fine examples of these little revolvers are available for extremely reasonable prices and provide an inexpensive entry for the collecting of antique American handguns.

Below is a group photo with some additional identifying information:

LEFT COLUMN:

Top: .38 Single Action 2nd Model. If it were a 1st Model (aka "Baby Russian"), it would have a longer ejector housing under the barrel, coming to within an inch or so of the muzzle on this example. A 3rd Model would have a conventional trigger and triggerguard.

Middle: .38 Double Action 2nd Model. The sideplate (on the other side in this photo) would have had straight edges fore and aft if it were a 1st Model, whereas this gun's are curved. If it were a 3rd Model (or later), it wouldn't have the groove and second set of stop notches around the middle of the cylinder.

Bottom: .38 Safety Hammerless 4th Model. The upward-lifting latch distinguishes it from the 3rd Model, which used a central button, while the pinned front sight distinguishes it from the 5th Model, which used a front sight milled integrally with the barrel rib. The fact that this gun has been refinished is made obvious by the fact that the latch, trigger, and trigger guard are all shiny. On a factory nickel gun, they would have been blued steel. Also because whoever did it made the gun look like a bumper.

RIGHT COLUMN:

Top: .32 Single Action. Like Athena from the forehead of Zeus, the .32 Single Action hit the market in its final, mature form, already having a rebounding hammer and simplified ejector; thus there are no "1st" or "3rd" or whatever.

Middle: .32 Double Action 4th Model. This pistol is distinguished from the earlier 3rd Model by its round (rather than recurved) triggerguard, and from the 5th Model by its pinned, rather than integral, front sight.

Bottom: (This space awaiting a reasonably-priced .32 Safety Hammerless.)

Continental .32 Pocket Pistols, 1907-1912, Part I

2010-05-09T23:56:00.004-04:00

Above are three representatives of the great diversity of early 20th Century European pocket pistols chambered in 7.65 Browning (or .32 ACP, as we Yanks term it.)

From top to bottom, they are a Dreyse M1907, a Frommer Stop, and an FN 1910.

Two are blowback operated, while the third is a locked-breech, long recoil design. One is striker-fired, one has an external hammer, and the third, an internal hammer. All three are single-action pistols. The Dreyse has a thumb safety, the FN has both thumb and grip safeties, and the Frommer has a grip safety as well as an external hammer which can be manually lowered to decock the weapon. All three saw service in various capacities with militaries and gendarmeries.

We'll be taking a closer look at these pistols over the next weeks.

Early American .32 Pocket Pistols: Part II

2010-02-10T08:09:00.001-05:00

In writing Saturday's post about pocket autos, I spent some time examining the actual pistols as well as exploded drawings. I also looked at the drawings of the two early American autos of which I don't yet have representative examples on hand, the Remington 51 and the Smith & Wesson .35. Most pocket pistols on the market after World War Two sprang from one of three evolutionary families: The 1903/1908 Colt/Brownings, the Walther PP, or the Beretta. That's what makes a look at the pistols from the Cambrian Explosion of self-loader design so fascinating: All manner of solutions to the problem of constructing a reasonably powerful, pocketable, self-loading pistol were tried before the market was thinned to the few that survive today.

The Colt is easily the most familiar, and not only because Colt's made more than half a million of the things over forty-something years. The basic structure of the John Browning design is elegant in its simplicity and several basic features have been copied down through the years by numerous handgun manufacturers.

The Savage is probably the second best known, and it should be, with a production run of several hundred thousand guns in a little over twenty years. The brainchild of one Elbert Searle, it's another simple and elegant design, if a little odd to our eyes, being somewhat of an evolutionary dead-end. Blowback-operated with a slight mechanical delay, its double-stack magazine was futuristic for the time and it contained even fewer parts than the Colt, but a combination of constant redesigns, overproduction, and a slumping market put paid to Savage's pistol efforts.

The H&R took a fairly simple, if odd-looking, Webley & Scott Police Pistol design and, through conversion to striker-firing and addition of a magazine safety, managed to up the parts count to 49; over a dozen more than the Browning design and almost two-thirds more parts than Searle's little pistol. They can't have been making money on those, and the fact that they disappeared from the market so fast suggests that they weren't.

Smith & Wesson, like H&R a revolver company, shopped for an outside design as well, finally settling on the Belgian Clement. With controls that were counter intuitive (the manual safety was a thumbwheel on the backstrap that pretty much could not be operated with the hand in a firing grip), baroque mechanicals (a parts count that far outstripped even the H&R), and extremely complex construction, S&W hammered the last nail in the coffin by arrogantly designing their own pocket pistol cartridge in 1913, when the rest of the market had already settled on Colt's .32ACP. Smith's .35 cartridge got Betamaxed, and the gun itself sank without a ripple; 8,000 were made in an eight year run at a time when Colt and Savage were selling tens of thousands a year.

Remington was the last player to arrive, showing up in 1917 with a graceful, futuristic-looking pistol designed by the great John D. Pedersen: The Remington 51. But its graceful, futuristic-looking lines concealed a funky, floating breech/indirect blowback mechanism and complex innards; Browning's pocket pistol contained five springs while Pedersen's had seven (S&W's Clement clone had nine!) Despite the greater complexity, Remington attempted to undercut Colt's on price, selling its offering for less than sixteen bucks when Colts catalogued for just over twenty. Late to the market, the Remington autos didn't survive the Depression.

And if you think there were some weird ones on the domestic market, well, that's just the start...

Early American .32 Pocket Pistols: Colt's, Savage, and H&R

2010-02-06T18:52:00.010-05:00

ABOVE: Early American .32 pocket automatics from Harrington & Richardson, Colt's, and Savage.

In the early 20th Century, American consumers were offered an alternative to the small revolvers and derringers that had been the standard in pocketable firearms for some fifty years: smaller versions of the new "self-loading" semiautomatic pistols.

In 1903, Colt's offered their .32 Automatic Pistol, known as the "Model M" or "Pocket Hammerless". Equipped with both thumb and grip safeties, it was not truly "hammerless"; rather, like Smith & Wesson's Safety Hammerless revolvers, it contained an internal hammer enclosed by the frame and slide which prevented snagging on clothing and allowed for a smoother draw. The pistol was in many ways an improvement over John Browning's first .32 pistol, the FN Model 1900, and it sold well, continuing in manufacture through numerous updates until 1945.

Wanting a piece of the lucrative new market and needing funding for their military trials effort, the Savage Arms Company of Utica, New York brought out their own .32 pocket pistol in 1908. Dubbed the Model 1907 from its patent date, the new design sold well and contained several novel features, including an external hammer-like protuberance that could be used to cock its internal striker, and a 10-shot staggered box magazine. Its advertising featured the slogan "10 Shots Quick" and made much of the pistol's ergonomics, claiming it pointed like "pointing your finger". However, despite celebrity spokesmen like "Bat" Masterson and "Buffalo Bill" Cody, and revised versions offered as the Model 1915 and 1917, production ended in 1928, and the pistol never attained the cult-like following of the prancing horses of Hartford.

Finding themselves late off the starting block, Harrington & Richardson took the sensible step of licensing a design from Webley & Scott, the famous English handgun manufacturer, although they redesigned it to use a striker-type ignition setup, which made for a more pocketable piece. Released in 1914, the H&R had a plethora of safety features, including both manual & grip safeties, a loaded chamber indicator, and the early production pieces even had a magazine safety. Far more complex than its competitors from Savage and Colt's, it was never a brisk seller, a fact that couldn't have been helped by its eccentric appearance. Manufacture ceased after 10 years and 40,000 units (as compared to over half a million for the Model M), although stock backlogs kept it in the catalog until the end of the 1930s.

(The definitive book on the Savage is Savage Pistols, by Bailey Brower Jr.; I spent a good couple hours nose down in my roommate's copy.)

Vintage "Assault Rifles"...

2009-11-28T07:31:00.002-05:00

The Firearm Blog's recent pieces on early "high capacity" repeaters had a picture of a Miegs rifle which, while interesting, would be no more than an extremely rare prototypical footnote if it hadn't obviously influenced the later rifles built by the Evans Repeating Rifle Company out of Maine, which were a qualified commercial success.

The Evans were manufactured from 1873 to 1879, and roughly fifteen thousand of the helical-magazine repeaters found buyers during that stretch of time, and were even endorsed by "Buffalo Bill". As a result, they're not terribly uncommon at gun shows today if you know where to look, and while premium examples bring premium prices, serviceable shooters can be had for well under a grand. The .44 Evans cartridge hasn't been commercially loaded for almost a hundred years, but the black powder rounds can be formed by cutting down .303 Savage brass.

Of course, "high capacity" is relative to the time and place: While the user of a later Evans, which due to its longer cartridges held six fewer rounds than the early models, had twenty-eight times as many rounds on tap as a contemporary U.S. soldier (who used a "Trapdoor" Springfield), he only had twice the magazine capacity of a Swiss private armed with a Gew. 1869 Vetterli.

.32 Caliber: A rocket for the pocket...

2009-11-21T07:18:00.009-05:00

When Smith & Wesson ushered in the metallic cartridge era in American handgunning, .31 caliber was already established as the de facto standard for repeating pocket pistols, with many thousands of Colt's Pocket Models and various small pepperboxes already on the market. It was only natural then, for Smith's second cartridge to be a rimfire .32; roughly the same size as the existing muzzle loading offerings.

RIGHT: S&W Model One-and-a-Half top break, in .32 S&W.

In the 1870s, the .32 made the jump to the centerfire era in Smith's tiny "Model One-and-a-Half", and when they went to solid-frame revolvers with swing-out cylinders, S&W retained the caliber, albeit with a lengthened case, as the ".32 Smith & Wesson Long".

LEFT: .32 Hand Ejector 3rd Model in .32 S&W Long.

When John Browning turned his attentions to self-loading pistols, his first commercial success in the arena was the Model 1900 produced by Fabrique Nationale in Belgium. It was a slim little automatic pistol that could fit easily into a coat pocket and although nearly everything else about it was new, the bore diameter was the old familiar .32; the bore size that had become popular with a muzzle-loaded lead ball seated over patch and powder now saw a pistol that used smokeless propellant to launch a jacketed bullet and then reloaded itself. Known as 7.65 Browning in Europe, the cartridge was sold as the .32 ACP (for Automatic Colt Pistol) in the USA, since its first appearance on these shores was in the Colt's 1903 Pocket Hammerless.

RIGHT: Colt's Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless in .32ACP.

.32, in both revolver and automatic formats, was very nearly the default bore size for pocket defensive guns for over a century and, as earlier competitors fell by the wayside, .32 S&W Long and .32 ACP became the default cartridges for .32-caliber pocket arms worldwide. Given that both revolvers and pistols of this type have been produced in nearly every country sophisticated enough to have an arms industry and even a few that aren't, there is no telling how many countless millions of these diminutive weapons lie forgotten in the sock drawers, sea chests, and sideboards of the world despite all the fantasy schemes of governments to control them; one may as well command the tide.

LEFT: Filipino blacksmith-made copy of S&W I-frame (top) and original S&W I-frame (bottom).

In addition to Smith & Wesson and Colt's (who called it the ".32 Colt New Police,) which were seen as the high end of the market, numerous other American companies manufactured .32 S&W Long revolvers: Iver Johnson, Harrington & Richardson, and Hopkins & Allen, to name but a few. Sold in hardware stores and via mail order, they were as common as Kleenex in purses and glove boxes.

During the early 20th Century, in addition to the well-known Pocket Hammerless model from Colt's, hundreds of thousands of which were manufactured over some forty years, pocket automatics in .32ACP were sold by Savage, Remington, and H&R; untold more were imported from Europe via regular importation channels as well as in the duffle bags of generations of American servicemen.

In postwar America, with the development of small .38 revolvers, often on .32-sized frames, and a general reduction in the pocket pistol market following the hostile legislation enacted in 1968, .32 in both "ACP" and "S&W Long" forms gradually became the caliber of the much-demonized "Saturday Night Special", found largely in extremely inexpensive revolvers and cheap cast zinc pistols. The fact that these guns served a valuable purpose in a market where a traditionally-made blued steel firearm, produced by union labor in New England and excise taxed to death, could cost half a month's wages for a night clerk went unmentioned.

RIGHT: The Beretta 3032 Tomcat, which hit the market in 1996, was one of a wave of new pocket pistols in .32ACP.

While .32 S&W Long lingers on mostly as a chambering for esoteric ISSF target pistols and a reduced load for various .32-caliber magnums, .32ACP has seen something of a revival in the last decades, with the reform of concealed carry laws and the introduction of truly tiny pocket guns from innovators such as Larry Seecamp and George Kellgren as well as established makers like Beretta. Whether the .32 will see its second century or not remains to be seen, but given its ubiquity, that would seem to be the way to bet.

Cold War Heaters: Polish Tokarev and Czech CZ-52.

2009-11-15T21:32:00.009-05:00

With the turn of the 20th Century, self-loading pistols began to see greater acceptance in military and paramilitary forces worldwide. The czar's government in Russia, long dependent on foreign arms designs, turned to the Belgian firm of Fabrique Nationale when seeking a pistol for its gendarmerie, acquiring several thousand FN Browning 1903's.

The FN1903 looked similar to the Colt Pocket Hammerless so familiar to American collectors, but was physically larger, being chambered for a 9mm cartridge. Also used by Sweden and the Ottoman Empire, both of which bordered Russia, the sleek pistol still looks modern today. The czar's pistols sported a frame slotted for a combination shoulder stock/holster, and featured an enclosed hammer.

Later, in the wake of the First World War, Bolshevik forces in Civil War-torn Russia acquired many “Broomhandle” Mausers from a German arms industry desperate for foreign sales to make up for the loss of income caused by the Versailles treaty. The Broomhandles were chambered for the classic “.30 Mauser” cartridge, a high-velocity bottlenecked number more like a carbine cartridge than a normal pistol round.

These two historical facts may go some way to explain why, when the victorious Communists sought a modern self-loader to replace the M1895 revolvers in their progressive socialist armies, the winning design looked an awful lot like an enlarged FN 1903 with a partially-exposed hammer and chambered for a hot-loaded version of the old .30 Mauser round.

The Tokarev TT-33, as the definitive version was labeled, was a short-recoil operated pistol with no manual safety and a magazine released by a thumb-activated button. Among its innovations was the fact that the lockwork was mounted in a chassis that could be removed from the frame in a single unit.

After WWII, as Eastern Europe fell into the Soviet sphere of influence, the Russians pressured their new satrapies to adopt weaponry in common calibers. Most countries tooled up to produce copies of the Tokarev, but the Czechoslovakians, with a sophisticated arms industry of their own, turned out a unique pistol chambered for the Soviet cartridge.

The CZ-52 was also operated on the short-recoil principle, but instead of using the common Browning tilting-barrel method of locking as used on the Tokarev, it used a roller-locking setup similar to that used on the German MG-34 and MG-42 light machine guns of the previous war. Also unlike the Tokarev, it offered an external manual safety which could also function as a decocker. While the Tok had a 1930s deco look to its shape, the CZ's lines had an angular ray-gun look that wouldn't have been out of place in a '50s sci-fi movie.

ABOVE: Cold War Heaters. Polish Radom wz.48 (top) and Czech CZ vz.52 (bottom).

Both pistols became widely available on the American civilian market when the Warsaw Pact had its big Chapter 11 sale in the early 1990s, and their low prices made them popular for shooters and collectors on a budget. Surplus ammunition was widely available, and new-production commercial ammo could be had from sources as disparate as Sellier & Bellot and Winchester on one hand and MagSafe on the other.

The examples in the picture are a basic Czech CZ-52 and a Radom-made Polish wz.48. In fit and finish, there's really no comparison: The CZ is a typical rough-hewn phosphate-finished example while the Radom is an elegant, polished blue. In use, though, the CZ points more naturally for me, since Fedor Tokarev managed to mess with the natural pointing qualities of the Browning design. It also has a better trigger pull (although that's damning by faint praise.) Combine this with the fact that the Polish heater didn't seem to like the S&B ammo used in the tests, as evinced by ragged groupings and a vicious Type III malfunction that required a Leatherman tool to clear, and of these two examples, the Czech is definitely the more practical sidearm.

ABOVE: Leatherman Juice was needed to pry the mangled cartridge case from the grip of the Radom Tokarev. Don't leave home without it.

Also the Czech pistol has a positive safety (it's even right-side-up to American thumbs,) while the Tok's safety is a jury-rigged afterthought which only serves to block the trigger, added to satisfy BATFE requirements mandated by the Gun Control Act of 1968.

RIGHT: Actual high-speed competition shooter with the Czech ray gun.

Both pistols can still be found for prices in the ~$200 range, although the Radom-marked Polish Tok is a sure-fire future collectible compared to the relatively dirt-common CZ. Surplus ammunition can still be found, and the fireballing high-velocity cartridge makes for a fun afternoon at the range. Any collector of Cold War-era arms would be advised to snatch up a copy of one or both while they're still available for reasonable prices.

Sunday Smith #48: .38 Double Action 2nd Model, 1882

2009-11-04T18:17:00.004-05:00

By the mid-19th Century, the battle for the title of America's premier handgun manufacturer was pretty much down to two contestants: Colt and Smith & Wesson. Smith stole a march on Colt with their purchase of the Rollin White patent for bored-through cylinders and even before its expiration had introduced a second generation of cartridge revolvers using the new centerfire cartridges, and with a top-break mechanism that featured simultaneous ejection of spent cases.

In 1877, Colt returned fire, so to speak, by introducing a version of their solid-frame revolvers that had double-action lockwork. In other words, the trigger performed the double actions of cocking the hammer and firing the piece. Current Smiths were all single-action, requiring the user to cock the hammer with his thumb for every shot.

In 1880, S&W offered double action versions of their own small- and medium-frame revolvers in .32 and .38 caliber. While the large-frame .44s and .45s are more romantic and tend to feature prominently in the Hollywood dramatizations of the era, these littler revolvers were actually far more common and were the workhorses of the company's lineup. Over 300,000 .38 Double Actions of just the first three variants were made, as compared to about a quarter million large-frame top-breaks of all types, including those for foreign military contracts.

Pictured above is a .38 Double Action 2nd Model from approximately 1882. The 2nd Model is distinguished from the earlier 1st Model by its smaller sideplate, which made for a stronger frame than the large, straight-edged sideplate of the earlier version, which is much rarer, only being made in 1880. In 1884, production shifted to the 3rd Model, which eliminated the unusual “freeing groove” on the cylinder, made necessary by the earlier model's double set of cylinder stop bolts.

The pictured revolver is in the most common trim for a .38 DA, with a 3.25” barrel, black hard rubber stocks, and the nickel finish that was vastly more popular than blued steel for 19th Century American pocket guns. It was acquired at a gun show in Louisville for $100, which is a very fair price. A really nice example might fetch four bills, and one in like-new condition with the rarer mottled red stocks could bring as much as $800.

Old-Fashioned Safety.

2009-10-28T06:24:00.004-04:00

It's a commonly-held notion in the shooting community that various mechanical safety doodads and gizmos are recent additions to the American firearms scene, driven by anti-gun legislation and an industry fear of lawsuits. However a quick study of the past will show that it just ain't so.

As a matter of fact, even in the late 19th Century, safety was a big advertising point for firearms in a rapidly-urbanizing America: Both Iver Johnson and Smith & Wesson touted the safety of their small revolvers in advertising, and by the early 1900s, Iver Johnson was using "Hammer the Hammer" as an ad slogan.

When automatic pistols debuted on the commercial scene in the early 2oth Century, they were quite a novelty. The early full-size Colt holster pistols had a rudimentary safety in the form of a pivoting rear sight, but this was soon dropped and the pistols were without any safety at all other than the exposed hammer. Less expensive pocket pistols were another matter, with both of Colt's small pocket auto designs from John Browning featuring a thumb safety and a grip safety from the start.

Savage's Model 1907 .32 had a positive manual thumb safety as well as a mechanical loaded chamber indicator, which consisted of a pivoting tab that raised up to indicate a cartridge up the pipe. When Harrington & Richardson entered the pocket self-loader game in 1914 with its modified Webley design, the pistol sported not only a mechanical loaded chamber indicator, a grip safety, and a manual thumb safety, but also an automatic mechanical safety that prevented the firearm from discharging when the magazine was removed. Colt engineer George Tansley immediately came up with a magazine disconnect that was fitted to the company's Vest Pocket models just two years later.

The fad for the more Rube Goldbergian devices was a fairly brief one, however. Savage disposed of the mechanical loaded chamber indicator, and only the first series of H&R autos have the magazine disconnect. What caused the popularity in the first place?

Lacking a time machine and without reading any periodicals of the era (although the topic has intrigued me enough to want to dig further), I'm going to hazard a guess: In the early 1900s, self-loading pistols were a novelty; even people who had extensive experience with handguns had had all of that experience with revolvers. Compared to a revolver, the manner of clearing and safing an autoloader is not an intuitive process. Probably the single most common cause of negligent discharges among novice self-loader users is dropping the magazine after clearing the chamber, rather than before. They've seen the round fly from the chamber, and therefore the gun must be "safe", right? And in 1900, almost everybody was a novice self-loader user.

The solution, of course, is training and experience and not more complicated fiddly little parts on a gun, and for the most part magazine safeties went away. They remained popular in one segment of the autoloader world, however: Every day, police departments and military organizations around the world hand out guns to countless people, many with only the most rudimentary of handgun training. And at the end of their shift, these same people are expected to come back in and safely turn in an unloaded weapon without shooting themselves, their armorer, or their fellow gendarmes or gefreiters. In this setting, magazine safeties retain their popularity with many issuing agencies and armies, since sending all their personnel to Gunsite would be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming.

Of course the belief that mechanical gizmos can substitute for safe handling has penetrated various legislatures and courtrooms, and more and more guns are fitted with these Rube Goldbergian contrivances in an attempt to remain salable in as many jurisdictions as possible. We can only hope for a brighter tomorrow, when we look back on this era of mandating hardware solutions to software problems and laugh.

Sunday Smith #47: Number 1, Second Issue, 1866

2009-10-13T21:36:00.008-04:00

The one that started it all...

As the first half of the 19th Century drew to a close, the Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company had a stranglehold on the revolver business in America, by virtue of holding the basic patents for the revolving pistol. The early Colt's revolvers were all percussion arms, in which the chambers were loaded with loose powder and ball, and fired by means of a percussion cap seated on an exterior nipple on the rear of the cylinder. A man by the name of Rollin White had come up with an idea for improving the basic design by using a cylinder that was bored through from end to end, but Colt's wasn't interested.

The firm of Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson, who had already tried making lever-action repeating pistols, eagerly purchased White's patents and when Colt's patents expired, they were ready with a new pistol that represented a quantum leap forward.

The Number One.

LEFT: S&W Number 1, Second Issue, shown with modern reproduction of .36-caliber Colt 1851 Navy.

Daniel Wesson had come up with a diminutive cartridge that contained the powder, projectile, and priming compound all in a unit. Manufactured of copper, the Number One cartridge launched a .22-caliber bullet, and was prevented from sliding all the way through the cylinder by a rim at the rear. The rim was hollow, and contained the priming compound, which was detonated when the revolver's hammer crushed it on firing. The little bullet with only four grains of black powder behind it was no ballistic powerhouse, but it was so easy to use when compared to fumbling with loose powder and caps that it caught on like wildfire.

The pistol that fired the round was a seven-shot revolver small enough to fit in the hand. It was a single action, meaning that the hammer needed to be manually cocked for each round. After firing all seven, a small catch beneath the front of the cylinder was operated, and the frame hinged upwards, allowing the cylinder to be slid out the front of the weapon.

To eject the spent cartridge cases, the loose cylinder was punched down over an integral ejector rod mounted beneath, and parallel to, the barrel. Seven more rounds were then inserted, the cylinder seated back in the revolver, the barrel hinged back down until it latched, and the revolver was ready to fire again.

RIGHT: S&W Number 1, Second Issue, shown broken open for reloading.

From little acorns...

The Smith & Wesson revolver went on sale in 1857, and now the shoe was on the other foot. Rollin White's patents gave Smith a lock on the bored-through cylinder until 1872 and they made the most of it, vigorously pursuing companies that attempted to copy the design.

The first iteration, now known as the Model Number 1, First Issue, was made up through 1860, a production run of almost twelve thousand guns. In 1860, to speed production, the frame was manufactured with sides that were machined flat, rather than the previous ogive cross-section. This Second Issue was produced for the next eight years, to the tune of almost 120,000 copies; it was frequently found in the boots and pockets of Civil War soldiers.

In 1868, several more design changes resulted in the Third Issue: A fluted cylinder and round barrel, and a rounded "birdshead" butt that made the pistol less likely to snag in a pocket or purse. This final version stayed in production until 1881, by which time it was well and truly obsoleted by newer revolvers with features like automatic ejection and double-action lockwork. Still, over 130,000 found buyers over its thirteen-year run.

Number One today...

With about a quarter million sold, the Number One is a very accessible collector's item. Almost any gun show will have at least one, and copies in reasonable shape can be had for $200-$300 or so. The pictured example, a Second Issue, was picked up at the Fall 2009 National Gun Day show in Louisville for $200; since it was manufactured circa 1866, it is not recognized as a firearm under federal law. The barrel is steel, with a silvered brass frame and rosewood grips. The same gun in excellent condition would be well over a thousand dollars, and the scarcer First Issue variants can bring over seven grand at auction.

(Note that modern smokeless powder .22 loads would reduce these little guns to scrap in short order. Even with a clean bill of health from a gunsmith, they probably shouldn't be fired, and if the temptation is too great, then primer-only CB or Flobert-type cartridges should be used.)

Sunday Smith #46: K-22 Combat Masterpiece, 1955.

2009-04-12T22:15:00.006-04:00

In 1940, Smith & Wesson released a .22 caliber revolver on their medium-size "K-frame" that was equipped with a taller rear sight and the new "short action" lockwork. Termed the "Masterpiece", its production was continued after the war.

The postwar "K-22 Masterpiece" contained everything Smith had learned about making an accurate revolver. The barrel featured an less tapered contour and had a serrated rib on top, which provided a glare-reducing sighting plane. The rear sight was of the micrometer style, click-adjustable for windage and elevation. The triggers were serrated and provided with an internal overtravel stop.

Built on a frame intended for .38-class cartridges, the K-22's were mild shooters and extremely accurate, as well as very durable. Starting in 1949, they were cataloged in two distinct styles: With a 6" barrel and a squared-off Patridge-style front sight as the "K-22 Target Masterpiece", and with a 4" barrel and a quick-draw ramp front sight as the "K-22 Combat Masterpiece". With the changeover to model numbers in 1957, these became the "Model 17" and "Model 18", respectively.

Popular with a broad cross-section of shooters, from competitive target shooters, to hikers, to casual plinkers, the 17 and 18 stayed in production for many years. The Model 17 remained in the catalog in one variant or another until 1999, while the 4" Model 18 was discontinued in 1985. The Model 17 was gradually superseded in the lineup by the stainless steel Model 617, but the K-22 Combat Masterpiece had no real official successor until it was recently re-released as a limited production "Classic Model".

The pictured revolver is a K-22 Combat Masterpiece produced in early 1955 (the upper sideplate screw was deleted in that year.) It was acquired at a gun show in Indianapolis in March of 2009. The asking price was in the mid-$500 range, which was pushing the envelope for what is an 85-90% gun at best. It shows wear on the ejector rod and front sight, and the target stocks are incorrect, but that last is easily fixed on Gunbroker or eBay.

The Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson, 3rd Edition gives a value of $350 for a "Very Good" specimen and $435 for an "Excellent" example, but these values are a couple years old, which is an eternity in the volatile market of 5-screw Smiths. If I found a pre-'57 K-22 in good, shootable mechanical condition that didn't look like it had been dragged behind a truck for less than five bills, I'd probably jump on it.

As they say, you rarely pay too much; you only buy too soon.

Sunday Smith #45: .44 Hand Ejector 3rd Model, 1930

2009-03-29T22:35:00.007-04:00

When Smith & Wesson released their .44 Hand Ejector in 1908, it was obviously their flagship handgun. Physically imposing and immaculately finished, most were chambered in a new cartridge called the ".44 Special", to distinguish it from the old, shorter .44 Russian caliber. Distinctive features that set the big .44 apart from its lesser brethren included a third locking detent for the cylinder assembly, mounted at the front of the crane, and a graceful-looking protective shroud for the ejector rod machined below the barrel.

A little over fifteen thousand were sold over the next seven years, making it one of the more sluggish items in the Smith catalog. And no wonder; this Cadillac of revolvers was priced at the princely sum of $21!

Its replacement, dubbed the .44 Hand Ejector 2nd Model, dispensed with the extra locking detent on the crane, as well as the complex and difficult to machine ejector rod shroud, and could be offered for only $19. Despite the ten-percent price cut, the new guns still remained slow-movers compared to their smaller brethren, but they had some fanatical devotees.

Like nearly every change Smith has ever made in a revolver, people almost immediately began complaining about the removal of the ejector rod shroud. While some claimed that it was just a place for mud to collect on a military or peace officer's gun, others claimed that it protected the ejector rod from bending should the gun be dropped or used for... um... Percussive Behavior Modification Therapy on an uncooperative bad guy.

The dealer Wolf & Klar in Fort Worth, Texas pleaded with Smith to do a run of the big-bore hand ejectors with the ejector rod shroud, offering to buy up to 3,500 of them. With such a huge offer on the table, Smith agreed, and thus was born the .44 Hand Ejector 3rd Model, sometimes known as the "Model of 1926".

Despite production of the 2nd Model continuing apace, and the two models sharing the same serial number range, the 3rd Models are easy to tell apart by the shroud under the barrel and the differently-shaped knob on the end of the ejector rod. Made famous by users such as Texas Ranger Captain "Lone Wolf" Gonzuallas, the distinctive lines of the taper-barreled, shrouded-ejector rod Model of 1926 were continued after the war as the Model of 1950 .44 Military and the later Model 21.

Less than five thousand of the 3rd Model guns were built between 1926 and S&W ceasing production for the war effort in 1941. Never cataloged as such, they remained a special order item and have gained almost cult-like status with Smith fans. When Clint Smith pestered Smith to bring back a classic big-bore service revolver, the Model 21 .44 Military was the first one he pestered them to resurrect. Part of the reason is that good originals have become so scarce as to be almost too valuable to shoot; a pristine Model of 1926, even assuming no special value modifiers, could be expected to bring $3500-$4000 at auction.

You can imagine my surprise when I saw the man walking through the gun show with a 4", tapered barrel with the distinctive half-moon front sight and shrouded ejector rod protruding from his hand. That's enough to set any S&W fan's gears to turning. "Whatcha got there?" I asked.

"Model 21," he replied.

Five screws. Pre-21, at least. It had a flaking re-nickel job and wore a cracked and yellowing set of godawful hollow plastic fake stag grips. It was all there, though, and seemed mechanically tight...

"How much you gotta get out of it?"

"Three-fifty."

Sold.

Endshake was in spec. Lockup was good. It carried up a little lazy, but that's to be expected and can be fixed. I even had a spare set of N-frame square-butt "Magna" service stocks laying around just waiting to replace the plastic ones.

Truthfully, I was so excited by the find that it wasn't until I got home and really looked it over that I noticed the mushroom-headed ejector rod and lack of both the sliding hammer block and alpha prefix on the serial number that indicated a prewar gun. According to the Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson, the serial number dated it to 1930.

As a bonus, the bore was pristine, with good, sharp rifling and no pitting. This gun had been carried a lot more than it had been shot. Further, there was a partly-obliterated factory rollmark on the backstrap indicating the gun had been shipped to a police department. Which one will remain a mystery until I get the gun lettered by the factory.

With the model being so rare and highly sought-after, for a collector of my type, this is just the kind of gun I like to find; cosmetically flawed enough to make it affordable and mechanically sound enough to make it shootable. I think I need to look into a good holster for it. If it's good enough for "Lone Wolf" and Clint Smith, it's good enough for me.

Sunday Smith #44: .38 Military & Police Model of 1905 -4th Change, 1930

2009-03-15T20:40:00.003-04:00

The late 19th Century was a time of great change in the small arms world. The U.S. Army, which had been using a solid-framed single-action .45 Colt revolver since 1873, adopted a new double-action sidearm in 1892. This revolver, also made by Colt, had a cylinder that swung out to the side for loading and chambered a smaller .38 caliber cartridge.

Within four years' time of the Army's changeover, Smith & Wesson had brought out their own line of revolvers with swing-out cylinders, albeit chambered in a lengthened .32 caliber cartridge, and they soon followed these up with an enlarged version. The target market of this bigger revolver was no secret: They were named the .38 Military & Police.

These early guns, easily distinguished from their later brethren by their lack of a locking lug under the barrel at the front of the ejector rod, were adopted in small trial-size batches by the Army and Navy in 1899. Although nobody realized it at the time, the heyday of the martial revolver in the US was drawing to a close, with the adoption of the first general issue self-loading martial sidearm in American service barely a decade in the future. That really didn't matter, however; the Smith .38 Military & Police was destined to be one of the most successful handgun designs ever manufactured.

They were chambered in a stretched .38 (which Smith called the ".38 S&W Special".) Although the new cartridge originated as a black powder design, it was loaded with smokeless powder shortly after its introduction and remains one of the most popular handgun cartridges to this day.

Noticeable changes were made to the gun in 1902, when a lug under the barrel with a locking detent for the ejector rod was added, and in 1905, when a screw was added to the frame in front of the trigger guard, bringing the number of externally visible screws in the frame to five. This is what has led to collectors referring to Smiths of this vintage as "five screw" guns.

Various small changes added up, and by 1915, the proper name for the current model was ".38 Military & Police Model of 1905, 4th Change". This iteration was immensely popular; between its inception and 1942, over three quarters of a million were made.

Available in barrel lengths of 2, 4, 5, or 6 inches, and with fixed or adjustable sights, a hobby could be made of collecting just this particular variant of the famous M&P alone. The above example, a fairly basic 5" model, dates to 1930. The photo does not do the condition of the revolver justice; the bluing is even and exhibits only minimal wear in the expected places, making it an honest 90-95% gun. It was purchased at a gun show in Knoxville, Tennessee in the summer of 2007 for $350. In today's market, in the condition it's in, it would probably bring $100 over that, maybe more. Excellent condition prewar Hand Ejectors remain solid investments.

Sunday Smith #43: .32 Single Action, 1883

2009-03-08T22:41:00.003-04:00

Smith & Wesson first made their bones in the personal self-defense pistol market. With the purchase of the Rollins-White patents for a bored-through cylinder combined with the tiny rimfire .22 cartridge, Smith literally sold hundreds of thousands of tiny pocket revolvers.

As Smith entered the centerfire cartridge age in the 1870's, they first tried their toe in the military market with their No. 3 frame size in 1870, and then quickly followed on its heels with a "medium" frame .38 in 1876 and then a "small" frame .32 in 1878.

The original S&W revolvers were of a "tip-up" design, wherein the frame was hinged on the top. When the gun was shot empty, the shooter would trip the latch, hinge the frame upwards, slide the cylinder forwards off its pivot, and then punch the spent cartridge cases out with a built-in punch on the pistol's frame. With the new "break-top" design, the latch would be worked and the barrel and cylinder hinged downwards, causing an integral ejector mechanism to spit the empty shells out simultaneously.

Although the original 7-shot tip-up .22 revolvers stayed in production until 1875, the market was obviously ready for the new top-breaks. The original single-action Model One-and-a-Half Centerfires mere manufactured until 1892 in their original form (which required the hammer to be cocked manually for each shot) and the double action variant of the Model 1 1/2 .32 S&W top-break remained in production until 1937; a run of very nearly sixty years.

The smallest of Smith's top-breaks, the Model One-and-a-Half was chambered for a new cartridge, designated ".32 Smith & Wesson". The tiny cylinder held five of the rounds, which used nine grains of black powder to propel an 85-grain round-nosed lead bullet at just under 700 feet per second. With less than a hundred foot pounds of energy, the .32 S&W cartridge was no man-stopper, but in the days before antibiotics and effective anesthesia, most people would think twice before getting a hole poked in them by a bullet, no matter how slow it was traveling.

Given their near-ubiquity in the pockets, purses, and sock drawers of America, it is perhaps unsurprising that the tiny 5-shot .32's are some of the most affordable antique arms in this country to this day. The pictured revolver, a nickel-finished Model One-and-a-Half Single Action with a three-and-a-half inch barrel made in 1883, was purchased at a gun show in mid-2008 for under $200. A truly premium example of the breed might edge over $1,000, but as is usual with these kinds of guns, condition is everything.

The gun in question, purchased at a gun show in Indianapolis 125 years after it was made, is still quite functional and shoots as well as it did in the year of its birth, the same year the Brooklyn Bridge opened and Black Bart robbed his last stagecoach. Rarely is history more accessible than in these little pistols...

Schmidts and K.31's: A tale of two bolts.

2009-01-11T18:53:00.011-05:00

When the time came for the Swiss army to replace their black-powder Vetterli rifles, they cast about for only a few years before settling on a design by Col. Rudolph Schmidt, working out of Bern.

He had come up with a straight-pull bolt action design in which the bolt body itself was nested inside an outer sleeve. The sleeve carried the lugs which locked into mortises in the receiver body, and was rotated through ninety degrees when the bolt handle was pulled to the rear, by means of a lug on the operating rod acting on a helical track in the bolt sleeve.

The earliest Schmidt rifles were elaborate pieces of machinery; every part of the bolt assembly, from the cocking ring to the operating rod, was machined from steel forgings. For whatever reason, Schmidt had the actual bolt body itself projecting far forward from the encircling sleeve, while the locking lugs were at the extreme rear end. This resulted in the tubular machined steel receiver of the rifle being extremely bulky and heavy when compared to the various other rifle designs emerging at the same time, as well as requiring a fair amount of time and ordnance steel to manufacture; two strikes against a weapon from the standpoint of any bureaucracy.

Further, the breechface was the better part of a foot from the locking lugs. When the catridge was fired, a force of several tons was exerted straight back against the column of the bolt (know as "bolt face thrust"), and that long, thin column of steel was only supported by those two lugs at its rear end. This could lead to compression, flexing, and premature wear or failure of the action.

As higher pressure cartridges were introduced, the Swiss redesigned the rifle by moving the lugs towards the front of the bolt sleeve. This made the arrangement much sturdier and allowed the use of modern ammunition. They also lightened the rifle's receiver by milling several lightening grooves in it, and made it less bulky by going to a smaller-capacity magazine.

However, the basic layout of the long bolt protruding forward from its sleeve remained, and despite the lightening cuts, the receiver was still longer, heavier, and much more difficult to produce than its contemporaries. This solution, finalized in 1911, could be no more than a stopgap.

In the 1930s, Switzerland introduced a new service weapon. Following the trail blazed by the Americans and the British in dispensing with two different length weapons, they standardised on a "carbine" length weapon for everyone.

The new rifle had a much shortened action, the forward extension of the bolt body having been "telescoped" back into the sleeve. Even though it was roughly the same overall length as the earlier Schmidt K.11 cavalry carbine, the K.31's barrel was longer, due to the length saved in the receiver. Manufacture was further simplified by doing away with the complexly-shaped operating rod and going to a simple, flat piece. All in all, it was a far more practical weapon for mass production.

Despite these shortcuts, the K.31 retained a reputation for fit, finish, and accuracy that lived up to the legacy of its Schmidt-designed forebears.

For those that were unaware...

2008-12-01T12:53:00.002-05:00

...TheFiringLine.com has opened a dedicated Curio & Relic subforum. Come nose around and contribute to the knowledge base!

Classic Colt #1: Model 1902 Military

2008-10-28T07:36:00.007-04:00

This past weekend, I shot a bowling pin match with a high-speed, low-drag semiautomatic pistol of the type favored by our nation's elite antiterrorist units. The next day at the gun show, I picked up a pistol that was first made one hundred and six years ago. Except for a couple of small design differences, they are largely the same gun.

In the late 19th Century, gun designer John Moses Browning pursued two paths of automatic pistol operation. The first to go into production was what we now term “blowback”, in which the force of the fired case pressing against the breech face would overcome the inertia of the “slide”, which was the upper part of the pistol, and the recoil spring that held it shut and drive the whole assembly to the rear, the spent cartridge case being kicked clear of the gun in the process.

The problem was that this method was not suitable to more potent cartridges, as the only way to keep the slide closed until pressures within the chamber had dropped to a safe level was to make it too massive to carry conveniently or to hold it shut with a spring so strong that the average person would find it difficult to actuate the slide manually. Something obviously needed to be done to slow the rearward progress or the slide.

Mr. Browning's idea was to make the barrel free to move somewhat, unlike in the straight blowback design, and anchor it to the frame by means of a pair of swinging links, one at the rear of the barrel and one at the front. On firing, the whole assemblage of barrel and slide would move rearward locked together by means of lugs machined atop the barrel that fitted into mortises in the underside of the slide. This would only be for a short distance, as the links would naturally pivot about their pins, causing the barrel to drop down and unlock from the slide.

The slide would continue rearward, extracting the spent case from a chamber whose pressures had safely dropped, since the bullet had long since exited the barrel. Thus did Browning find a solution to the problem of higher-powered cartridges in the newfangled automatic pistols, and he managed to sell the idea to Colt, heretofore known mostly for revolvers. In 1900, Colt released a pistol chambered in a .38-caliber rimless round loaded with the new smokeless powder. It was not a resounding success, having one or two issues that needed addressing.

One of those issues was that the hammer could not safely be carried in the lowered position with a round in the chamber. Mr. Browning refined his original design somewhat, including a new inertial firing pin that allowed hammer-down carry on a live round, and Colt released the refinement as the Model of 1902, notable for its complete absence of external safety levers, made possible by the fact that liability attorneys had not evolved from sharks yet and everyone knew whose fault it was if you put a bullet through your own foot.

A large pistol with a 6” barrel completely enclosed by its slab-like breech slide, it was very plain in appearance compared to its contemporaries. There were no outside controls or levers, except for a semi-recessed slide catch that held the slide to the rear after the last round had been fired. The muzzle was located within the slide by means of the forward link, as well as a distinctly coned shape that would return it to the center of the slide as the latter moved forward.

The pistol was offered in two variants, a “Sporting” model with a somewhat rounded butt, and the “Military” model with a squared butt holding one more round of ammunition as well as a lanyard ring. The “Military” model actually did manage to score some sales to various governments, with the U.S. buying a number for testing & evaluation, as well as shipments to users as diverse as Mexico and Chile.

The pistol was manufactured until 1929, long after it had been superseded by newer designs from Browning. Its main weakness had been that, should the slide lock fail, the slide would exit the frame to the rear, catching the shooter square in the face. On later designs, Browning added a recoil lug under the front of the slide to retain it on the frame in the event of slide lock failure. This meant that the slide would have to be drawn off the front of the frame when taking the pistol down for cleaning, and necessitated abandonment of the forward swinging link. Browning made up for it by supporting the end of the barrel in a hardened removable bushing installed in the front of the slide.

A glance at a cutaway of the pistol shows how little has changed of the basic mechanism between a 1902 Colt and the latest polymer STI 2011 race gun. There is the sliding trigger which acts on the disconnector, which passes through and transmits forces to the sear, the whole assembly held in place by a three-fingered leaf spring behind the magazine. When it is done right the first time, there's not much need for improvement.

The example above was manufactured in 1912. It was purchased at a gun show in late 2008 for $675, mostly due to its lack of original grips and the fact that the original finish has gone to patina and there is some pitting on the front starboard side of the slide. With even a modicum of original bluing left, these guns will bring well north of $1,000, with a very nice example of an early model (which has the cocking serrations on the forward end of the slide) worth as much as $8k. With U.S. military markings, you could buy a new car for what one will bring at auction. Any Colt auto of this vintage is a solid investment and worth a closer look.

Sunday Smith #42: .38 Single Action 2nd Model, 1881

2008-09-22T06:21:00.006-04:00

The story of the firearms industry in America is often a story of patents. A study of any of the early 20th Century self-loading pistols from Savage or Smith & Wesson, for example, will show the great lengths that it took to design around the various Browning patents held by Colt. It was a single patent that was largely responsible for the initial success of Smith & Wesson in the revolver business: They held the patent by Rollin White for a cylinder with charge holes bored through from end to end, and consequently they owned the market for revolvers firing fixed metallic cartridges.

S&W mostly concentrated on small pocket revolvers, leaving the market for martial belt pistols to Colt and Remington, although they did make a tentative foray with their Model Number Two, which was built on a smallish frame for a holster gun, and chambered for an anemic .32 rimfire cartridge to boot. Often erroneously termed the "Army" or "Old Army" Model, this was never purchased by the U.S. Army as an issue weapon, although it was very popular as a backup gun among servicemen who could afford to spring for such an extravagance. For the most part, however Smith was content with the civilian market for small revolvers.

Patents, however, are not forever, and as the decade of the 1860s drew to a close, S&W was preparing for the expiration of the Rollin White patent with a whole new generation of revolvers. 1872 was the end for the patent and before Colt even had a chance to get their new cartridge revolver to market, Smith had made a preemptive strike with a new martial revolver containing two new patented innovations. The Number Three, which began production in 1870 and was chambered for the then-new centerfire metallic cartridges, featured a frame that was hinged at the bottom and which exposed the entire rear of the cylinder for loading when the latch was released and the barrel tipped forwards. Further, the revolver featured an automatic ejection system driven by a cogwheel in the hinge that would eject all six spent cartridges simultaneously.

The Number Three was a huge success, most notably landing Smith and Wesson a huge contract with the armies of the Tsar of Russia. Not content to rest on their laurels, Smith began to revamp their smaller revolvers as well.

In 1874, an intermediate-sized revolver roughly analogous to the Number Two "Old Army" debuted. The new gun was a single action design, featuring the hinged frame and automatic ejection of the larger Number Three, but with a scaled-down cylinder sporting five holes bored to fit an entirely new cartridge, featuring a .38 caliber, 150-grain bullet over a charge of 14 grains of black powder.

The new cartridge, dubbed the .38 S&W, became one of the most popular and long-lived chamberings in firearms history. It even went on to be, albeit with a heavier projectile and smokeless powder, the official military handgun round of the British Empire.

The revolver developed to fire it was variously known as the .38 Single Action or, since it was about the same size as the earlier .32 Rimfire pistol, the Number Two. The original models had a long housing under the barrel for the ejector assembly that was similar to that on the popular .44 revolvers made for the Russian military contract, and this has caused the early .38 Single Actions to be referred to as "Baby Russians". That long housing was, however, necessitated by an overly complex ejector system. Smith streamlined the mechanism in 1877 and the resulting .38 Single Action 2nd Model remained in production until 1891, with over a hundred thousand being manufactured during that period.

The revolver pictured above is a 2nd Model from fairly early in the production run. It is nickel-plated, as the majority of Smith & Wesson revolvers were during that era, and features the earlier style stocks, which have a fairly plain "S & W" in a simple font and a finely-grained checkered texture to the hard rubber. Later stocks featured more florid trim and a fancy logo of an entwined S&W that is still used today. Easily meeting the requirements for "NRA Fine", it was purchased at a gun show in Knoxville, TN for $250 in January of '08. The gun books a lot stronger than that, but that can be the advantage of being at a slow show, late on a Sunday, with cash in hand. If the revolver were in truly "Like New" condition, it would probably fetch somewhere in the neighborhood of $800, while a still-shootable "representative example" should be able to be purchased for the same $250 I paid.

BPCR: Black Powder Cartridge Rifle.

2008-06-07T20:01:00.006-04:00

By the 1870's, the armies of the world had wholeheartedly begun the transition to breechloading rifles firing metallic cartridges. I'm fortunate enough to have five examples of the breed in my museum, from France, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, and the United States. It's interesting to compare and contrast these very different rifles that entered service all at roughly the same time, and the different imperatives and philosophies that drove their acceptance by those various nations. They fall into roughly three groups.

The first group is represented by the German Mauser Kar. 71 (a shortened derivative of their Gew. 71 infantry rifle), and the French Mle. 74 Gras. Of these five nations, Germany and France had the most experience with breechloaders as general-issue infantry weapons. The Prussian army had begun issuing the Dreyse rifle in 1841, and the French had followed suit with the Chassepot in 1866. Both weapons were "needle guns", which is to say that they fired combustible cartridges made of linen or paper that were loaded through the breech, which was of the pattern that we would come to know as the conventional "bolt action". They were called needle guns because the primer was in the base of the bullet, ahead of the powder charge, and a long, needle-like firing pin had to pierce all the way through the charge to reach the primer. Needless to say, this caused problems as the slender firing needle was exposed to the erosive effects of the combusting powder charge. Also, the paper or linen cartridges did not obturate, or seal, the breech, causing the firer to be exposed to occasional jets of hot gases in the face; something not conducive to accurate aiming.

After fighting a war between them with these older weapons, the Germans were the first to field a bolt-action rifle firing a self-contained brass cartridge. The first of a long line of Mauser-designed German rifles, the Gew. 71 featured a self-cocking bolt, unlike the Dreyse, which had to be manually cocked after closing. Using the camming action of the opening bolt gave good extraction of the spent case, but the Gew. 71 lacked an ejector, requiring the firer to tip the rifle on its side after opening the bolt to let the spent cartridge fall free. The French response was more parsimonious, having just come out on the losing side of the recent unpleasantness, their Mle. 74 Gras was designed so that it could be made by fitting a new bolt to an existing Chassepot, thus converting it to take brass cartridges. Both weapons are 11mm, or .43 caliber, a large step down for the Germans, whose Dreyses had sported a .60" bore.

Unlike the French and the Germans, who faced each other on the continent, the US and Britain were isolated by the sea, and faced only skirmishes with hostile, technologically-primitive natives on their expanding frontiers. The British had originally used a breechloading conversion of their Enfield muskets, based on a design by Snider, but the 1870's saw the .58 caliber Snider-Enfields replaced by a new falling block design by a Swiss named Martini. Pulling down on a lever under the action dropped the breechblock and ejected the spent brass from the previous round. A new cartridge was fed into the breech and the lever raised to close the rifle, which was now ready for firing.

The Americans, rebuilding after a savage civil war, weren't eager to spend fortunes on new munitions. A method was devised by a man named Erskine Allin, master armourer at Springfield Arsenal, to convert the massive stock of .58-caliber rifle muskets to cartridge breechloaders. Much like the Snider-Enfield, the Allin Springfield used a trapdoor breech. Like the British design, this allowed ignition to be accomplished by the existing sidehammer. Unlike the British design, which flipped open to the side, the trapdoor breech on the Springfield flopped open to the front. Oddly, for a country that had so much experience in a recent conflict with breechloading repeaters such as the Spencer and the Henry, in the early 1870s the US Army decided to start making "trapdoor" Springfields from the ground up, as new-built rifles. These required the soldier to place the weapon on half-cock, flip the breech up, insert the cartridge, close the breech, cock the rifle, and fire. In their favor, they had an ejector for the spent brass, which neither the Snider-Enfield or even the high-tech Mauser could claim at that point.

Unlike the French and German efforts, both the British and American rifles used .45 caliber cartridges that packed a serious wallop, even at extended ranges. As a footnote, the 1873 Springfield's .45-70 Government cartridge is still a popular sporting round today, a hundred and thirty-five years later.

The odd duck out is the Swiss Vetterli Gew. 69/71. Of the five rifles, it is the only repeater. In the 1870s, Napoleon's invasion was still a recent sore to the independence-minded Swiss, who watched the constant knuckle-jousts between Germany, France, and other continental powers with some trepidation. Switzerland relied on a citizen militia to ensure their sovereignty and, being a technologically-advanced country, selected a technologically-advanced weapon with which to arm them. The Vetterli fired a somewhat weak .41 caliber rimfire round, but it combined a modern breechloading bolt action with a 12-shot tubular magazine system inspired by the U.S. Henry lever-action repeaters. The disadvantages of rimfire priming were offset by a forked firing pin that struck the cartridge in two places simultaneously to ensure reliable ignition.

Reading about these different rifles and their reasons for being is quite interesting. It's another level of interesting altogether to have them where you can study and fire them side by side. Thankfully for the collector, all these rifles predate the 1898 cutoff by almost three decades; the Federal government doesn't consider these antiques to be firearms, and so they can be acquired and shipped without the need of special licenses. Buy a time machine or two and enjoy it!

Sunday Smith #41: Model 21-4, 2004.

2008-05-20T14:33:00.001-04:00

After being in production for roughly a century, Smith & Wesson’s Hand Ejector revolvers still bore an external similarity to their 19th Century forebears, but that resemblance was in many respects only skin deep. Just as the intervening decades had wrought changes in the ownership of the company and the nature of its manufacturing facilities, time had changed the guns themselves, often to the point of unrecognizability to longtime fans.

The rush of production and government safety demands during the Second War To End All Wars introduced both a simplified ejector rod assembly as well as an internal hammer block. The 1950s saw extraneous frame screws removed and the traditional model names of yore replaced with a sterile numbering system. In the Sixties, stainless steel entered the marketplace as a new material for gunmaking and gradually supplanted carbon steel among many users for its ease of maintenance. The heavy barrel, originally introduced to tame muzzle flip in magnum and selected target model wheelguns, became standard, since it required fewer machining steps to manufacture than the traditional tapered barrel.

In the 1980s, further simplification of the manufacturing process saw the departure of pinned barrels and the countersunk chambers that had been the trademark of S&W revolvers in magnum calibers. Increasingly strict EPA regulations combined with the new predominance of stainless guns to do away with nickel plating as a finish option. In the last decade of the 20th Century, the new Metal Injection Molding process used for lockwork and other small parts caused the firing pins of centerfire guns to migrate to the frame, where their rimfire brethren had located them all along. In order to reduce the number of different frames they needed to manufacture, S&W deleted the traditional square-butt profile from the catalog with little fanfare.

All these changes left a considerable part of Smith’s core consumer base feeling lost at sea. The grumbling started quietly, mostly confined to various gun nut message boards on the internet, and S&W’s new management floated the first trial balloon of reconciliation in the form of the “Heritage Series” of revolvers in 2000 and 2001. Unfortunately, the Heritage Series was less than a stellar sales success.

Sold as collector’s pieces solely through ace distributor Lew Horton, the Heritage Series attempted to revive several classic discontinued models. Collectors and fans lost no time starting with the snarky comments. For starters, since these guns were built on existing stocks of frames, there were no square-butt frames available. This resulted in the bizarre-looking (to a collector’s eye) spectacle of 6.5”-barrelled target N-frames with round-butt grips. Furthermore, in an attempt to give a “vintage look” to the guns to accompany the gold-foil boxes reminiscent of a bygone era, Smith had the frames of several models done in a beautiful case-coloring by famed firearms finisher Doug Turnbull. The hitch being, of course, that old Smiths never had case-colored frames. More than one internet wag described the “Heritage Series” as the “Vaguely Old-Timey-Looking Series”. Combined with stratospheric Performance Center-style price tags, these factors were the kiss of death for the Heritage Series guns: Not enough Performance Center whiz-bang to draw new buyers and not convincingly retro enough to lure back traditionalists.

The net result of all this was that many, if not most, of the Heritage revolvers went for dimes on the dollar via reseller CDNN. Happily, though, someone at Smith seems to have taken the right message away from this: It wasn’t that retro revolvers couldn’t succeed, it was that the Heritage Series wasn’t retro enough. The next evolution in this story arc came from an unexpected quarter: The “tactical training” market.

Clint Smith, former trainer under Jeff Cooper, proprietor of Thunder Ranch, and odds-on favorite to be the next pope of the Church Of Tactical Truth when the white smoke went up from Gunsite, had a weakness for simple, reliable old guns, such as Colt Single Action Armies, big-bore S&W Hand Ejectors, and the like. Around about this time, he began making overtures to Smith & Wesson regarding the desirability of an old-school large-frame Military & Police-style revolver, with a 4” tapered barrel, fixed rear and half-moon front sights, and firing a low-pressure classic big-bore round. A modern iteration of the classic Model 21 “Model of 1950 .44 Military”, if you will. Original Model 21s were scarce collector’s items, and rapidly becoming too precious to carry even if you could find one for sale and, seeing a market, the idea took hold at S&W.

Sadly, the original idea soon spun out of Clint’s control. Anxious for a tie-in with the popular “Thunder Ranch” training center, the new Model 21-4 acquired the shield & lightning bolt Thunder Ranch logo picked out in gold leaf on the side plate. Additionally, they would come with special serial numbers using a “TRS” (for “Thunder Ranch Special”) serial number and a wood display case with a glass lid in which to show off the pristine collector’s model. All in all, a far cry from the simple, rugged carry gun originally envisioned.

Despite outcries over the decidedly non-retro round-butt grip contour and internal lock, as well as QC problems with early guns, sales were apparently good enough to persuade S&W to try again the next year with another Thunder Ranch gun. This time the gold leaf and glass case were eschewed in favor of a plain side plate and a simple padded olive drab zippered nylon carrying case. The new Thunder Ranch was in .45 ACP and numbered as the Model 22-4.

These early attempts presaged a wholesale return to the retro revolver market in 2007, with the reintroduction of several classic models, complete with the proper square-butt grip profile where required. Smith & Wesson seems to have learned a lesson from Harley Davidson: When tradition and brand recognition are two of your strongest assets, it is foolish to ignore them. Now, about that MIM and the internal lock…

The revolver pictured above, a Model 21-4 “Thunder Ranch Special”, gun number 807, was purchased new in 2005. Unlike many of these guns, it wasn’t bought to be a prima donna safe queen, but specifically because it was a fixed-sight .44 Special N-frame with a round butt and tapered 4” barrel; both features that make it easier to carry. The gold leaf logo may be silly-looking, but it doesn’t affect the functionality of the gun in the slightest, and the glass display case doesn’t have to go in the kydex inside-the-waistband holster with it. The initial purchase price was under $700 and current values on a putative collector model this recent are hard to fix with certainty. In any case, collector models are usually priced with the understanding that they are sold As-New-In-Box, Never Fired. I think Clint Smith would be happy that those words ceased to apply to this example the day I took delivery.

MAS-49/56: End of an Era.

2008-05-12T19:56:00.010-04:00

In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, France was blessed with a creative and prolific arms industry, as forward-thinking as any in the world. Two French innovations alone completely changed the nature of land warfare. First was the hydraulically-buffered quick-firing field piece, which allowed cannon to fire repeatedly from the same position, without rolling backward under recoil, while their crews sheltered behind an armored splinter shield mounted directly to the gun’s carriage. The second innovation was just as significant.

Experimenting with new types of propellant yielded a high-energy powder that burned cleanly, without the barrel fouling and attendant white smoke clouds generated by the black powder that had been used in guns for the last half-millennium. The new powder allowed much higher velocities, especially from the smaller-diameter bullets made possible by the lack of fouling. The higher velocities, in turn, demanded that the soft lead of the bullets be encased in a harder metal jacket to protect them from erosion during their passage down the barrel.

Combined with recent advances in breechloading magazine-fed rifles, this meant that the French infantry could be equipped with a rifle that shot further, with a flatter trajectory than their foes; a rifle that didn’t need to be cleaned as often, and which didn’t emit a cloud of smoke on firing that would simultaneously give away the shooter’s position and obscure his vision of the battlefield. Overnight, every other army on the planet found themselves equipped with yesterday’s technology.

Unfortunately for the French, they had a bureaucracy that was as hidebound and penurious as their designers were innovative. For the sake of both cost and rapidity, the new medium bore smokeless cartridge was to be chambered in a rifle that was basically an adaptation of the tube-magazine Kropatschek already in use by the French marines. Additionally, the new 8mm smokeless cartridge would be based on the case head dimensions of the current service round, the black powder 11mm Gras. Authorities reasoned that, in case of emergency, this would allow existing single-shot Gras rifles to be rechambered for the new round by the simple expedient of fitting new barrels. Thus, the cartridge for the new M1886 “Lebel” rifle looked like an incense cone; sharply tapered from its fat, rimmed, black-powder-derived base to its small, 8mm jacketed bullet.

This decision was to haunt the French arms industry for the next fifty years because it totally hamstrung all French efforts in the next phase of small arms development: self-loading firearms. With the advent of the clean-burning, high-pressure smokeless round, arms designers around the world began coming up with ingenious ways to harness its power to not only propel the bullet, but to operate the gun itself. French designers came up with automatic designs, too, including some of the earliest self-loading shoulder-fired rifles, but were stymied at every turn by the heavily-tapered cartridge with its wide rim, both characteristics anathema to reliable function in a self-loading weapon.

All through the Great War, French units suffered with inadequate machine guns. In the period after the war, the government finally threw up its hands and consented to the development of a new cartridge specifically for machine guns, the 7.5x54mm. The new round was ultra-modern, with no rim, a moderate case taper, and a short overall length. Design teams at the St. Etienne arsenal immediately set to designing an autoloading infantry rifle to chamber the new machinegun round.

They had a good base to work from, since many of the mechanical ideas familiar to students of modern automatic military firearms had first seen the light of day in failed French designs of the first decade of the 20th Century, from tipping bolts to direct gas impingement. Sadly, however, the bureaucratic cloud they labored under was a dark one. With Europe still in the grip of the Depression and the French government still dreaming Maginot dreams, the self-loading rifle program was a low priority and was still in its larval stages when Guderian’s panzers slashed across France.

Fusil MAS-49/56. Photo by Oleg Volk.

After the second War to End All Wars, development resumed and the first self-loading rifles were issued to the French army. First was the MAS-44 in limited numbers, and then came the MAS-49, its definitive issue version.

A handy, compact weapon, the MAS-49 was roughly the same size as the contemporaneous Soviet SKS. Also like the SKS, its prewar heritage was evident in its elaborately machined steel receiver, designed before metal stamping technology had become a tool in the gun maker’s box. Unlike the SKS, it fired a full-power round, with much the same ballistics as the later 7.62x51 NATO, the famed .308 Winchester.

A blast of gas tapped directly off the barrel was directed against the face of the bolt carrier, moving it backwards and causing it to tip the bolt, unlocking the lugs. The bolt traveled to the rear, ejecting the spent round before returning forward under the impetus of the receiver-mounted recoil spring to strip a fresh cartridge from the ten-round detachable magazine.

Rather than a catch in the magazine well engaging a detent in the magazine body, the mag itself held its own latch, a vertically-oriented alligator clip-looking apparatus, for some unknown Gallic reason. As an alternative to inserting a fresh magazine, charger guides were machined into the top of the bolt carrier, allowing reloading or topping up from five round stripper clips. The safety was an ingenious piece that lay alongside the trigger mechanism, pivoting fore and aft, so that when it was in its rear, or “on”, position the trigger finger of a right-handed shooter would be prevented from entering the trigger guard normally, letting the shooter know even in the dark and confusion that his weapon was on safe.

LEFT: The trigger-blocking safety of the MAS-49/56. Photo by Oleg Volk.

In the mid-1950s, as Soviet bluster led the world to fear a showdown in Europe, Western armies began casting about for ways to increase the firepower of their outnumbered infantry squads, as well as giving them increased anti-tank capabilities. The US Army developed a 40mm grenade launcher to be issued at the squad level, as well as beginning to develop disposable tube-launched antitank rockets to be issued as needed. The French, different as always, revitalized the old technology of the rifle grenade. By outfitting every rifle with a launcher for rifle grenades and by making a mix of projectiles available, each individual infantryman could be a short-range artillery piece, bunker buster, or tank hunter as the situation warranted.

The resultant rifle was typed as the MAS-49/56. It was shortened slightly from the previous MAS-49. The wood of the stock was cut back somewhat, and a sophisticated ladder-type grenade sight was fitted and a gas cutoff valve was added. A launching adaptor was attached at the muzzle that, by means of an elaborate system of ports, doubled as a muzzle brake. A spring-retained sliding collar that controlled how deeply the grenade socketed over the muzzle slid fore and aft over a series of numbered detents indicating the approximate range of a grenade at that setting.

RIGHT: Grenade-launching paraphernalia. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Taken as a whole, this product of the 1950s was the ultimate evolution of the prewar semiautomatic infantry rifle. Robust, reliable, firing a potent round, and able to serve as its own short-range artillery or antitank gun, the MAS-49/56 was a masterpiece of its generation of small arms. Sadly, thanks to the delay imposed by the French military establishment’s embracing of the Lebel round sixty-some-odd years prior, the 49/56’s generation was long gone before it even arrived. Armies around the world had gone over to fully automatic rifles with larger magazine capacities and simple, stamped construction while the French were still catching up to the revolution they’d started. With the exception of some colonial brushfire wars in Africa, the tide of history flowed past the anachronistic French rifle.

In the 1990s, large surplus stocks were imported to America as the French began cleaning out their arsenals. Many were subjected to less-than-adequate conversions to .308 by Century Arms, giving the rifle an undeserved reputation for unreliability in the hands of American sports shooters. For the rifles left in the original 7.5x54mm chambering, a different fate was in store: Surplus stocks of 7.5, never common to begin with, soon dried up, leaving commercial ammunition by FNM and others as the only available fodder. Commercial ammunition has soft commercial primers, and the 49/56 design is, as are many other military rifles of similar vintage, completely innocent of anything resembling a firing pin spring, With the heavy firing pin, designed to reliably detonate hard military primers under filthy battlefield conditions, free to fly forward under inertia, slamfires with the commercial ammunition were endemic, leading to a brisk cottage industry in titanium firing pins, lightening of original firing pins, and retrofitting of firing pin springs.

While not ubiquitous, the MAS-49/56 is still a fairly common sight at gun shows. Prices range from ~$125 for an ugly .308 conversion to just north of $300 for a cherry example in the original caliber. Commercial 7.5x54 MAS ammunition is loaded by FNM in Portugal and Prvi Partizan for the “Wolf Gold” line. All things considered, this is a bargain for a lightweight, compact, hard-hitting rifle that represents one of the pinnacles of a short era in military small arms design.

Sunday Smith #40: Model 432, 2004.

2008-03-23T18:55:00.005-04:00

In 1984 a new cartridge was introduced to revolver shooters. The Harrington & Richardson company, a maker of inexpensive small- and medium-frame revolvers, collaborated with Federal Cartridge to develop a higher performance variant of the old .32 S&W Long cartridge that wouldn't overtax the weaker design of their wheelguns. By lengthening the case slightly to 1.075", they ensured that the new hotter round could not be loaded into small revolvers chambered for the older .32 cartridge and that any revolver with a cylinder window long enough to accept .38 Special could be chambered for the new offering.

Officially named the .32 H&R Magnum, it wasn't long before other companies, such as Ruger and Smith & Wesson, were cataloging revolvers chambered for the "Poor Man's Magnum". Smith offered adjustable-sight K-frames for target shooting and small game hunting, but it was in small J-frame revolvers that the new round showed its best advantage: Where the J-frame in .38 Special could only squeeze five charge holes into the cylinder, the .32 Magnum J-frame was a true sixgun. Not much of a surprise, really, to those who remembered that the "J" was based on the old I-frame, which was designed as a .32 in the first place.

The all-stainless 631 and 632 Centennial fizzled out of production after only a couple of years, and only a very small number of black "032's" were made. Smith made another, more successful, run with the caliber in the late '90s, with the titanium cylindered 331 and enclosed-hammer 332 Centennial, but those models finally succumbed in 2003. They were briefly replaced by the blackened-alloy frame, steel-cylindered 431PD and 432PD for the '04 and '05 model years before Smith & Wesson finally stopped production of .32 H&R Magnum guns altogether after an on-again, off-again run of sixteen years, although overstock caused them to be available from wholesalers almost to the end of 2006.

The revolver pictured above is a Model 432PD, with "PD" standing for "Personal Defense", which is S&W marketing department-speak for "Airweight revolver with blackened finish". It was purchased new in early 2005 for not too much over $400 and has served as this writer's pocket-carry backup ever since. The grips are Crimson Trace lasergrips. Far too new and common to have any standing as a collector's piece, a nice used 432 could probably be found for somewhere around $350 without too much looking.

Sunday Smith #39: Model 646, 2003.

2008-03-17T06:42:00.005-04:00

The sport of practical pistol (or "combat") shooting was formally organized under the International Practical Shooting Confederation in 1976 and grew rapidly in popularity; so much so that by the early 1990s it had become something of a victim of its own success. Some folks thought that it had lost its "tactical" roots and formed the International Defensive Pistol Association. Others felt that gamesmanship had triggered an equipment race that led to more complex and expensive pistols and tried to flatten the price curve with competitions that mandated classic single-stack 1911s or revolvers.

Of course, any competition involving equipment is going to provoke "improvements" in an attempt to gain an edge, and revolver competitions were no exception. Revolver shooters looked for ways to gain an edge and soon found one: Shaving fractions of a second during the reload. It didn't take long for Smith & Wesson's Model 625's to rule the roost, with the fast reloads made possible by their full moon clips, which held all six rounds and went into the gun along with the cartridges unlike a conventional revolver's speed loader.

In the late '90s the use of titanium was explored by S&W engineers, and someone figured out that the unique elastic properties of the metal would allow them to make an L-frame cylinder with six .40 caliber charge holes. The result was a medium-frame revolver that would be easier to handle than the full-size .45ACP Model 625, while still using cartridges that still met any "power threshold" demanded by various sanctioning bodies. Further, the stubby .40 S&W casings would be theoretically easier and quicker to load and eject than the long, skinny .357 Magnum rounds used by a standard L-frame 686.

Thus was born the Model 646 from the Performance Center; a space-age looking stainless steel revolver with a slab-sided heavy barrel and matte gray titanium cylinder. It was only produced for one year, and did not catch on quite as well as Smith had hoped. Unlike other moon clip revolvers such as the 610 and 625, the 646 generally wouldn't fire a cartridge without the clips. Dogged by persistent complaints of sticky extraction, ignition problems caused by varying rim thickness on factory .40 ammo, and a MSRP just shy of $850, it vanished without much comment after its short run.

In 2003, S&W had been bought by Saf-T-Hammer, purveyor of internal gun locks, and the frames and lockwork of their revolvers had been redesigned to accommodate a lock whose keyhole was just above the cylinder release. There were plenty of existing frames of the old style lying around, however, and some were used in a classic example of S&W parts bin engineering. By utilizing these remaining "no-lock" stainless L-frames, along with some L-frame titanium cylinders and 4" .40 caliber full-underlug barrels, Smith released some 300 new Model 646s into the wild. Easily distinguished from their Performance Center siblings by their rather more conventional underlug barrels, the non-PC 646's are also unusual in having a hammer that is clearly notched for the lock, but no provision for the locking mechanism on the frame. The guns shipped in locking aluminum cases, wore Hogue Bantam grips, and came with two thicknesses of full moon clips in order to compensate for varying rim thickness on factory ammo.

The Model 646 pictured above wearing a Hogue cocobolo monogrip was purchased new in 2003. Although the manufacturer's suggested retail was set at $575, street prices tended to run much lower, as the gun was marketed as a closeout from the get-go. Purchase price on the example in the photo was somewhere between $450 and $475, which was actually no more expensive than a regular Model 686 at the time. Today the gun would easily fetch back the original tariff and then some, provided it still had all its accoutrement. Especially the moon clips. Don't lose the moon clips.

Sunday Smith #38: Model PC627, 2002

2008-03-10T18:40:00.003-04:00

With the introduction of its big-bore .44 and .41 Magnum cartridges, sales of Smith & Wesson's large-frame .357 Magnums began to tail off in the latter half of the 20th Century. The introduction of the beefed-up medium-size .357 Magnum revolvers of the L-frame type in the early Eighties seemed to be the death knell for the plain-Jane law enforcement-oriented Model 28 Highway Patrolman, which bowed out of the catalog in 1986, its fate sealed by a combination of the rugged L-frames and a growing trend for law enforcement to adopt semiautomatic pistols. The traditional blued Model 27, once S&W's flagship revolver, followed it into oblivion in 1994.

As a result, although S&W issued stainless steel N-frames in .44 Magnum and .41 Magnum in 1979 and 1986, respectively, it wasn't until 1989 that the Model 627 .357 Magnum Stainless debuted, and then only as a limited "Classic Hunter" edition with a full underlug heavy barrel. While the big stainless .357 flitted in and out of the catalog over the next few years, something radical happened in the six-shooter market: Seven-shooters. In the mid '90s both Smith and Taurus debuted medium-frame .357 magnum revolvers with seven shot cylinders. The implications of this were not lost on engineers at S&W.

In 1997, Smith & Wesson showed off a large-frame stainless .357 Magnum revolver with eight charge holes in the cylinder. The gun soon became a staple of the Performance Center catalog, with its cylinder recessed for moonclips and a bewildering array of barrel lengths and configurations. Variants were even released in .38 Super with an eye towards the competition shooting market. With their exotic features and the cachet bestowed by MSRP's over the $1,000 mark, the 627's quickly filled the niche of company flagship that had been left vacant by the departure of their 6-shot blue steel forebears.

The revolver pictured above, a 627-3, was acquired in Like-New-In-Box condition from a private seller in late '02 for just over $700. A 3" V-Comp, it shipped with a removable compensator that could be replaced with an unported muzzle protector. It is rare enough to not appear in the latest edition of the Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson, and values on Performance Center guns are hard to fix at any rate. It is not unreasonable to assume it could fetch some $850-$900 or so at auction today. With the capacity of some semiautomatics and the wallop of a magnum wheelgun, the 627 makes a fine addition to any collection of Smith & Wesson revolvers.

Sunday Smith #37: Model 696-1, 2000.

2008-03-03T09:31:00.004-05:00

A little over a decade after the release of its beefed-up "L-frame" medium frame revolvers, Smith & Wesson capitalized on the fact that the slightly larger cylinder of the new guns would accommodate five .44 caliber holes with plenty of safety margin to spare. With Brazilian competitors Taurus and Rossi having both released five-shot medium frame .44 Special wheelguns, Smith countered with the Model 696, an all-stainless 3" round-butt big bore revolver almost guaranteed to find market share in an era when liberalized concealed carry laws were sweeping the nation.

Although heavy at only a fraction less than 36 ounces, the new revolver was fairly compact, yet its three-inch tube allowed for an ejector rod with a full-length stroke and enough sight radius to make the adjustable sights, with their red ramp up front and white-outlined rear blade, a useful addition. Only about a year after the introduction of the Model 696, the gun was redesigned to utilize S&W's new Metal Injection Molded lockwork, easily distinguished by the "flat nose" hammer lacking a hammer-mounted firing pin. The new model was assigned the "-1" suffix, signifying the first engineering change to the basic revolver. In 2001, the designation was changed again to the 696-2, with the addition of Smith & Wesson's controversial new key-operated integral safety lock. Only two years later, the 696 was dropped from the catalog.

In late 2004, the 696 became an online gun-collecting version of Dutch Tulip Mania. For some reason the gun became the object of wild speculation in internet forum and auction circles, with nice examples changing hands at $800 and more. Prices have since receded to more normal levels, leaving unwise speculators sitting on stacks of revolvers for which they'd paid too much, proving that it's important to know market trends before speculating in guns as investments, just like anything else.

The above revolver, shown wearing Hogue Bantam stocks, was picked up in Like-New-In-Box condition in early 2005 for $400, which was a good, if not earth-shaking deal. With factory grips and all the documentation and accoutrement, an LNIB 696 these days can expect to bring ~$600, with a premium for a "no dash" model with the hammer-mounted firing pin. For those who like the anvil-like reliability and solidity of a compact belt revolver made of steel, but prefer their bore size to start with the number "4", it's hard to imagine a better choice.

Sunday Smith #36: Model 296, 1999.

2008-02-24T14:07:00.004-05:00

In 1980 Smith & Wesson responded to fears about the long-term durability of K-frames when firing full-power .357 Magnum ammunition by releasing a new frame size, its first in thirty years. The new "L-frame" offered greater strength than the K by the virtue of being slightly beefed up in critical areas, while still using the same grips and fitting the same holsters as the earlier medium-framed guns. The new size caught on well and eventually produced spinoffs of the original .357 Magnum offerings.

Soon after, a combination of factors led to a revolution in carry revolver design. The fall of the Iron Curtain caused a drop in the price of titanium on the world market, and when combined with new manufacturing techniques for working this difficult-to-machine metal, allowed firearms manufacturers to explore its uses. Almost as light as aluminum, yet almost as strong as steel, S&W exploited its unique properties when they released the first of the "AirLite" revolvers in 1998, using titanium for the cylinder instead of steel. Where an all-stainless .38 Special Model 640 weighed some 21 ounces and an alloy-framed 642 still tipped the scales at 16 with its steel cylinder and barrel, the flyweight new 342 Ti weighed in at an astonishing 11.3 ounces with Dymondwood grips. This new method of construction included using a two-piece barrel, wherein the outer barrel was merely an alloy shroud, secured in place by the rifled steel insert that was screwed into the frame by use of a special fixture that mated with the rifling in the bore. Unlike the earlier crush-fit one-piece barrels, the sights could not be mounted crooked, since they were mounted on the barrel sleeve which had a key that fit into a matching mortise on the frame.

In 1999, Smith debuted a revolver at the annual SHOT Show that was unlike anything they'd released before. Combining the alloy and titanium construction of the AirLites with an L-frame featuring the enclosed "Centennial" hammer (the only non-J-frame Centennials Smith has ever made), the new revolvers were offered in both 7-shot .38 Special (Model 242) and 5-shot .44 Special (Model 296) flavors. Weighing only 18.9 ounces, the 2" round-butt .44 Special Model 296 offered big-bore punch, medium frame size, snag-free carryability, and was lighter than a steel J-frame. It seemed to be a recipe for success in a time when liberalized CCW laws were sweeping the country.

Alas, it was not to be. The new revolvers were still fairly complex to make; the complexity of the two-piece barrel and the machining of the titanium cylinder translated to an MSRP of US$754.00. The revolver was still fairly large; Glock had just released its Model 26 and 27, the latter of which offered 9+1 rounds of .40S&W in a slightly smaller package. The light weight imposed some shooting restrictions on the gun, too. Most .44 Special target ammunition was of either the 246gr lead round nose or 240gr jacketed soft point type, and the sharp recoil of the flyweight .44 would cause the heavy bullets in these loadings to jump their crimps, propelled forward out of the case by inertia (actually, the heavy bullet remained in place while the revolver and the cartridge case recoiled away from them, but the effect was the same.) This meant that the Model 296 was limited to 200gr or lighter bullets, and the only loads of that type on the market were defensive hollowpoints, which were a bit expensive for shooting tin cans.

Probably the biggest strike against it was the one that is most blindingly obvious: Simply put, it is quite possibly the most... um... "aesthetically challenged" revolver S&W has ever manufactured. Okay, it's just downright ugly and buyers stayed away in droves, causing Smith to discontinue the revolver after the 2001 model year, with the remaindered guns selling at deep discount through companies like CDNN. The few who purchased one found out, however, that pretty is as pretty does and if you're looking for an easy-to-carry big-bore wheelgun, they don't come much prettier than the 296 Ti.

The example pictured above was purchased new in October of 2001 for a shade under $600. Asking prices these days seem to be a little optimistic, but the last few I've seen actually sell at gun shows usually went in the $500-$575 range. Given their unique configuration and short production run it seems safe to say that these will probably achieve at least minor collectible status in the future, but that doesn't matter to me. It works too well in my purse to be wasted gathering dust in my gun safe...

Sunday Smith #35: Model 625-7, 1998.

2008-02-10T12:48:00.000-05:00

When Colt's introduced the "Peacemaker" revolver in 1873, they also debuted one of the most enduring centerfire handgun cartridges ever loaded. Originally propelling its 255-grain lead bullet with a charge of forty grains of FFg black powder, the .45 Colt is still one of the most popular revolver chamberings in the land over one-and-one-third centuries after its conception. The new cartridge was adopted by the U.S. Army in 1875, virtually guaranteeing its commercial success.

This put Colt's arch rival Smith & Wesson in something of a bind. Smith was committed to their top-break "No. 3" design for a large-frame belt revolver, and the .45 Colt was just too much cartridge for the gun. It would not be until the debut of the S&W .44 Hand Ejectors in the first decade of the 20th Century that Smith had a revolver capable of handling the big .45 round. Smith & Wesson mostly sold the large frames in their own .44 caliber configuration, however, leaving .45 Colt variants as rare collector's prizes.

In the postwar era, a few hundred .45 Colt versions of the .45 ACP Model of 1950 and Model 25 were manufactured, but it remained scarce until a resurgence in demand for the old chambering towards the end of the 1970s. By then, reloaders were starting to experiment with very heavy .45 Colt loads to get .44 Magnum terminal performance at lower pressures and this, combined with the emerging sport of Cowboy Action Shooting meant that the .45 Colt was staging a big comeback in the marketplace. When the stainless Model 625 was released in 1989 most realized that a stainless .45 Colt wasn't far behind, and sure enough, the guns hit the shelves in 1990.

The Model 625 made the transition to the "flat-nose hammer" era in 1998, and in that year Smith made up a run of approximately 150 guns with 3" full-underlug barrels and round-butt frames for ace distributor Lew Horton. Back in the autumn of 2003 I was fortunate enough to stumble into one in trade (along with some cash) for a .223 "franken-FAL" I had been playing with, and when I realized what I had received, I felt pretty good about having made the deal. After all, there are only 149 other ones out there...

Valuation on the 3" gun pictured above is hard to make due to scarcity, but a nice example with box & docs would probably bring $800 or more, potentially a fair amount more if it is unfired, which mine most certainly is not. A more conventional 5" gun is still not a common sight, but would probably be in a more normal $500-$600 price bracket, with a 4" tapered barrel 625 Mountain Gun falling somewhere in scarcity and price between the 3" and 5" examples.

Sunday Smith #34: Model 610-2, 1998.

2008-02-04T00:31:00.000-05:00

Over the years, Smith & Wesson has made many changes to their Hand Ejector revolvers in the name of simplifying manufacture. After WWII their commercial revolvers took a cue from the spartan wartime Victory Model and dispensed with the separate 'mushroom' knob on the end of the ejector rod and just knurled the end of the rod itself. About a decade later, they realized that the top screw in the sideplate and the screw forward of the trigger guard were superfluous, and did away with those. A change that is still controversial amongst innately conservative revolver enthusiasts happened in the early '80s, when the pin that was used to locate the barrel was eliminated by simply crush-fitting the barrel. At the same time, the countersunk chamber mouths used on Magnum revolvers were discontinued. You'll still hear some enthusiasts speak of old "five screw" or "pinned and recessed" revolvers in reverent tones.

Few changes, however, generated as much sturm und drang amongst the faithful as the one that took place in the late 1990s, when the era of the "flat-nose hammer" began. Prior to this, Smith had used lockwork components, most notably triggers and hammers, that were finish-machined from forgings. Because the fit between these parts in a double action revolver is as precise as clockwork and because tool heads wear, this was an assembly step that required a great deal of hand labor, and one that resulted in a pile of hammers and triggers discarded as too out-of-spec to be fitted. Anything that could be done to improve this would prevent manufacturing costs from climbing to unreasonable levels.

Enter MIM, or Metal Injection Molding. With MIM, a correctly-dimensioned part could be made just once and used as a master for a mold. Then, through a process somewhat similar to sintering, a powdered metal matrix held by a plastic binder would be fired in a furnace under intense heat, cooking away the binder, and would come out as a finished hammer or trigger that was the same dimension every time. The guns with the new MIM lockwork were immediately distinguishable from their predecessors by the fact that they had flat-nosed hammers, the firing pin having been exchanged for a floating one in the frame similar to the setup that S&W's rimfire revolvers had used all along.

In 1998, Smith's large-frame revolvers made the jump to the new lockwork, including the Model 610. The 610, originally introduced in 1989, was Smith's stainless steel large, or "N", frame Hand Ejector chambered for the 10mm Auto cartridge. The 10mm was a factory-legitimized wildcat, a high-pressure loading capable of throwing a 180gr .40-caliber bullet at over 1200fps. Developed with an eye towards fitting in current autoloaders, the cartridge's overall length was kept roughly the same as that of the .45ACP. It was only natural that Smith, which had just resurrected the .45ACP revolver in a modern stainless form with a full-underlug barrel, offer essentially the same gun in the newer caliber as well. The 610 has always been moderately popular with competition shooters as its moonclips make for speedy reloads, plus it can also fire the shorter .40S&W cartridge, a round that has become nearly ubiquitous in America today.

The revolver pictured above, a Model 610-2, is one of a run of 300 with 3" barrels done for distributor Lew Horton in 1998. It was acquired back in 2002 in trade for a compact 1911. Complete with box and docs and all the factory accoutrement, it is worth probably $600-$650 on the current market. A far more common 5" or 6.5" gun in similar condition could be found for not too much over $500, and less if one is willing to forgo having the blue plastic case and the factory instruction manual. Just make sure the seller includes the moon clips, as they're definitely not as common a retail item in brick-'n'-mortar gun stores as their .45ACP cousins.

Sunday Smith #33: Model PC-640, 1995.

2008-01-27T22:15:00.001-05:00

In 1887, Smith & Wesson introduced a new line of pocket-sized revolvers that had the hammer completely enclosed. Called the "Safety Hammerless", they were extremely popular, remaining in production in one form or another for over a half-century, with the .38 Safety Hammerless not dropped from the catalog until the pressures of wartime production forced its exit in 1940.

Twelve years later, an enclosed-hammer model was reintroduced, only this time on the modern J-frame Hand Ejector platform. Marking as it did the hundredth anniversary of the company, the reborn hammerless revolvers were known as the "Centennial" model. They remained in the catalog until 1974 before being discontinued in their turn.

Almost immediately gun writers and S&W fans began lamenting the loss of what they considered to be a nearly perfect concealed-carry revolver, with its non-snag lines and a completely enclosed hammer that allowed it to be fired from inside a pocket in a pinch. Responding to pressure, Smith relaunched the gun in stainless steel for 1989, this time as the Model 640.

It was a successful re-introduction, with the gun being embraced by diverse markets, from the general public to the New York City Police Department. It did not take long for special variants to emerge, either. There was, for instance, a "Paxton Quigley" model, complete with tapestry carrying case and mother of pearl inlays in the stocks. The gun also became a common platform for Performance Center variants.

The PC-640 above sports a 3" barrel with a true expansion-chamber compensator. Since this occupies the space normally taken up by the integral ramp front sight, a dovetail front sight replaces it. The action is slicked up, and the gun comes with attractive smooth wood stocks. It was among the first J-frames explicitly rated for use with +P ammunition. Shortly after it was made, the Model 640-1 debuted, bringing the .357 Magnum to the smallest current Smith frame size.

The pictured firearm was acquired in 2004 in trade for a Performance Center-customized 640 (as opposed to this gun, which is a factory PC gun, complete with PC logo rollmark.) Again, being a Performance Center gun, an exact value is hard to fix, but considering the gun's like-new-in-box condition complete with box and docs, it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect it to fetch something in the $550-$650 range at auction. A standard 640 of similar vintage in similar condition (LNIB) would probably bring ~$400-$450 depending on your area, while a decent shooter could probably be picked up for no more than $300 if one doesn't mind some wear and tear.

Sunday Smith #32: Model PC-13, 1995.

2008-01-20T14:51:00.001-05:00

In 1990, a new department was opened at Smith & Wesson. Dubbed the "Performance Center", it was envisaged as an in-house semicustom shop, where niche guns could be designed and built under the direction of master pistolsmiths Paul Liebenberg and John French. The guns would be based on existing S&W designs, built in limited runs, and shopped to Smith's various distributors, who would then get an exclusive model to offer in their catalogs. The concept proved popular, and soon it was not uncommon for models to be completely sold out at SHOT, the gun industry's big winter trade show.

In 1995 the Performance Center turned its attentions to the .357 Magnum Model 13. The Model 13 was first released in 1974 and remained in production through 1999. Also known as the ".357 Magnum Military & Police" it was, as the name implies, a slightly beefed-up fixed-sight M&P chambered for the more powerful Magnum cartridge instead of the old .38 Special. It was fairly popular with law enforcement, at least with departments that weren't hampered by the stigma of issuing "Magnums". It was available in both 4" square-butt and 3" round-butt configurations, the latter becoming very respected as a concealed-carry or plainclothes revolver, especially after its adoption by the FBI.

The Performance Center version, sold through the well-known distributor Lew Horton, was known as the PC-13. Based on the 3" round-butt gun, the magnum K-frame featured a bobbed hammer and double-action-only lockwork, lightly chamfered charge holes, a simple overtravel stop consisting of a roll-pin fixed in the rear of the trigger, Eagle Secret Service grips, and quad Mag-Na-Porting. The cylinder release was beveled on the bottom to better clear a speedloader and, unlike the standard 3" Model 13, the ejector rod was shrouded. The whole gun was finished in a businesslike matte blue. The Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson by Jim Supica and Richard Nahas refers to it as "A very serious carry revolver."

The revolver in the photo was purchased by a good friend at a gun show in 2001 for $650. It was gifted to me in 2002 and has held pride of place in my S&W collection ever since. As scarce as these revolvers are (only 400 of them were built), accurate pricing is difficult. MSRP in 1995 was $765, and examples have turned up all over the price map in the last few years, from $800 on the low end to a recent unfired-in-the-box specimen on Gunbroker.com with an opening bid of $1,199. Sadly, like most Performance Center guns, a lot of these seem to have been bought to hoard and never shoot, which is a shame for such a no-nonsense gun. As can be seen by the discoloration around the porting in the above photo, this specimen has been spared such an ignominious fate.

Sunday Smith #31: Model 64-4, 1994.

2008-01-13T14:15:00.001-05:00

Stainless steel, first patented in the early 20th Century, didn't see widespread use in firearms manufacture until the 1960s. In 1965, Smith & Wesson launched the first production revolver made entirely out of stainless steel; the Model 60, a stainless variant of the Model 36 Chiefs Special. The revolver was a huge sales success, much to the chagrin of traditionalists, and was followed in 1970 by the Model 64, a rust-resistant rendition of the Model 10 Military & Police.

The new stainless M&P revolvers were widely issued by police departments, and much anecdotal evidence exists stating that they were highly sought after as personal weapons with the US servicemen then serving in Southeast Asia's hot, humid jungles. The gun is pretty much an exact copy of the Model 10 save for the steel used. Early models had flash-chromed hammers and triggers, but by the 1990s these were plain color-case hardened carbon steel like on non-stainless guns.

The Model 64 is one of the most prosaic firearms in the S&W lineup, and therefore commands little collector interest outside of very early guns or rare production variants. Good shooters can be found for ~$200 without much effort and even very fine specimens seldom top three bills by very much. The above example, a 2" heavy barrel Model 64-4 dating to 1994, was acquired (along with a couple C-notes) in LNIB condition in 2003 in trade from a private seller at a gun show for a 4" Model 624. It has served as this writer's nightstand gun ever since.

Sunday Smith #30: Model 625-2, 1989.

2008-01-06T20:35:00.000-05:00

With the .45 ACP Model 25 continuing in production into the 1980's, it was inevitable that S&W would introduce a stainless version. Sure enough, towards the end of the decade the Model 625 appeared. Seemingly designed to be an ideal bowling pin gun, its 5" full-underlug barrel minimizing the muzzle flip from the .45 cartridge, the 625 had enough oddities to keep collectors scratching their heads for some time to come.

For starters, there never was just a plain 625 or 625-1; the first guns to hit the street were designated "625-2", and engineering changes incremented normally from there. It was also unusual for a 5" gun at the time in that it had a round-butt frame, something that was only seen on short-barreled N-frames of the era. The very earliest ones had the barrel rollmarked "Model of 1988" (despite being made in 1989) and had ramp front sights, but almost immediately this was changed to a laser-etched "Model of 1989" and a patridge-type front sight blade. Unlike other stainless guns from Smith & Wesson, which had brushed finishes, the 625 was finished in a soft matte bead-blast.

In 1990 the 625-3 debuted the longer cylinder stop notches associated with the "Endurance Package" from the 629, and the "-4" change that followed three years later introduced holes pre-drilled in the topstrap for accepting scope mounts. The 625 proved popular with competition shooters for the speed with which it could be reloaded thanks to its use of moon-clips. Indeed, when Jerry Miculek set his famous record of "six shots, reload, and six shots in 2.99 seconds", it was a Model 625 that he used.

The revolver pictured above, an early "Model of 1988" marked gun, was purchased from a friend for $450 in the Autumn of 2003. The 625 seems to hold its value better than some of its more common modern N-frame siblings, and a LNIB example could fetch as much as six bills. The sample above, given its status as a very early rollmarked gun, could bring $550 or a bit more at auction, even with the aftermarket cocobolo Hogue monogrip. A good shooter with minor cosmetic issues could probably be found for around $400, and the beauty of the finish on these guns is that any gunsmith with a blasting cabinet and a deft touch can freshen it right up.

Sunday Smith #29: Model 19-5, 1988.

2008-01-01T11:43:00.000-05:00

When Smith & Wesson introduced the .357 Magnum cartridge in 1935, many viewed it as an ideal law enforcement round. The only problem was that the only revolver chambered for it was prohibitively expensive for most law enforcement agencies, being carefully fitted and finished and positioned as the "Cadillac" of the S&W line. After World War Two, S&W attempted to rectify this by introducing the "Highway Patrolman", later known as the Model 28, in 1954. This was essentially the same revolver as the .357 Magnum/Model 27, but with various cost cutting measures like a matte blue finish and elimination of the fine checkering along the sighting plane.

While this solved the cost issue, it didn't change the fact that the .357 cartridge was only available in a big N-frame revolver that weighed in at over two and a half pounds, which was quite a burden to lug on a duty belt already encumbered by handcuffs, nightstick, and all the other items on the ever-growing list of impedimentia considered necessary for police work. Behind the scenes, Border Patrol officer Bill Jordan had been pressing S&W to take advantage of advances in metallurgy and heat-treating of steel by releasing a .357 Magnum version of their midsize K-frame revolver. In 1955, they did just that, and thus was born the Combat Magnum, soon to be dubbed the Model 19 when the transition to model numbers was made in 1957.

Immediately a big hit, the Model 19 offered the more compact dimensions of the medium-frame combined with the hard-hitting .357 Magnum chambering and was used by any number of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, ranging from the Dayton, OH Police Department to the United States Secret Service. Initially offered with a 4" barrel and square-butt frame, variations with other barrel lengths soon became available. The most common were the 2.5" guns with round-butt frames and square-butt 6" guns, but 3" and 5" examples are known to exist. The revolvers went through the litany of engineering changes denoted by "dash numbers" after the model number, with the "-5" variation marking the abandonment of the pinned barrel and countersunk chambers in 1982. Production of the Model 19 Combat Magnum continued through November of 1999 when it was finally discontinued, its sales having slipped precipitously in comparison with its stainless offspring, the Model 66.

The revolver in the above photo, a 19-5 dating to 1988, is unusual for combining the 4" barrel length with a round-butt frame. This configuration first showed up in guns issued to the Office of Naval Intelligence in 1965, and those guns were marked "ONI" on the frame. A later run of 4" round-butt guns was done in 1988 for the U.S. State Department, and this revolver would appear to be from that batch, as its serial number bears the correct prefix. It was acquired from a friend in 2003 for about $325, and would bring probably over $425 in today's market, given the aftermarket Hogue monogrip and the lack of a factory box. Standard 4" Model 19's will run anywhere from not too much over $150 for a tired shooter to as much as five bills for a pristine early example with box & docs. Variations in barrel length, commemoratives, and odd Law Enforcement or foreign-contract guns can sometimes be worth substantial premiums, but research is in order before laying out the cash, as always.

As a purely side note, if I could only own one handgun, the above revolver would probably be it. Able to shoot anything from .38 snake shot to .357 loads appropriate for deer hunting, and small enough to be carried concealed in an inside-the-waistband holster, the 4" Model 19 is maybe as close to a "Do Anything" handgun as has ever been made.

Sunday Smith #28: Model 629-1, 1987.

2007-12-23T14:36:00.001-05:00

When Smith & Wesson debuted the .44 Special cartridge in their new .44 Hand Ejector revolver back in 1907, it was only a matter of time before handloaders began to realize its hidden potential. By the post-WWII era, you couldn't swing a cat without hitting someone who was tinkering with hot-rodded .44 Special loadings, cheered on by the writings of Elmer Keith. With that level of interest, factory legitimization was a certainty.

Working with Remington, S&W debuted the new .44 Magnum cartridge in 1955. Throwing a 240gr bullet at over 1300fps, the round was far and away the most potent purpose-designed handgun cartridge ever developed at the time and would hold its title for almost three decades (it was the late '80s before the cartridge that supplanted it, the .454 Casull, could really be called a "factory round".) Going the same route that they had taken with the .38 Special/.357 Magnum in the 1930s, Smith lengthened the case on the new round to prevent it from being stuffed into older .44 Special guns that might not be up to the forces generated by the potent cartridge.

In 1957, the revolver formerly known as the ".44 Magnum" became the Model 29, and suffered the same gradual production shortcuts that its .357 sibling, the Model 27, endured over the years. Less hand polishing and fitting went into the guns in order to maintain profitability in the face of gradually increasing costs. One new twist came in 1979, when the Model 629 was released as the first stainless steel N-frame. Initially offered only in the 6" barrel length, 4" and 8 3/8" barrels were soon added. In 1982, the counterbored chambers and the pinned barrel went the way of the Dodo, and the 629 became the 629-1. Four years later a run of 8,000 guns were done with round-butt frames and three inch barrels for the Lew Horton company, and were immediately very popular.

The above pistol is a 629-1 from the tail end of that run in 1987. It was purchased from a private seller at a gun show in 2001 for $450 and wears its original factory "combat" stocks. A previous owner had the gun Mag-Na-Ported to help tame the vigorous muzzle flip that can occur when launching scorching magnum loads from the gun's stubby tube. As a side note, the 629-1 predates the "Endurance Package" that showed up on -2E and -3 and all later 629's, which is most easily recognized externally by the longer cylinder stop notches. This package of improvements helps prevent the cylinder from spinning backwards under recoil of heavy loads as well as generally increasing the durability of the gun. Still, if one wishes to lob super heavy bullets or experiment with hot loads, a Ruger is probably a better choice; the Smith is best with the factory loadings for which it was designed, and there's nothing wrong with those. After all, they did once make it "The most powerful handgun in the world."

Do you feel lucky, punk?

Sunday Smith #27: Model 657, 1986.

2007-12-17T09:30:00.000-05:00

Starting in 1979, Smith & Wesson started releasing stainless versions of their N-frame revolvers with the Model 629 .44 Magnum Stainless. Seven years later it was the turn of the .41 Magnum Model 57 to get a stainless counterpart in the Model 657. The new revolver was released with a square-butt frame and was cataloged in 4", 6", and 8 3/8" barrel lengths.

Non-standard variations on the 657 abound. As had become something of a tradition by the mid-'80s, Smith released a limited run of guns with a 3" barrel, round-butt frame, smooth "combat" stocks, and red-ramp/white-outline sights during the first year of production. Like other factory snubnose N-frames, these command a fair amount of collector interest compared to their more common siblings.

The revolver pictured above, still wearing its factory stocks, was acquired from a private seller in late 2005 for $400. The going rate in these parts for a 3" stainless N-frame these days seems to be $500-$600, but it's hard to hang a value on a no-dash 3" 657 as so little information is available about them. The snubnose N-frames do have noticeably greater recoil and muzzle flip than the longer-barreled guns, and the stubby tube makes it a flamethrower, but since the gun predates S&W's "Endurance Package" modifications, I tend to avoid really heavy hunting-type loads in it anyway. As it is, it's plenty potent enough with 170gr or 210gr defensive loads.

Sunday Smith #26: Model 544, 1986.

2007-12-09T19:03:00.000-05:00

In 1873 Winchester introduced a new cartridge for their brand spanking new M1873 lever-action rifle. The new chambering was known by them as the .44 WCF (Winchester Center Fire,) but quickly became known as the ".44-40", as it utilized a .44 caliber bullet propelled by 40 grains of black powder. The factory loading lobbed a 200gr bullet out of a carbine barrel at roughly 1800 feet per second and became a wildly popular general purpose cartridge.

In seemingly no time, Colt began offering the round as a factory chambering in the Peacemaker, and Smith & Wesson followed suit in their No. 3 top-break revolvers. This was enthusiastically received by people who wanted a carbine and pistol chambered for the same round. As the century turned and Smith debuted their new large-frame Hand Ejector wheelguns, the .44-40 continued to be offered as a standard cartridge. As newer cartridges like the .44 Special came to the forefront, interest in the old .44-40 began to wane; when production was discontinued during World War Two to focus on revolvers for the military, that seemed to be the end of the line for the venerable .44 WCF in Smith wheelguns. After the war the chambering did not remain in the catalog.

In 1986, Texas celebrated the Sesquicentennial of its independence from Mexico, commemorating the year with a wagon train that wound through the state. Smith & Wesson commemorated the event with a limited edition revolver; a blued steel 5" N-frame, the Model 544 "Texas Wagon Train Commemorative" chambered for the old .44-40 cartridge. According to Smith's records, 4782 of these revolvers were shipped, all with special serial numbers with the "TWT" prefix. They came with a fitted basswood box sporting the Texas Wagon Train logo on the lid, and smooth basswood target stocks. They were the first S&W revolvers chambered for the .44-40 round to ship since 1940, and their collectible status has earned them a place on the "Curio & Relic" list from the BATFE.

The above revolver was purchased for some $275 back in 2003. It came with the original basswood box and the original stocks, which are not shown in the above photo. Given the amount of wear and the minor freckling on the gun, it is probably worth only about $350-375 in today's environment. Given that I've used it to bust rocks at 100 yards down on the Rio Grande in Big Bend country, to me it is priceless.

Sunday Smith #25: Model 624, 1985

2007-12-02T17:57:00.000-05:00

Smith & Wesson introduced the .44 Special cartridge along with the New Century model (also known as the "Triple Lock") in 1908. It was the debut chambering for their new, large "N-frame" Hand Ejectors. Created by stretching the .44 Russian cartridge case roughly an additional .19", the new round gained acclaim as a powerful revolver cartridge and sold well for many years.

It didn't take long for handloaders to vastly exceed the original factory velocity and energy numbers of the cartridge, and by the mid-1950s, S&W had released their own hot-rodded version as a new chambering: the slightly-lengthened ".44 Magnum". From that point forward, .44 Special sales began to taper off. By 1967, the last .44 Special revolvers were dropped from the S&W catalog.

As so often happens, nostalgia appeared ten minutes too late to save slumping sales, but by the early 1980s letters, phone calls, and wistful gun magazine articles caused Smith to reintroduce the old chambering. Not only was the adjustable-sight N-frame Model 24 re-released in 1983, but in a new twist for the old cartridge, a stainless version was introduced in 1985: The Model 624.

Retaining the classic tapered-barrel lines of the original, the 624 was initially offered with a 4" or 6.5" barrel and shrouded ejector rod. Like all stainless Smiths of the era, the gun sported a flash-chromed trigger and hammer; the finish was a lightly brushed bare stainless. Sights were adjustable, and the frontstrap and backstrap of the grip were serrated. Additionally, a special run of 5000 3" guns sporting red ramp/white outline sights was manufactured for the famous distributor Lew Horton between '85 and '87; these shipped with a fitted holster and were destined to be much sought-after. In 1988, the .44 Special again temporarily disappeared from the catalog with the demise of the 624.

The 624 featured above was purchased in 2002 as part of a three gun set; a local seller was offering the 3", 4", and 6.5" guns, all Like New In Box, at $1000 for all three. I couldn't pass the deal up, although I knew I'd only be keeping one of them. Eventually, I used the two longer-barreled guns as trading fodder and kept the 3" piece, as it made a nice companion to my 3" .44 Magnum Model 629. In the above photo it is wearing a set of smooth cocobolo stocks from Kim Ahrends. In today's market, a 3" Lew Horton 624 in excellent condition with the correct box and accessories could bring anywhere from $500 to almost $600, depending on the area.

Sunday Smith #24: Model 10-8, 1983

2007-11-26T12:35:00.001-05:00

The Smith & Wesson Model 10 was available in standard barrel lengths of two, four, five, and six inches for most of its life, but early on Smith offered a three-inch tube as a special order item, usually for large departmental orders. The 3" square butt configuration was popular with many foreign police departments, being used from France and Turkey to Malaysia and Australia. It was only when combined with the round-butt frame of the 2" Model 10, however, that the three-inch barrel really came into its own.

By the early 1980s, the 3" round-butt Model 10 had become a regular catalog offering, and some people immediately recognized the virtues offered by this package. The 3" barrel and round butt made the gun compact enough to be discreetly carried on the belt. Unlike its 2" snubbie cousin, though, the 3" barrel offered usable sight radius and even more importantly it had a full-length ejector rod stroke to ensure positive extraction of spent cases. The steel frame and thick barrel profile made the gun heavy enough to easily tame the recoil of even hot +P ammunition, while not rendering it too heavy to comfortably carry. The fixed sights were rugged and snag-free, and added to the all-business aura of the piece.

Domestic agencies, including the Criminal Investigative Division of the much-loved IRS, quickly saw the virtues of this configuration, and the FBI issued its .357 Magnum sibling, the Model 13. Many fans today still consider this the best all-around concealed-carry revolver configuration.

In 1997, Smith finally discontinued all configurations except the 4" heavy barrel, and the Model 10 lingers on mostly for bulk orders to private security firms. The above pictured revolver, a Model 10-8 produced in 1983, was purchased for $275 back in '03, which was a pretty fair price for a 95% gun with the box, docs, and tools. Cleaned up and sold at auction today, it could bring as much as $350-375, given its configuration, condition, and correct accoutrement.

Sunday Smith #23: Model 38, 1982

2007-11-18T15:52:00.000-05:00

In 1955, Smith & Wesson produced a variation of their aluminum-framed Chief's Special Airweight revolver that had a built-in hammer shroud. Called the Bodyguard Airweight, the new revolver allowed the shooter a smooth, snag-free draw from inside a pocket or under clothing, while still allowing the hammer to be thumb-cocked for single action fire, an option not available on the earlier Safety Hammerless and Centennial revolvers with their entirely enclosed hammers.

The model was an instant sales success, with shooters enjoying the availability of both modes of operation in the slick little fourteen-ounce pocket gun. When Smith made the changeover to model numbers in 1957, the Bodyguard Airweight became the "Model 38" and continued selling well. The distinctive silhouette of the Bodyguard had its moment of infamy in the hand of South Vietnamese Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, frozen in Eddie Adams Pulitzer Prize-winning photo.

The Model 38 Bodyguard Airweight was joined by a stainless variant, the Model 638, in 1989. A decade later the stainless gun's sales had so outstripped its carbon steel forebear that the original was dropped from the catalog after a 47-year run. Model 38s remain fairly popular with collectors, but are generally less expensive than Model 37 Chiefs Special Airweight or the Model 42/042 Centennials.

The above revolver, a nickel Model 38 in about 98% condition with box, docs, and tools, was acquired for about $300 back in 2003 which was probably at the outer limit of its value envelope at the time. Currently it might bring as much as $350 with the original stocks fitted and a quick rub with Flitz. But like they say, "You can never pay too much for a gun; you can only buy it too soon."

Sunday Smith #22: Model 547, 1982

2007-11-12T14:22:00.000-05:00

Smith & Wesson's first foray into building a revolver chambered for a semiautomatic pistol cartridge was the Model 1917 revolver produced for the U.S. Army during the First World War. The challenge wasn't in chambering the round, as the chambers could be stepped, allowing the cartridge to headspace on the case mouth just like in an automatic, but in extraction. The hand ejector extraction system relied on a protruding cartridge rim for the extractor star to act against.

A solution was found by using a thin sheet metal clip that would clip into the pistol round's extractor groove, joining two or three of them together and giving the extractor something to grab. Still, this always felt like a temporary solution. It added an extra part to be looked after, required time to be spend inserting rounds into the little clips, and if the clips were bent, they could bind the action of the gun, rendering the cylinder hard to turn and the revolver effectively inoperable. Lose the clip, and you're spending precious time trying to pry spent cases out with your fingernails or poke them out with a stick.

LEFT: Extractor with fingers.

Over the years other chamberings were tried, usually as wartime experiments, but it wasn't until 1980 that the obstacle of rimless extraction would be overcome. In an attempt to court overseas sales, Smith & Wesson came up with a unique new extractor system that used six "fingers" on the ejector rod to lift out the rounds by their extractor grooves. They also overcame another problem with 9mm as a revolver round, which was case setback on firing due to the slight taper of the 9x19mm cartridge, by using a floating frame-mounted firing pin, and placing a second floating pin in the breechface immediately above it to provide case support and keep the brass from backing out of the chamber.

RIGHT: Breechface with two pins.

The new "Model 547 9mm Military & Police" was offered in both 4" square-butt (the standard service configuration) and 3" round-butt (preferred for plainclothes work) configurations, both with a heavy barrel. The revolver was, at a glance, nearly identical to the then-common Model 13 .357 Magnum M&P, but one dead giveaway externally was the 9mm's oddly shaped hammer.

The revolver never caught on with overseas customers, and tradition-minded U.S. revolver shooters gave it a lukewarm reception as well. It was no surprise then to see it fade from the catalog after 1985, only five years after its introduction. Naturally, its relative scarcity (only slightly more than 10,000 made) and unique mechanical nature has made it something for collectors to chase down and prices have climbed accordingly in the last half-decade or so. In 2000, it wasn't uncommon to find a nice 547 for maybe $250-$350; the example in the above photo, which is an honest 95%+ gun, was picked up at a gun show for right around $400 in mid-'04; these days nice ones are fetching north of $600 on auction sites, and a LNIB example could bring more than eight bills. Still, what collection of Smith "Military & Police" revolvers would be complete without at least one example of the oddest M&P?

Sunday Smith #21: Model 15-4, 1980

2007-11-06T11:36:00.000-05:00

From the debut of the K-frame .38 Hand Ejector as the ".38 Military & Police 1st Model" in 1899, Smith & Wesson offered variants equipped with adjustable (or "target") sights. It wasn't until after World War Two, however, that they introduced a K-frame .38 target pistol truly worthy of the name. That gun was the K-38 Masterpiece.

Special features abounded on the new revolver model. It made use of Smith's new short-throw hammer and the trigger featured an adjustment for overtravel (the amount of movement remaining in the trigger's throw after the sear breaks.) The barrel was topped by a flat, longitudinally serrated rib in order to provide a level non-glare sight plane. The grip frame also had longitudinal serrations on both the frontstrap and backstrap to improve grip.

It was originally offered in two barrel lengths, each with their own distinctive front sight. The 6" model, known as the "K-38 Target Masterpiece" had a squared Patridge-style front sight, whereas the 4" "K-38 Combat Masterpiece" had a sloped Baughman "quick draw" style ramp, to avoid snagging in the holster. The weapons proved immediately popular and were sales successes for the Massachusetts gunmaker.

With the shift to model numbers in 1957, the Target Masterpiece became the Model 14, while its shorter barreled cousin had its romantic moniker replaced by the dreary "Model 15" designation. New barrel lengths were added, with the Model 14 acquiring an 8 3/8" option, while the Model 15 had a 2" variant added to the lineup. Surprisingly, given its added cost over the ubiquitous Model 10, the Model 15 saw a fair amount of law enforcement sales, and was even adopted by the USAF for issue to security police.

The Model 15 remained a standard catalog item through 1999, when it was discontinued. Sales of blued guns had suffered next to their stainless counterparts, and the Model 15 suffered the double curse of being chambered in .38 Special. Many consumers felt that the adjustable sight Model 66, externally identical, offered the added bonus of being made of low-maintenance stainless steel and able to chamber the .357 Magnum cartridge as well. Traditionalists howled, however, and the Model 15 has since seen various resurrections in limited edition "Heritage Model"-type runs.

The Model 15-4 pictured above was manufactured in 1980 and, as best I can tell, it remained unfired until I acquired it in early 2003. The bluing in the barrel is still intact, there are no markings on the breechface, and the revolver barely has a drag ring, indicating it hasn't even been dry-fired much. It was picked up at a ridiculously cheap $125, and is worth better than three times that amount at auction in today's environment. As it sits, $400-$425 would not be an unreasonable selling price, and if it had the box & docs it would be worth even more.

Sunday Smith #20: Model 36-1, 1980

2007-10-29T12:52:00.000-04:00

When Smith & Wesson stretched the cylinder window of the I-frame by slightly over a tenth of an inch in 1950 to accommodate a cylinder chambered for the .38 Special cartridge, they created a new frame designation: The J-frame. They also created what would become one of the company's best selling and longest-lived models: The .38 Chiefs Special, later known as the Model 36. Introduced before commercial jet air travel, the model is still being catalogued fifty-seven years later.

The blend of service revolver power and pocket gun size was a winning recipe, and the little 2" snubbie became synonymous with "detective's gun" or "off-duty gun" in no time flat. It was used by both heroes and villains in Hollywood and on TV. J. Edgar Hoover received one of the earliest ones, and police departments across the land purchased them in batches.

It didn't take long for variations to turn up. For example, a very limited number were made with target sights and in the 1990's Smith released the Model 36LS, or "Lady Smith", with attractive hardwood grips and "Lady Smith" engraved on the sideplate. The NYPD ordered a batch Model 36-1's with 3" barrels and square-butt frames to issue to female police officers who had a hard time with the double-action trigger reach on the standard issue Model 10.

The above revolver is an example of the 3" heavy barrel, square-butt Model 36-1. It was purchased back in '01 for $225, a price that was more than fair considering it's outstanding condition and the fact that it shows almost no wear. Current market value for an identical piece would probably be somewhere between $275 and $350, depending on in which area of the country the gun was sold and how badly the purchaser wanted an unusually-configured Chiefs Special.

Sunday Smith #19: Model 57, 1980

2007-10-21T20:17:00.000-04:00

In 1964 Remington and Smith & Wesson answered the demands of handloaders and wildcatters by launching the new .41 Remington Magnum cartridge. The .41 Magnum began life with a split personality, with two types of loads being offered. The first, a 210 grain lead bullet at just under 1000 feet per second, was intended to be a police loading that offered a larger and heavier bullet than the .357 Magnum or .38 Special, but without the muzzle blast and recoil penalties of the .44 Magnum. The second loading pushed a jacketed hollowpoint of the same weight to some 1300fps, and was designed for hunting deer-sized game.

To go along with the new cartridge, S&W debuted a pair of new revolvers. There was the Model 58, which was a fixed-sight piece that looked like a Military & Police on steroids, and the Model 57, which was a heavy-barreled adjustable sight model that was added to their premium lineup which at that time consisted of the Model 27 .357 Magnum and Model 29 .44 Magnum revolvers. Like the other two, it enjoyed an extra bit of polishing and attention to detail coming off the production line.

Unfortunately, this was during the era of Smith & Wesson's ownership by the Bangor Punta conglomerate (a gunsmith of my acquaintance swears that "Bangor Punta" is Spanish for "toolmark") and by 1969, cost cutting ensured that the extra fine finishes on the 27, 29, and 57 would be no more; collectors will pay a premium for the early examples, easily identified by their "S" serial number prefixes.

The revolver pictured above began life as a fairly generic Bangor Punta-era Model 57, with the standard six inch barrel and square-butt frame. Its previous owner subjected the gun to radical elective surgery:

The 6" tube was removed and a factory 4" barrel was ordered and sent to Mag-Na-Port for quad porting.
The action was slicked up considerably, while the hammer spur was removed and the serrated target trigger was replaced with a smooth combat trigger.
The frame was altered to a round-butt profile, and the serrations on the rear of the frame were meticulously re-cut to give it a factory appearance.
The front sight was machined for an orange insert.
A hardwood Hogue Monogrip was fitted.
The whole gun was finished to a non-glare matte blue.

The result is a one-of-a-kind fighting sixgun. Ironically, however, such is the nature of collectible guns and custom work that if the gun were in pristine original shape, as a "Pinned & Recessed" Model 57, it would bring almost as much money in resale as it would after megabucks were spent tuning it up; the moral being that if you are going to customize a gun, customize it for yourself and forget about realizing a profit. A like-new-in-box Model 57 could command over $600 (well over, if it's an "S" prefix) at auction today; plan on spending $300-$400 for a good shooter.

Sunday Smith #18: Model 37, 1976

2007-10-14T23:03:00.001-04:00

With Colt's having introduced an aluminum alloy-framed version of the Detective Special, known as the "Cobra", in 1950, it was perhaps inevitable that Smith would follow the introduction of their new Chiefs Special with an alloy-framed variant as well. Sure enough, in 1952 Smith & Wesson began offering the Chiefs Special Airweight.

By giving up one round in the cylinder, the new Smith was noticeably smaller than its competitor from Colt's. Further, thanks to the alloy cylinder, it was measurably lighter, too. Unfortunately, the aluminum alloys of the day weren't quite up to the stresses occurring in the chamber of a firearm, and persistent reports of catastrophic cylinder failures caused Smith to shift to a steel cylinder after less than 3,800 were made. The USAF showed some interest in the model, ordering a number for testing, but all save a handful were destroyed, making the "Baby Aircrewman" one of the most sought-after postwar Smiths by collectors.

In 1957, the Chiefs Special Airweight became the Model 37 and continued to be made with mostly minor engineering changes until it was finally dropped from the catalog in 2006. The most significant change was probably the one made when they started producing the gun on the slightly longer new "J-Magnum" frame in 1997, since this allowed the gun to be certified for use with more powerful, "+P rated" ammunition, which offers improved performance at the cost of sharper recoil in the twelve-and-a-half ounce J-frame. While newer snubnose revolvers have become all the rage at S&W, with their titanium cylinders and scandium/aluminum alloy frames, many feel that the old steel-cylindered Airweights offer a "best of both worlds" balance, being light enough to carry in a pocket while not being so light as to produce the bone-cracking recoil characteristic of the newer flyweights.

The revolver pictured above is a nickeled 2" Model 37 produced in 1976. From the condition of the breechface, forcing cone, and rifling, it is highly unlikely that this revolver has been fired since it left the factory. Being made before 1982, it has the characteristic barrel locating pin through the frame forward of the cylinder opening. "Pinned barrel" Smiths are starting to command more elevated prices on the market, but even so, they are still a fairly affordable field for collecting. This Model 37 was scooped up for $300 in '03, which was a low price on the market even then. Given condition and the fact that it's in nickel and has a pinned barrel, it could bring $450 or more to the right buyer these days. A serviceable shooter, however, can be bought for $225-$300.

Sunday Smith #17: Model 53-2, 1974

2007-10-07T19:30:00.001-04:00

In the mid-1950's, experimenters started playing with Model 17's (.22LR K-frames) by fitting new cylinders machined from cylinder blanks and chambered in a variety of wildcats made from necking down centerfire pistol cartridges to accept the .224" jacketed bullets then becoming popular from the new small-bore .222 Remington varmint cartridge. The .224" bullets would function fine in the .22LR barrels, and the idea was a revolver that would be lethal on small game and varmints at ranges far beyond those considered practical with a .22 rimfire.

In 1961, S&W and Remington legitimized one of these wildcats by naming it the .22 Remington Jet and chambering it in the new Model 53. The Model 53 was a square-butt K-frame revolver with target sights, marked ".22 Magnum" on the barrel, and was available with a 4", 6", or 8 3/8" barrel. Unique features included either a second cylinder chambered for .22LR, or a set of .22LR chamber inserts. The revolver had dual firing pins in the frame, and had a pivoting striker in the hammer that could be toggled back and forth between rimfire and centerfire positions.

The .22 Remington Jet round itself was based on the .357 Magnum casing, but necked down to take a .222" projectile. The large powder charge launched a 40gr projectile at a claimed 2460fps out of an 8 3/8" tube (although test numbers chronoed noticeably lower.) Still, the .22 Rem Jet had numbers far surpassing the modern 5.7x28mm round from FN.

The round's fatal weakness was a result of its shape and the fact that it was intended to be fired from a revolver. Based on a rimmed midbore revolver cartridge, the round was tapered like an incense cone. Unless the chambers were scrupulously degreased, firing the round would cause the case to expand and force the base hard against the revolver's breechface, preventing the cylinder from turning. With the growing popularity of the .22WMR, the .22 Rem Jet's day came and went, and with it, the Model 53.

Early Model 53 "no dash" four-screw guns (first year of production) command a substantial premium, but any Model 53 (there was no "53-1"; deletion of the triggerguard screw in '62 resulted in the 53-2) will bring close to eight bills or more if it is in good shape. Ammunition is no longer commercially manufactured, so it behooves the Model 53 owner to take up reloading or make friends with someone who already has the bug. The Model 53-2 in the above picture was purchased in '05 for $450 and has the less-common 4" barrel; combined with the short barrel, the light bullet and relatively large powder charge result in spectacular pyrotechnics on a darkened range.

Sunday Smith #16: Model 31-1, 1971

2007-09-30T20:34:00.000-04:00

With the changeover from names to model numbers by Smith & Wesson in 1957, the ".32 Regulation Police" became the "Model 31". It continued to be produced on the older improved I-frame, with its smaller cylinder window, while the new J-frame .38-caliber revolvers exploded in popularity. Over time, the fortunes of the "I-frame" continued to wane alongside the .32 S&W Long cartridge to which it was historically tied.

In 1961, the Model 31 was shifted over to the newer "J-frame" size, and the changed weapon was dubbed the "Model 31-1". It would continue in this form largely unaltered (except for the deletion, over time, of the flat latch, diamond grips, and pinned barrel) for over twenty years. Finally, the 4" barrel was deleted from the catalog in 1978, leaving the only difference between the Model 30 and Model 31 as a matter of whether the pistol had a round or square butt, since both had 2" or 3" tubes. The Model 31 (by then the 31-3) was finally discontinued in 1991.

The weapon pictured above is a Model 31-1 produced in 1971. With its square butt, four-inch barrel, and mild .32 caliber recoil, the unprepossessing little revolver is a splendid introductory piece to the joys of the S&W wheelgun for the recoil sensitive or small of hand. It was purchased at a gun show in early '03 for some $200, which was about fair market value at the time, given the excellent condition. Considering the explosion in S&W prices in the intervening years, a really cherry example might bring three bills, or even more if it has the correct box and accoutrement.

Condition Is Everything.

2007-09-25T02:07:00.001-04:00

A phrase you'll hear often in the world of firearms collecting is "Condition is everything." This is handily illustrated by the two Colt Pocket Hammerlesses shown in the above photo. Both are extremely early specimens: The top gun was made in 1904 (second year of production) and the lower pistol was produced in 1905.

Despite the upper sidearm being a year older, its value is roughly half that of its newer sibling. Both handguns originally had the bright, almost purple, blued finish displayed on the newer piece, with small parts such as the safety and trigger showing the almost rainbow hues of fire bluing. This type of bluing tended to fade, however, when exposed to acids such as those found in sweat, and could even be faded by extended exposure to bright sunlight. The result was the dull gray found on the upper gun.

Note also how extended carry has blunted the corners on the older piece, leaving it with a "bar of soap" look. The newer gun (and photos don't do it justice, at least 'til I can get it to Oleg) shows very little evidence of having ever been carried. Many experienced collectors who have seen it have pronounced it the nicest one of its vintage they've seen for years.

The result? The pistol on top is one that I have no qualms about shooting or stuffing into a hip pocket as I wander the back forty, while the lower one I am nervous about touching too much without an oily rag handy with which to wipe it down. This is because the upper pistol is, in today's market (which is crazy about anything that has a Prancing Pony on it), worth maybe $400, while the lower pistol is worth at least twice that figure.

This is also why any professional will be hesitant to give a valuation on a firearm without examining it in person. Because condition is everything...

Sunday Smith #15: Model 12-2, 1966

2007-09-23T16:09:00.000-04:00

Experiments by Smith & Wesson and Colt in the use of aluminum as a material for firearms began to bear fruit in the early 1950s. Colt released the Commander, a 1911 with a shortened slide and aluminum frame, and the Cobra, an alloy-framed Detective Special, in 1950. Smith answered with the Military & Police Airweight in 1952. Among customers of the new lightweight revolvers was the U.S. Air Force, eager for a gun that did not weigh much with which to equip fliers.

The early Airweights had alloy cylinders. This ambitious attempt to save weight was a bit ahead of the materials science of the day and by 1954 the aluminum cylinders, plagued by catastrophic failures, had been replaced by ones made of standard ordnance steel. The Air Force soon abandoned their experiment, but the Airweight revolver was here to stay on the civilian market, proving popular with those who needed to tote a pistol at all times, but didn't want to suffer the weight penalty of an all-steel gun.

In 1957, the Military & Police Airweight became the Model 12, in accordance with Smith's new numbering policy. Longer barrels were introduced in the late '50s, although the 5" and 6" variants were quickly deleted from the catalog, leaving the traditional 2" and 4" lengths as the only options. In 1962, the ejector rod was changed from right-hand thread to left-hand, and the fourth (trigger guard) screw was deleted, causing a "-1" to be appended to the Model 12 designation, and later in 1962 the front sight was widened to 1/8", creating the Model 12-2.

The above revolver, a Model 12-2 from 1966 is from the first year when the flat cylinder latch (on the other side of the weapon) was replaced with the standard curved thumb piece, and only shortly before the diamond grips were deleted in 1968. It is an outstanding example of a revolver that has been fired very little, if at all, and was picked up in 2001 for somewhat less than $300. These days, a model 12 in this shape is worth something on the lines of $400 on the collector's market, while more worn examples can be found in the $200-300 range. Be very careful, especially when purchasing older models, that the frame is not cracked. Aluminum alloy as a material for firearms frames was still virgin territory in the late '50s and early '60s and cracks in the frame, especially where the steel barrel is screwed in, are not at all unheard-of. My personal 12-2 stays loaded with powder-puff wadcutter loads and has only been exercised a few times since I bought it for fear of damage. Although a late-'60s Model 12 like this should be plenty safe to fire, I have others to shoot so why take the chance? If I needed a lightweight, service-sized carry piece, however, I'd probably tote it in an instant, collectability be damned.

Sunday Smith #14: Model 27-2, 1964

2007-09-18T13:41:00.000-04:00

With handgun users demanding more and more powerful loadings in the interwar years, Smith & Wesson's .38/44 models were just a stopgap. Not four years after their introduction, Smith dropped a bombshell that shook the whole handgun market and is still with us today: The Magnum. The Most Powerful Handgun In The World.

The .38 Special loading still clung to an antiquated measurement left over from the days of the old "heeled" type bullets, and the new cartridge used the actual diameter of the bullet as its nomenclature: .357 Magnum (guaranteeing the confusion of generations of handgun novices to come as it is patiently explained to them that .38's can be fired in .357's, but not vice versa.) Smith lengthened the .38 case slightly to prevent the new barn-burners, capable of launching 158gr bullets at 1400 feet per second, from being chambered in smaller-framed .38 Special firearms; the new cartridge was developed from the start to take advantage of the strength of the large .44-scaled "N-frame". The splash caused by the new round is hard to overstate; like the .44 Magnum and .500 Magnum that followed, it quickly entered the popular consciousness, from tales of Col. Douglas B. Wesson taking all kinds of game with it all 'round the world (including many things that probably shouldn't be shot at with a .357) to Dick Tracy and his men surrounding a villain's hideout in the Sunday comics and announcing "You'd better come out! We've got Magnums!"

The guns themselves were almost all built to order originally, and featured levels of fit and finish seldom seen on guns today. Rumor has it that a worker at the Springfield factory had to work for many years on the regular finishing line before he was given a shot at polishing Smith's new flagship guns. The high-polish blue is such that, when parked next to other Smiths in dim light, the lesser guns appear almost gray by comparison.

Magnum production was stopped for the war effort, with only about 7,000 being made before '41, but was resumed after the war as a regular catalogue item. It was still Smith's flagship gun, however, and still boasted that extra premium fit and finish. Somewhere around 1950, the lockwork was switched to the new short-throw hammer, and in 1957, the Magnum followed the rest of the Smith revolver line and became the "Model 27". In 1960 the threading on the ejector rod was changed to left-hand thread and the "-1" suffix was appended to the model number, followed by a change to the cylinder stop and deletion of the fourth (trigger guard) screw in 1961 that resulted in the Model 27-2.

These are among the most sought-after and collectible Smith & Wesson wheelguns, with prices on prewar Registered Magnums reaching the nosebleed four-figure range, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to see the $10k prewar RM become a not-uncommon occurrence for particularly fine examples in the near future. Postwar/pre-model-number guns are being sucked up in their wake turbulence, with $800-$1000 prices being not unheard of for nice ones. A late-'50s/early-'60s Model 27 will run anywhere from ~$400 for a tired shooter to $800+ for a primo example. The above gun, a very likely unfired 3.5" 27-2 dating to 1964, was acquired for about $550 back in '03, and would likely bring half again that price at auction today.

Still, for a gun that is a legitimate contender for the Finest Revolver Ever crown, it's worth it.

Sunday Smith #13: Model 49, 1963

2007-09-09T13:02:00.000-04:00

Colt's Detective Special revolver was selling like gangbusters in postwar America, and Smith had nothing that really competed with it. The Military & Police was available with a 2" barrel, but was noticeably larger and the I-frame .38/32 Terrier, while smaller, was chambered for the .38 S&W cartridge, which was rather anemic by comparison with the .38 Special round. In 1950, though, Smith launched a potent return salvo in the shape of the .38 Chiefs Special, which was created essentially by lengthening the frame of the old Terrier to allow a longer cylinder which would accommodate the longer cartridges of the .38 Special.

The new frame size, which would eventually replace the I-frame entirely, was designated the "J-frame" and it soon spawned a host of variations. In 1952 an alloy-framed version, termed the "Airweight", was released. In 1955 Smith responded to Colt's offering of a screw-on hammer shroud by offering the "Bodyguard Airweight". The new revolver was basically a Chiefs Special Airweight with a built-in hammer shroud that prevented the hammer spur from snagging on the wielder's coat or a pocket when drawn, like Smith's "Centennial" models, but still allowed the revolver to be thumb-cocked to allow for single-action shooting, which a sizable minority of the revolver-buying public preferred over the double-action-only Centennial.

Soon after, Smith made the change from model names to model numbers, and in 1959 yet another variation on the Chiefs Special was introduced, this time termed just the "Bodyguard" and cataloged as the "Model 49". It catered to those who didn't trust the longevity of alloy-framed revolvers (or found their recoil objectionable,) by replacing the aluminum of the Bodyguard Airweight with standard ordnance steel.

The Model 49 pictured above was made in 1963, and was picked up back in 2003 for under $350, reasonable for a decent Bodyguard of its vintage. The flat thumbpiece for the cylinder latch (on the other side of the gun) was discontinued in '66 and the "diamond grips" went away in '68, but the gun itself remained in production until 1997. Plan to spend anywhere between $225 and $400 or more for one, depending on its age and condition.

Sunday Smith #12: Model 30, 1960

2007-09-02T17:58:00.001-04:00

Smith & Wesson had debuted the Hand Ejector series (as well as the .32 S&W Long cartridge) with the diminutive .32 caliber I-frame in the closing years of the 19th Century. It was still being manufactured after World War Two, but more and more changes were being made to simplify production or to make the gun safer.

During World War Two, Smith had changed the ejector rod to speed up the manufacture of the Victory Model. Prewar revolvers had knurled knobs threaded onto the end of the ejector rod. This added a part and required machining a complex clearance cut on the underside of the barrel to accommodate the knob. The Victory Model dispensed with this by simply knurling the end of the ejector rod itself. After the war, this change was continued on all the company's commercial guns. Also during the war, Smith added a sliding hammer block as a safety device to positively prevent the revolver's discharging if the hammer was struck a blow and this, too, continued on all models in the postwar era.

In 1953 the leaf mainspring was replaced with a coil-type unit, causing the strain screw to disappear from the front of the grip portion of the frame; this resulted in the "Improved I-frame". At the same time, the screw in front of the trigger guard was deleted, followed by the upper sideplate screw in 1956. The very next year, 1957, Smith dropped the old model names in favor of number designations for the different guns and the .32 Hand Ejector became the Model 30.

The changes made over the years can be noticed easily by comparing the 1918-vintage hand ejector shown here with the 1960 Model 30 pictured above. The Model 30 was acquired earlier this year in trade for a well-loved Model 65. It came with the correct box and the condition of the gun is as close to new as makes no nevermind; in fact, by the condition of the breechface and rifling, it may not have been fired this side of the factory. Even given the condition and the box, relatively low demand means that this is a $375-$400 gun, tops. An excellent condition shooter can probably be picked up for not too much more than $250 with some careful shopping, thanks to the unpopularity of the .32 Smith & Wesson Long cartridge in this country. As with all pre-1982 Smiths, however (and I can't stress this enough) it's best to get while the gettin' is good.

Sunday Smith #11: Model 34, 1957

2007-08-26T18:52:00.001-04:00

"Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag,
And smile, smile, smile!"

Once upon a time, everybody knew what a kit bag was. The lyrics above were from a World War One marching ditty that was later used for the title and theme song of a Laurel and Hardy film released in 1932. At the time, S&W had been without a truly "packable" .22 caliber revolver for over a decade, since the tiny "M-Frame" Ladysmith had been discontinued in 1921 which left the "Bekeart Models", with their 6" barrels and target stocks, as the only small-frame .22 revolvers in the catalog

Three years after the release of Pack Up Your Troubles, Smith released the .22/.32 Kit Gun. With its round butt grip profile and 4" barrel, this little .22 revolver on the .32-sized I-Frame was perfect for tossing in your kit bag for camping, hunting, fishing, or hiking. The little gun was extremely popular, and continued in production after WWII with a 2" barreled version added to the lineup. In time, the excess screws in the frame were dropped, the gun went to a coil mainspring, and was eventually moved to the larger "J-Frame" platform. S&W has abandoned the small steel-frame .22 revolver market to Taurus these days, but old Kit Guns are still extremely popular and increasingly coveted as plinkers, and the 2-inch guns make excellent "understudy" pieces for .38 caliber snubbies used for self-defense.

The pictured piece was made in 1957 and is therefore not a romantic "Kit Gun", but rather a prosaic "Model 34" (Such a difference a change in nomenclature can make!) It still shows many vintage Smith traits, such as the "diamond" grips (safely stored away for this photo), the 'flat latch' cylinder release, and the fact that it was made on the old "Improved I-Frame", which is the smaller, older frame size with the newer coil mainspring. It was purchased in "Like New In Box" condition back in early '03 for $375, which was about right for the gun's condition. Even given that it's been shot since then, the fact that it has the box and has suffered no finish wear means it's a sound investment. Look for prices on Kit Guns to range from $225-250 for a mediocre postwar piece to a couple of grand for a pristine prewar with all accoutrement. If you're not sure what you're looking at, it pays to get the help of a more experienced collector before plunking down the green for this most excellent of plinkers.

Sunday Smith #10: Model 1955 .45 Target, 1956

2007-08-20T02:30:00.000-04:00

During World War One, the shortage of M1911 semiautomatic pistols forced the US Army to seek alternative handguns. One source they turned to was Smith & Wesson, who adapted their large N-frame hand ejectors to fire the standard military .45ACP round, using spring steel "moon clips" to allow the revolver's ejector to work with the rimless autopistol cartridges.

The revolvers were popular on the surplus market into the post-WWII era, and were sometimes converted into target pistols by their owners by the simple expedient of installing a set of adjustable sights. Smith & Wesson got into that market themselves in 1950, offering a version of the big .45ACP revolver with S&W's fine micro-adjustable factory target sights, as well as an oversized target trigger and hammer and large, hand-filling target stocks.

For 1955, a new model was added, referred to as the "1955 .45 Target Model". The standard barrel was a 6.5" untapered heavy barrel, giving a slightly nose-heavy feel in the hand and further dampening the recoil of the .45ACP, already mild in the big-frame Smith. After only two years of production, Smith and Wesson went to model numbers instead of the old name designations, and the "1955 .45 Target Model" became the "Model 25".

The revolver pictured above dates to 1956, one of those early pre-Model Number guns, and was purchased at a dealer in Spring of '05 for $425, which even at the time was well under market value. It was just sitting unnoticed in his showcase, surrounded by newer and flashier long-barreled stainless guns. Even the most wretched specimen of this 5-screw target N-frame will fetch almost $300, and a completely pristine example with box & docs could bring a grand or more at auction. Look for street prices in the $600-$700 range on an excellent condition shooter like the pictured example.

(For those just thinking about getting into S&W collecting, the finding of this gun is an example of why it's fun. This was "Corvette in a barn" stuff; the kind of find that has a Smith nut laying awake with the sweats the night before a gun show...)

Sunday Smith #9: .38 Military & Police, 1953

2007-08-12T08:59:00.000-04:00

After introducing their new Hand Ejector design to the market in 1896 chambered for a .32 caliber round, Smith & Wesson was quick to scale up the basic design to accommodate .38 caliber cartridges in order to go after lucrative government contracts. In 1899 Smith began making the new, larger revolver, calling it the "Military & Police". One hundred and seven years later, they haven't stopped.

Although largely replaced by semiautomatics in this day and age, for the better better part of a century the M&P was the police handgun in the United States and many other countries as well. It served the U.S. military and our allies in WWII and many conflicts thereafter. It has served as the basic platform for a host of variants in every caliber and configuration imaginable. It is still seen in the holsters of security guards and the occasional cop even today.

In 1899 the Wright Brothers were still four years away from their flight at Kitty Hawk. General Electric wouldn't patent the tungsten-filament light bulb for another seven years, and it would be nine years before Henry Ford built his first Model T. And the Military & Police revolver from Smith & Wesson has been in constant production, largely unchanged, for the entire time and is just as effective now as it was then. If there is a more enduringly successful piece of industrial design, I'm sure not aware of it.

The pictured revolver was made in 1953, before the evocative "Military & Police" moniker was replaced by the sterile designation "Model 10" when S&W went to model numbers rather than names for their handguns in 1957. About the same time, Smith deleted the upper sideplate screw and the screw in the frame ahead of the trigger guard as being superfluous. As a result, pre-'57 guns (referred to as "Five Screws") command prices that are spiraling steadily upwards. It was purchased in excellent condition, complete with the gold-foil covered box, at a gun show in '03 for $275, and has appreciated rather handily since then. With the box, a revolver like this could bring close to $400 in today's market.

Not bad for a gun that originally sold for under fifty bucks.

Schmidt-Rubin Gew. 96/11: Like a Swiss watch.

2007-08-06T05:21:00.000-04:00

The Swiss Vetterli, so outré in 1869, was beginning to look a little long in the tooth only a few short years later. By the mid-1870s, Switzerland's continental neighbors were fielding bolt-action designs like the Mauser Gew.71 and the Gras Mle.1874 which, while still single shots, fired modern centerfire black powder cartridges with ballistic performance that eclipsed the now-quaint-looking stubby little rimfire round chambered by the Vetterli.

Rifle performance at the time was limited largely by the bullet itself. Above certain velocity and pressure thresholds, the paper-patched lead bullets of the time just left smears of soft lead that quickly filled the rifling. By the early 1880s, Swiss engineers led by a Major Eduard Rubin were investigating the possibilities offered by enclosing the lead bullet in a protective jacket of copper alloy. They soon discovered that a smaller diameter bullet, 7.5mm versus the then-common 11mm, enclosed in a copper/zinc alloy jacket and seated over a compressed black powder charge could offer a much flatter trajectory and longer effective range than any current military round. The limiting factor was now the powder, as the residues from black powder charges would quickly foul such a small bore.

Schmidt-Rubin Gew.96/11. Photo by Oleg Volk

Meanwhile, also in the early 1880s, another Swiss Major by the name of Rudolf Schmidt was hard at work on a rifle design with a straight-pull bolt action, which was submitted to the army for trials. Unlike contemporary Mannlicher straight-pull designs, which used interaction between an inner bolt and outer bolt sleeve to manipulate a vertically-hinged locking wedge, Schmidt's design used a bolt handle connected to an operating rod; a lug on this rod traveled in a helical track on the outer bolt sleeve causing it to rotate the locking lugs in and out of alignment. Spurred by neighboring nations starting to adopt tube-fed repeating rifles, trials commenced using a combination of Major Rubin's cartridge designs, along with an innovative loading system using disposable chargers, and the straight-pull rifle designed by Schmidt. The leisurely pace of the testing was sped up when the French shocked the world by the adoption of the Mle.1886 Lebel, with its small bore smokeless cartridge.

LEFT: Disposable paper and tin charger holding six rounds of 7.5x55 Swiss. Based on the original charger loader designed by Major Rubin in the 1880s. Photo by Oleg Volk.

By 1890, the Swiss equipped their troops with the Schmidt rifle chambered in a stopgap "semi-smokeless" loading and designated the Gew.1889. Unfortunately, the original rifle design turned out to be somewhat of a stopgap, too. Its locking lugs were located at the rear of the bolt sleeve, which necessitated not only a very long receiver, but also severely limited the amount of pressure the rifle could safely stand. The GP90 cartridge (GP = Gewehr Patrone, or rifle cartridge), with its 211gr round-nosed iron jacketed and paper patched bullet pushed by a semi-smokeless propellant, only generated about 37,500psi of chamber pressure; about all the Gew.1889 could take. Improvements were clearly needed, and by 1896 a new variant with an action strengthened by the virtue of moving the locking lugs to the front of the bolt sleeve was put into service and designated the Gew.89/96.

RIGHT: Detail of the action. Clearly visible is the helical track on the bolt sleeve, as well as the rear edge of one of the locking lugs which are at the forward edge of the sleeve. The cocking handle is Bakelite. The grooves atop the receiver are lightening cuts. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Fortified with a stronger rifle, work began on a new cartridge. By 1911, the Swiss army adopted a modern cupro-nickel jacketed spire point 174gr bullet. Fired from a rifle-length barrel the new GP11 round offered an amazing 600 foot-per-second advantage over the old GP90, and while production ramped up on the new Gew.1911 rifles, old Gew.89/96 rifles were converted to the new Gew.96/11 standard. (The original Gew.1889 was, obviously, unsuited for conversion, as the 45k+ chamber pressures of the new round would turn the older design into a clumsily long pipe bomb.)

LEFT: Detail of the muzzle end. Note the upturned stacking rod tip to minimize the chances of snagging on underbrush, and the hinged barrel band secured by a screw so as to keep it from crushing the stock onto the free-floated barrel. Photo by Oleg Volk.

The 96/11, like the example shown here which was originally produced at Solothurn in 1900, exhibits the craftsmanship one would expect from a rifle made by the Swiss. The barrel bands are piano-hinged and tensioned with screws, rather than just being slid on and retained with leaf springs like most rifles. The walnut stock was carefully inlet to float the barrel and was prevented from swelling and touching the barrel at the muzzle end by a metal collar insert that surrounded the barrel. 89/96 rifles being brought up to 96/11 standards had pistol grips expertly inlet into their stocks in a display of woodworking skill rarely found on nice furniture these days.

RIGHT: Closeup showing the ring-type safety/decocker and the exquisite inletting of the pistol grip into the existing stock. Photo by Oleg Volk.

The rear sight, in keeping with the doctrines of the time, was graduated to 2,000 meters. Windage adjustments could be made by an armorer drifting the dovetailed front sight, which was unprotected by wings or a hood. The 96/11 replaced the 12 round magazine of earlier rifles with a 6 round magazine that protruded less and didn't interfere with carrying the rifle at the balance. The magazine cutoff, an archaic device intended to keep troops from "wasting ammunition", was also discarded on the newer rifles. Like all other rifles based on the Schmidt design, the 96/11 used a large ring on the rear of the striker as a combination safety/decocker, and it could also be used to cock the rifle for another try at a hard primer.

Though its length and weight betrayed its 19th Century origins, the Gew.96/11 and Gew.1911 served their country as frontline rifles until the 1930s, when they were relegated to reserve status with the adoption of the K31 carbine. Many remained in the hands of reservists well into the era of the automatic rifle before being sold off as surplus. The older Schmidt-Rubins are not seen anywhere near as often on the US collector scene as the recently-surplussed K31. Whereas older Gew.89 and 89/96 rifles are handloader-only curiosities, the 96/11 can handle modern Swiss 7.5x55, which can be found in surplus GP11 form as well as in commercial loadings from FNM, Wolf, Norma, and others. Prices for a good 96/11 can range anywhere from roughly $100 for an ugly one to as much as $400 for one in outstanding condition. Along with Finnish Mosins, the Swiss Schmidts are some of the most accurate bolt action military rifles ever made, and fortunate is the collector who gets his or her hands on a nice one.

Sunday Smith #8: .38/44 Heavy Duty, 1936

2007-07-29T14:49:00.001-04:00

During the days of Prohibition, lucrative profits to be made in the alcohol business led to increasing sophistication among the gangs who trafficked in it. Bullet-resistant body armor had made great strides in the trenches of France during the Great War, and was adopted by some gangsters. More significantly, the widespread availability of the automobile meant that the new criminals were fleeing crime scenes behind sheet metal auto bodies moving at 40, 50, or even an astounding 60 miles per hour. With longer ranges and harder targets becoming more common, law enforcement began to find that the .32 S&W Long, .38 S&W, and even the newer .38 Special were inadequate for their needs.

Smith & Wesson responded by developing a new .38 S&W Special round, loaded to much higher muzzle velocities. This gave a flatter trajectory at longer ranges as well as more punch against hard targets, and was referred to in marketing as the ".38 Super Police". It was soon apparent that this round would be detrimental to long service life in their .38 (or "K") frame revolvers, and so the large .44 (or "N") frame revolvers were adapted to shoot the smaller bore round. The new large-frame .38/44 revolvers were introduced to the market in 1930 and 1931, respectively, as the "Heavy Duty" (fixed sight) and "Outdoorsman" (adjustable sight) models, and these were a key stepping stone to the development of the .357 Magnum cartridge in 1935.

The revolver pictured above has led a colorful life. It was manufactured in 1936 as a fixed-sight ".38/44 Heavy Duty". At some time a "Mr. Middleton" purchased it and, after the war, sent it to Jim Clark in Louisiana to be transformed into a Bullseye gun. Adjustable sights from Micro were expertly fitted, the hammer spur was gas-welded up from a narrow projection into a wide and finely checkered pad that juts noticeably to the left for ease of thumb-cocking, and the trigger was tuned to a fare-thee-well. Lastly, the owner had his name etched in nicely-done cursive letters on the sideplate. After he passed away shortly after the millennium, his gun languished in a trade-in case at a gun shop before I found it, passed over by kids who didn't know what they were looking at.

Smith made just over 11,000 .38/44 Heavy Duties before WWII, and even an ugly one with issues will bring close to $200. For a really nice example, expect to pay $800 or more and (as with all pre-war Smiths,) if it's Like-New-In-Box with the tools and whatnot, the sky's the limit at an auction.

Sunday Smith #7: .38 Regulation Police, 1928

2007-07-15T13:17:00.000-04:00

Realizing that not everyone would accept the .32 Regulation Police as a viable sidearm, Smith & Wesson released a parallel model at the same time. The small I-frame was able to accept a five shot cylinder chambered for the .38 S&W cartridge, originally introduced back in the 1870s in their top-break revolver line, and so a .38 Regulation Police only made sense. While the .38 S&W, which in its most common smokeless incarnation launched a 145 grain bullet at something just less than 700 feet per second, is not considered to be a serious defensive cartridge nowadays, at the time it was considered perfectly adequate, and was in fact adopted by Great Britain as their standard service handgun cartridge (albeit with a heavier bullet.)

The .38 Regulation Police was never Smith's strongest seller, with less than 55,000 copies sold between its introduction in 1917 and its first cancellation in 1940. While Smith did bring it back into production after the war and it was made as the "Model 33" as late as 1969, it's not the most common gun on the used gun market today. Still, like most I-frames, it is considerably cheaper than the larger-framed revolvers of the same vintage.

The blued example in the above photo, a good condition shooter with honest cosmetic wear and a dark bore with mild pitting, but good mechanicals and matching numbers, was made in 1928. It was picked up at a gun show in late 2003 for $190 and while it has appreciated a small amount since then, similar examples can be turned up for $200-ish still. A really outstanding prewar example might run over $400, possibly well over $400 if it has a matching box and all accoutrement.

The vz 52 rifle: Handy hybrid.

2007-07-10T07:35:00.001-04:00

When the new nation of Czechoslovakia was born after the end of WWI, they received two important gifts from the vanquished nations. From the Austro-Hungarian war machine came the Imperial arsenal at Brno, which became the new Czech State Arsenal in 1919. From the defeated Germans came the tooling and licenses to build Mauser rifles. Given something to build and a place to build it, the industrious Czechs wasted no time in setting up an arms industry that was competitive with any in the world. Of course, this prize asset made their much larger neighbor to the north eye them greedily, and the Czech arms industry was one of the plums with which the Germans walked away from the table at Munich.

vz 52 rifle. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Like most factories in occupied Europe, the Czech factories spent the first part of the war turning out arms for their German occupiers and the last part getting bombed flat by the Western Allies. Compared to the utter devastation in Germany, Italy, and Poland, however, the Czechs were in remarkably good shape after the war, and quickly set about re-equipping their army with modern weapons, including a brand new self-loading rifle: The vz 52 (vz being the abbreviation for “vzor”; Czech for “type” or “model”.) The Czech arms industry had a tradition of quality and innovation, and the vz 52 was no exception. Designed using experiences gathered during WWII, it was a rifle that spanned two eras: Its full-length wood stock, intricately machined steel receiver, and semi-automatic operation wouldn't have been out of place in the 1930s, while its intermediate cartridge and detachable box magazine looked towards the future.

LEFT: Detail of receiver and magazine. Photo by Oleg Volk.

The trigger mechanism and safety are nearly identical to that of the American Garand, while the gas system utilizes a short-stroke annular piston derived from that of Germany's Walther self-loading rifles. The bolt is a tipping design, much like the contemporary Belgian and Russian autoloading rifles, but utilises lugs at the front of the bolt, rather than at the rear. Other features included a side-folding knife bayonet and unique double buttplates, with the outer one being a replaceable thin steel shell that protects the inner one from damage. The proprietary Czech cartridge, 7.62x45mm, is roughly the ballistic equivalent to the Soviet 7.62x39mm M43 round. The whole package makes for a handy little carbine, slightly smaller than the Russian SKS, and a fair bit handier in the bargain.

RIGHT: Side-folding knife bayonet. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Interestingly, the rifle was released as part of a whole suite of new infantry weapons in the early '50s by the Czechs, who hoped to get foreign currency in exchange. The weapons included an innovative pistol that used a roller-locking short recoil action to tame the potent 7.62x25mm Tokarev round, a general-purpose machine gun that was simply a belt-fed update of the proven Bren gun (another famous Czech design), and an innovative submachine gun featuring a bolt that telescoped around the breech and a magazine well integral with the pistol grip: both novel features that made for a compact weapon, and both features that would be cheerfully plagiarized by Uziel Gal when he "designed" his famous Uzi.

With this cornucopia of small-arms technical excellence poured at their feet, it is somehow unsurprising that the Soviets ignored it, and instead forced their own far cruder designs on the nascent Warsaw Pact. Meanwhile, most of the Czech weapons faded into undeserved obscurity, with sales slumping since both superpowers were essentially giving guns away to third-world nations who promised to be on their team. As a result, vz 52’s have turned up in the oddest corners of the world, flotsam and jetsam of the global arms market; they’ve been encountered in the hands of terrorists in Lebanon and Cuban “advisors” in Grenada.

The CZ52 pistol is well-known to American shooters, having been imported in droves over the last five years or more. Its companion rifle is a little less recognizable, and many of those coming in recently have been barely shootable junkers. Most of the rifles have been painted with an ugly black substance bearing a remarkable resemblance to pickup truck bed liner, and these seem to run for $100 or maybe a little less, but a nice clean one could fall into the $200-$300 range. Loaded factory 7.62x45 ammunition for the vz 52 is scarce; the only source I could find online was Buffalo Arms. Unfortunately, their brass is known for splitting case necks, so for properly annealed, reloadable 7.62x45 brass, the source is Gewehr 98 of the blog Neural Misfires. His brass is correctly annealed and reports have casings lasting through ten reloadings or more.

Sunday Smith #6: .44 Hand Ejector Second Model, 1921

2007-07-08T21:56:00.000-04:00

Smith & Wesson followed up the release of the .32 Hand Ejector in 1896 with a larger-framed .38 Hand Ejector in 1899 and a diminutive .22 Hand Ejector in 1902. The top-break .44 Double Action Frontier, however, was forced to soldier on as the only big-bore entry in Smith's catalog until 1907, when it was joined by the .44 Hand Ejector, also known as the New Century. To go with the new gun, S&W created a new chambering: .44 Smith & Wesson Special, which was derived from the old .44 Russian cartridge, but featured a lengthened case to prevent it from being used in any older black powder top-breaks.

The new big bore Hand Ejector contained a couple of traits that distinguished it from its smaller siblings. The cylinder crane featured a third locking point, in addition to the one at the rear of the cylinder and at the front of the ejector rod, causing the guns to sometimes be referred to as "Triple Locks". The most visually distinctive feature was the shroud under the barrel that protected the ejector rod from damage. These revolvers were assembled and finished with great care, and are considered by some to be among the finest revolvers ever made by anyone.

Even in the good old days, however, Smith was never averse to a bit of cost cutting. When it was realized that both the third locking lug and the ejector rod shroud (the latter being an especially tricky and time consuming addition to the barrel machining process) could be abandoned without any real effect on the gun's performance, Smith did so, introducing the newer and more spartan version as the .44 Hand Ejector 2nd Model in 1915. The newer design remained in Smith's lineup until 1940, when it was dropped due to the demands of turning out wartime M&P's.

Standard barrel length on the .44 Hand Ejector 2nd Model was 6.5", although both 4" and 5" barrels could be had as well. The vast majority were chambered for .44 Special; out of over 17,000 manufactured, only about 1,300 were chambered in .44-40 or .45 Colt, and these will bring a substantial premium today. The guns were available in both blued and nickel finishes, and with fixed or target sights. Checked walnut stocks were standard, and most had a lanyard loop on the butt, a popular feature for a large holster gun in that time. Production was halted for 1918 and 1919 due to the war effort, and resumed towards the end of 1920.

The above example, a nickel 6.5" .44 Hand Ejector 2nd Model, sports period mother of pearl stocks, and the serial number indicates that it was the 472nd revolver built after Smith resumed production in 1920. Pre-WWII .44 Hand Ejector prices are high and climbing higher, but the 2nd Models are fairly affordable when compared to their Triple Lock predecessors. The pictured revolver, a tired shooter in fair-to-good condition with some timing issues that needed correcting, set me back some $325 in '06. A Triple Lock in similar shape would probably fetch at least five bills. If my .44 H.E. 2nd Model was in, say, 85-90% condition, you'd probably be looking at $900 or more in today's hothouse market, while equally nice Triple Locks regularly fetch $2,500 or more. As with most old Smith & Wessons, though, they are going nowhere but up in price because, much like real estate, they aren't making any more.

Sunday Smith #5: .32-20 Hand Ejector Model of 1905 - 4th Change, 1921

2007-06-17T23:11:00.000-04:00

Got a thirty-eight special, boys, it do very well
I Got a 32-20 now, and it’s a burnin’ --Robert Johnson, "32-20 Blues"

Revolvers in rifle chamberings have always been popular in America, and after Smith & Wesson had introduced their .38 Hand Ejector in the 1890s, they saw an open market niche. The .32 Winchester Center Fire cartridge, or ".32-20", was a very popular cartridge in the Eastern US. It was chambered in plenty of lever action rifles, was more than potent enough for taking small game for the pot, and (while not ideal) many folks pressed it into service as a deer cartridge because it was cheap to buy when compared to the other primary carbine cartridges of the day, such as .38-40 and .44-40.

Smith chambered their medium-frame "Military & Police" revolver for the .32 WCF in 1899 and continued production through the start of US involvement in WWII. It was an especially popular chambering in the southeast, a region hit hard by the Great Depression, and was immortalized in blues song and legend.

These days even a wretched late 1930s .32-20 Hand Ejector that looks like it's been dragged behind a truck will command a price above a C-note, while a nice example of a pre-1902 .32-20 1st Model can fetch more than $3,000 if it has all the proper accoutrement. The revolver in the picture is factory nickeled, dates to 1921, and has a 5" barrel; it was purchased at a gun show in April of '07 for $250, and is in probably 75% condition, with all matching serial numbers and a bore that showed signs of some pitting. Ammunition is still loaded by Winchester, Georgia Arms, and some of the smaller specialty houses; the Georgia Arms offering launches a 115gr unjacketed roundnose flat point bullet at a sedate 850 feet per second, and is plenty safe to shoot in an old Hand Ejector. The .32-20 K-frame is a joy to shoot, and I can't recommend one highly enough, but if you're looking for one, be prepared to spend money and caveat emptor when it comes to condition.

Arisaka Type 38 Cavalry Carbine: A Samurai Mauser.

2007-06-17T17:14:00.000-04:00

When Commodore Matthew Perry's ships dropped anchor in Uraga Harbor in 1853, the insular Japanese were brought face to face with a harsh ground truth; if they wanted to remain free from the colonizing spree being engaged in by the great European powers, they needed to modernize. They did so with a vengeance.

By the early 1870s, the Japanese army was armed with German Gew.71 Mausers and French Gras rifles, but they didn't rely on foreign small arms for long; in 1880, they began equipping with the Murata Type 13, a homegrown single shot bolt action sporting a melange of Mauser, Gras, and Dutch Beaumont design features; Winchester was contracted for 100 prototypes, and then production commenced in Japan. Ironically, it would be another twelve years before the land of Commodore Perry would replace its side-hammer Springfield Trapdoors with a bolt-action rifle.

ABOVE: Arisaka Type 38 Cavalry Carbine, photo by Oleg Volk.

When Japan shocked the world by beating a European power in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, they were equipped with a new rifle designed by a Colonel Nariaki Arisaka in 1897. He trumped this design eight years later with a rugged rifle based on the Spanish M1893 Mauser, known as the Type 38 Arisaka, (Type 38 refers to the 38th year of the Meiji Restoration, with 1868 being Year 1.) This rifle would go on to serve as the primary Japanese service rifle for the next thirty-four years, and remained in production in some factories until the Japanese surrender in 1945.

LEFT: The knurled knob on the rear of the bolt served as both a safety and a gas-deflecting flange. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Col. Arisaka's rifle was made in both rifle and carbine formats and had several innovative features, some more useful than others. The rifle handled escaping gas from a ruptured case very well, being equipped with both gas vent holes in the receiver ring and a large round knob on the rear that doubled as both a safety and a flange to direct gas away from the firer's face. Famous gunsmith P.O. Ackley considered the Type 38 to be the strongest military rifle action he'd ever tested. It certainly was a rugged looking rifle.

RIGHT: The front sight was drift-adjustable for windage, and was protected by sturdy "wings". Photo by Oleg Volk.

The stock was somewhat blocky in shape, and the butt was of two pieces fitted together tongue-and-groove style, which allowed stocks to be made from smaller blanks. The rifles came from the factory with sliding sheet-steel dust covers, but these were frequently discarded by troops in the field as they rattled as they got loose. The sights consisted of a triangular front blade protected by beefy wings, and a rear ladder-style sight that was graduated to 2,000 meters on the carbine version. The infantry rifle had sling swivels on the bottom attached to the butt and barrel band, while the cavalry carbine had its swivels on the left side of the stock. Both took the same long sword bayonet. Unlike most Mausers and Mauser derivatives, which required a cartridge nose or punch to release the magazine floorplate for unloading, the Type 38 could be unloaded safely by releasing the magazine floorplate by means of a finger-operated catch inside the triggerguard.

LEFT: The Type 38's 6.5x50mm round, in this case a 156gr Norma soft-point, with a 5.56mm NATO round and a .30-'06 M2 ball cartridge for comparison.

Like many other rifle designers in the late 1880s/early 1890s, Arisaka selected a smallbore bullet, in this case a 6.5mm projectile. The military loading launched a 139-grain projectile at 2500 feet per second, giving it slightly better-than-average wallop among the military 6.5's. The flatter crack of the 6.5 was easily distinguished from the deeper muzzleblasts of the .30 caliber rifles used by the Allied forces in the Pacific during WWII, at least according to most memoirs of the time.

ABOVE: The receiver ring of the Type 38. Note the ground-off mum, indicating a surrendered weapon. (And no more inscrutable or mystical than the canceled "Broad Arrow" on a de-milled British weapon; it just means it's not Imperial property anymore.) The markings below it read "Type", "8", and "3" from bottom to top. Also note the dual gas-escape vents. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Not only did the Type 38 see service with the Imperial Japanese military, but excess rifles were also sold to fellow allies Great Britain and Russia during WWI. Rifles found in the US today will generally either be battlefield-captured souvenirs, or surrendered pieces brought home by returning GIs and sailors or imported after the war by surplus houses. The latter can be distinguished by the fact that the chrysanthemum symbol, an Imperial property mark much like the British "Broad Arrow", on the receiver ring will be defaced or ground off. Prices will start at under $100 for a tatty infantry rifle with a ground mum, and can climb north of $500 for a nice carbine with intact mum and dust cover. Ammunition is still loaded by Norma as well as some specialty houses, but expect to pay dearly for it. This is a rifle for which it is definitely worthwhile to reload, especially since the strong action allows the caliber to shine. As with all WWII weapons, expect a lot of volatility in pricing over the next years as the war passes from living memory, with the passing of the generation who fought it.

Sunday Smith #4: .32 Regulation Police, 1918

2007-06-03T22:06:00.000-04:00

In the early 20th Century, police forces were still a fairly new concept in most of the United States. In much of the rest of the Western world, military or paramilitary forces were used to keep order, but the American distrust of standing armies and the posse comitatus act prevented that in the US. Sheriffs backed up by hired deputies and with the power to raise posses from the general populace had kept order in the USA since the nation's founding, but the idea of permanent municipal police forces gradually spread across the settled regions of the East in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Large belt revolvers were seen as uncouth artifacts more appropriate to the unsettled West; an Eastern policeman's gun was as much a badge of authority as it was a weapon. In 1917, Smith & Wesson released a new adaptation of their diminutive I-frame revolver with a four inch barrel and a modified grip frame that allowed the use of wood grips with a squared-off profile to the butt. The new pistol was called the "Regulation Police" and was fairly popular, with many thousands shipping between 1917 and 1942, when the model was discontinued.

The gun in the above photo is a nickeled .32 Regulation Police, holding six rounds of the then-new .32 S&W Long cartridge, probably built in 1918 or thereabouts. While the nickel finish shows some signs of wear and pitting, the grips are worn nearly smooth, perhaps from where an officer rubbed it like a worry stone in the pocket of his frock coat as he made his nightly rounds of Main Street, ensuring that all the doors that were supposed to be locked actually were, and that all was quiet on his watch.

Sunday Smith #3: .32 Hand Ejector 3rd Model, 1918

2007-05-28T00:06:00.000-04:00

In the early 1890s Colt's debuted a solid-frame double action revolver with a cylinder that swung out to the side for loading. Smith quickly followed with their own version in 1896. Previous top-break Smiths would automatically eject the spent cases when hinged open, but the solid-frame gun with its swing-out cylinder required the shooter to manually operate the ejector rod in order to dump the empties; consequently, the new revolvers were dubbed "Hand Ejectors". The first Hand Ejectors were small revolvers in the new .32 S&W Long caliber, and their cylinders were unlatched by pulling forward on the ejector rod under the barrel. This frame size came to be known as the ".32" or "I-frame". In 1903, the I-frame was redesigned to add a thumb latch for releasing the cylinder, and a lug was added under the barrel that the ejector rod locked into by means of a detent, giving the Smith & Wesson cylinder a stronger means of locking than their Colt rivals.

The I-frame revolver in the photo above is a .32 Hand Ejector Third Model produced some time between 1911-1917. It has a factory nickel finish, a 3.25" barrel, and the factory hard rubber grips are in unusually good condition for their age. It's in fairly good shape, all things considered, with nice bright case coloring still evident on the hammer and trigger, and likely spent most of its many decades in a desk or dresser drawer providing peace of mind to a householder before its honorable retirement as a collector's piece only occasionally exercised at the range.

Sunday Smith #2: .38 Safety Hammerless 4th Model, 1899

2007-05-20T18:14:00.001-04:00

In 1887, S&W introduced its "Safety Hammerless" or "New Departure" models. Legend (surely apocryphal) has it that Mr. Wesson was disturbed by the tale of a child accidentally shooting himself with a small-frame S&W wheelgun, leading to the invention of a small-frame pocket revolver that couldn't be cocked, had a horrendously heavy double action trigger pull, and required that a grip safety on the backstrap be depressed in order for the trigger to be pulled in the first place.

In a move that seems alien to our lawsuit-besotted times, the Safety Hammerless revolvers shipped from the factory with a pin under the stocks that could be used to disable the grip safety. Interestingly, these pistols (known as "Lemonsqueezers" to their aficionados,) with their enclosed hammers and double-action-only triggers, became the pattern for the hammerless "Centennial" S&W revolvers that are the preferred pocket pistols of today's cognoscenti.

The pistol in the above photo is a .38 Safety Hammerless 4th Model, circa 1899. It has been re-nickeled, which can be deduced from a distance by the fact that the trigger is no longer case-colored and the trigger guard is bright rather than black. Despite its age, it still fires .38 S&W cartridges reliably and, if one can hold the hair-fine sights on target through the 15+ pound trigger squeeze, will hit what one is aiming at.

Japanese Type I rifle: An unusual hybrid.

2007-05-19T08:16:00.000-04:00

In the late 1930s, Imperial Japan's ongoing invasion of China was beginning to place a strain on the ability of her arsenals to keep the army supplied with rifles. With the army taking all the rifle production from home, the navy was forced to go shopping for a source of rifles for their naval infantry. A call to their new Axis partner, Italy, resulted in one of the more unusual military rifles of WWII.

ABOVE: Japanese Type I rifle. Photo by Oleg Volk.

The new rifle, referred to as the "Type I", was a hybrid of Italian and Japanese features. (Sort of like ramen al dente, or a teriyaki beef calzone. Mmmm. Anyway...) The rifle's action was that of the Mo. 1891 Carcano, which itself was a more-or-less direct ripoff of the old Gew.88 "Commission Rifle", sans the usual Mannlicher-style magazine. In its place was a Mauser-type box magazine that could be fed rounds from stripper clips. The rifle was chambered for the standard Japanese 6.5x50mm cartridge, and the furniture and sights were pure Arisaka, down to the two-piece dovetailed buttstock. Unlike other Japanese service rifles, they were not marked with the Imperial chrysanthemum on the receiver ring. In fact, except for the serial number and various small proof marks, they were remarkably devoid of markings of any sort.

Never common on the US collector scene (less than 60,000 were produced; compared to millions for most other WWII service rifles) it's possible to go many years without ever seeing one at a store or gun show. It's not listed in the Blue Book or the Standard Catalog of Military Firearms. It's mentioned but not pictured in Japanese Rifles of World War II and Scarlata's Bolt Action Military Rifles book. At the previous gun store I worked at, an old guy walked in the door with a long rifle in tow:

"Hey, I got this ol' military rifle. A buddy of mine tol' me that this lady that works here knows a lot about ol' army guns, collects 'em, even, and could tell me what it's worth."

"That'd be me."

As he started to heave the rifle up onto the counter, saying "I think it's Japanese...", I heroically kept from squeaking "Ohmigod! It's a Type "I"!" I'd never seen one in the steel before.

"So, what's it worth?"

"Well, sir, it's hard to say. The gun isn't in any of the usual price guides. Obscurity may work against it, the bore is a nasty dark orange with corrosion, and ammo is so expensive that an empty magazine means the gun's nearly totalled. On the other hand, it's cosmetically nice, and someone who knows what it is and is just dying to have one for their collection may be willing to pay well to get it. What do you figure you need to get out of it?"

"Well, I'd like to get out of it what I've got in it..."

"Which is? If you don't mind me asking..."

"Naw. I paid $75 for it, and I reckon I've got $5 worth of my time in running it over here. How's $80 sound?"

"Let me call my boss."

I walked in the back room and rang him on the cell phone. Bear in mind my boss at that shop didn't know one milsurp from another. To him, they're all just junky old rifles.

"Hey, I've got this guy that wants to sell us a Type I." *long pause* "It's a rifle with Arisaka-style parts on a Carcano action." *longer pause* "Anyhow, it's an oddball old Japanese rifle. He wants $80 for it."

"I dunno, money's still kinda tight right now. You think we could sell it for $150?"

"Hell ye... er, I mean, I know somebody who'd pay $150 for it."

"Who?"

"Me!"

"Okay, give him $80."

Back out front.

"Here you go, sir."

"Thank you very much, ma'am; if I find anything else, I'll let you know."

Later, my boss apparently decided that he could live with making only a $50 profit off me, instead of a $70 one, which was just fine with me. The rifle in question turned out to be one that was produced at Beretta, rather than one of the more common government arsenal-produced specimens. Ammunition is still produced by Norma, but at today's prices, two and a half boxes actually equal what I paid for the rifle, so until I get dies in the caliber, it won't get shot much. Whether it gets shot or not, it's an interesting artifact from WWII and makes for quite the conversation piece.

Sunday Smith #1: .32 Double Action 3rd Model, 1883

2007-05-13T16:12:00.000-04:00

Smith & Wesson is, if not the oldest surviving American gunmaker, the only American arms company who has continued to fill the same market niche since their inception. In an era when Colt dominated the military contract market, S&W purchased a patent from Rollin White and began turning out a line of tiny revolvers chambered for the then-new .22 rimfire cartridge. Despite occasional military interest, Smith & Wesson has been turning out revolvers and pistols mostly for the civilian and law-enforcement market since 1857, the date of introduction of the Model One. (Before this, they made lever-operated pistols based on the Volcanic pattern.)

Smith & Wesson collecting is still a wide-open and fertile field. With tens of millions of revolvers and pistols made to hundreds of patterns over the last 150+ years, it's easy to start a modest collection. Rarer models may have started commanding high prices, but even a pristine Triple Lock or Registered Magnum is a bargain when compared to a cherry first generation Colt Peacemaker. Hence, the Sunday Smith series; a more-or-less chronological walk through my S&W collection, with a dab of history and pricing data to boot.

The first gun featured, and the oldest Smith currently in my collection, is a .32 Double Action 3rd Model, dating from approximately 1882 or '83. The gun is chambered in .32 S&W, one of the oldest centerfire cartridges still extant, and sports a 3.5" barrel and a nickel finish. These were intended as pocket pistols in an age when most gentleman thought nothing of having a handgun in their coat pocket, and many ladies felt likewise. The tiny size of the gun is shown by the 1937 penny included for scale. These small-frame top-breaks are still cheap to acquire in average condition. As one can guess from the shells showing in the cylinder, this one is still a safe shooter, and I paid under $200 for it from a private seller at a gun show in April of 2006.

Springfield M1903 Mark I: American Icon.

2007-05-12T07:16:00.000-04:00

The United States Army was slow to field a breechloading repeater, the single-shot "Trapdoor" Springfield M1873 proving adequate for the needs of a military that was mostly involved in Indian fighting. By the early 1890s, however, the need for a new rifle was apparent and after an open trial the Krag Jorgensen rifle was settled on, being adopted as the M1892. Within six years it would see its first test in combat.

The Spanish-American War of 1898 marked the first time that armies equipped with the new smokeless powder magazine-fed rifles faced each other. The Spanish army was equipped with the M1893 Mauser, a thoroughly modern design, which featured Mauser's stripper clip loading system which allowed a soldier to strip five rounds into the magazine at once from a disposable sheet-metal clip. This contrasted sharply with the Krag, which required the soldier to dump loose rounds into the magazine; an easy thing to fumble on a two-way rifle range. The Mauser was also stronger, and fired a higher velocity round, which gave it a flatter trajectory. The Krag's action was incapable of taking the pressures involved in firing the newer, faster rounds. Despite winning the war, the US Army immediately began seeking a replacement for the Krag Jorgensen.

ABOVE: M1903 Mark I, photo by Oleg Volk.

After studying captured Spanish rifles, the United States adopted the United States Magazine Rifle, Caliber .30, Model of 1903. It was destined to be an icon; of all the myriad weapons produced at the government arsenal over its many decades of operation, when one says "Springfield", it is understood that one means the M1903. The '03 was a radical departure from the contemporary military practice of issuing a long rifle to infantry and a short carbine to cavalry; it split the difference with an overall length of roughly 43 inches, and the same rifle was issued to all branches. This was the same course Britain took with the SMLE in 1904; Germany didn't follow suit until the introduction of the kar 98k in 1935. The early rifles had a flimsy, fiddly rod bayonet and a simple, sturdy tangent sight like that found on the Mauser. These were quickly replaced with a sturdy sword bayonet, and a fiddly, complex rear sight more at home on the manicured ranges of Camp Perry than on a chaotic battlefield.

LEFT: Complex Springfield rear sight was windage adjustable, and marked out to 2,850 yards. The lower peep in the example is set at 800. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Service in the trenches of World War One showed a need for a higher volume of fire than could be delivered by the bolt-action rifle when clearing trenches or suppressing enemy fire during the dash across no-man's land. A hasty secret program resulted in a device that would replace the bolt of the Springfield, allowing the rifle to fire semiauto pistol cartridges from a 32-round magazine. Known as the "Pedersen Device", rifles meant to use it are marked "Model 1903 Mark I" and are easily distinguished by the oval port cut in the left side of the receiver to allow the ejection of spent shells.

RIGHT: The ejection port for the Pedersen Device. Photo by Oleg Volk.

The M1903 was one of the most beloved service arms in US history. It was the primary rifle of our troops for thirty three years, and served on long after that as a sniper rifle or in rear-echelon roles. When it was replaced by the M1 Garand in the 1930s, resistance to the change was fierce, and the new rifle met with a level of scorn that not even the M16 faced. Over a million Springfields have gone on to become hunting rifles, family heirlooms, and collector's pieces in the US, and original examples in good condition are demanding ever more stratospheric prices on the collector's market. A Mark I with the correct stock and barrel (which the rifle in the photos does not have, more's the pity) can bring in excess of $2,000, while even a homely WWII-era '03A3 is rapidly becoming a $500 proposition. A joy to shoot and a joy to look at, no collection of American militaria is complete without one.

Timeless lines. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Vintage gun pinup No.1

2006-12-11T10:21:00.000-05:00

1948-vintage Polish-made Pistolet TT, aka "Tokarev".

Imported by Tennessee Guns in Knoxville, this Tokarev is one of the relative few that bear the "FB Radom" logo rather than the "Circle 11" Warsaw Pact country code for Poland. (Only those made in '48 and '49 had the former.) The Tokarev, designated Wz48 by the Poles, remained the standard Polish military sidearm into the '60s, when it was replaced by the P-64, which was a PPK-esque pistol chambered for the 9mm Makarov cartridge.

Other than the serial number and year of manufacture atop the slide, the small proofs in the triggerguard area, and the serial number on the left rear of the frame, these guns are devoid of markings. They also show a level of fit and finish unusual in a mid-Cold-War Warsaw Pact firearm.

LEFT: Polish Wz48 Tokarev. Photo by Oleg Volk.

As an interesting aside on the perils of believing everything you read, in a sidebar in the second edition of the Standard Catalog of Military Firearms, gunwriter Charlie Cutshaw praises the Polish Tokarev as the most comfortable variant to shoot, stating that the Poles had equipped theirs with thumbrest grips and a manual safety. This is untrue, as the crude manual safety (which only blocks the trigger) and the thumbrest grip were retrofitted by the importer in order to gain enough "points" to be importable under the handgun provisions of the Gun Control Act of 1968; the pistols originally had flat grips and no manual safety. The embarrassing sidebar disappeared in the third edition of the Standard Catalog, but the description still lists the Polish Tok as a "Polish copy with manual safety", and Cutshaw's sidebar is repeated almost verbatim elsewhere on the 'net. Don't believe everything you read.

Ask The Gun Nut: Why don't they...?

2006-12-01T13:56:00.000-05:00

Dear Auntie Gun Nut,

I think that the British Bren gun of WWII fame is so cool! Why can't I find a cheap modern semiauto copy?

Gentle Reader,

The Bren gun had a receiver machined from a single forging. The stripped receiver weighed four and a half pounds. The forging from which it was finish-machined weighed twenty-two pounds. That's a big pile of metal chips, even for a CNC machine...

Future Additions to the Museum...

2006-11-25T08:14:00.000-05:00

Although the museum expands in a largely random fashion, I always have a wish list in the back of my mind. In addition to the wish list, I have a more practical one of firearms I'm actually likely to find and be able to afford...

1) The German collection: Kar. 71, Gew. 71/84, Gew. 88/05, Gew. 98 (Transitional), Kar. 98k.
What I'd like to add: A G43 autoloader, or a Dreyse.
What I'll likely get: An intact Gew. 98, complete with the rollercoaster (Lange Vizier) sight.

2) The French collection: Gras Mle. 1874 M80, Berthier-Mannlicher Mle. 1907/15 M16, and Mousqueton d'Artillerie M1916, MAS Mle. 1936, MAS Mle. 1949-56.
What I'd like to add: A Chassepot.
What I'll likely get: An Mle. 1886 Lebel. If I can ever find one.

3) The British collection: Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle (replica), Martini-Henry Mark I, Enfield SMLE Mk.III*, Enfield No.4 Mk.2.
What I'd like to add: A real Tower musket (aka "Brown Bess"), or a Lee-Enfield Mk. V.
What I'll likely get: A replica Brown Bess, or a No.4 Mk.1.

4) The Japanese Collection: Type 38 cavalry carbine, Type 99 short rifle, Type "I" rifle (Beretta marked!).
What I'd like to add: Type 2 paratroop rifle or Arisaka Type 30.
What I'll likely get: Type 38 rifle.

5) The Russian collection(ette): Mosin Nagant M91/30 ('44 Izhevsk), Tokarev SVT-40.
What I'd like to add: An Imperial-era Mosin M1891, un-altered.
What I'll likely get: An M38 carbine.

6) The American collection: M1 Garand, Springfield M1903 Mk.I, Eddystone M1917, M1896 Krag Jorgensen, Remington Model 11 riot gun.
What I'd like to add: Lee straight-pull U.S. Navy musket.
What I'll likely get: M1 carbine or M1873 floptop Springfield.

7) The Swiss collection: Vetterli Gew. 71, Schmidt Gew. 96/11.
What I'd like to add: Kar. 1911
What I'll likely get: The ubiquitous K31.

8) Mauser Miscellania: Spanish FR-8, Chinese Chiang Kai Shek, Siamese M1903, Swedish M1896/38, Argentine Mo. 1891, Venezuelan M24/30 carbine, Chilean M1895 carbine.
What I'd like to add: Argentine M1909 or an OVS M1895.
What I'll likely get: A Swedish M1896 or Yugo M48.

9) Mosin Miscellania: Finnish M39, Hungarian 44.M.
What I'd like to add: Polish M1891.
What I'll likely get: Finnish M28 or M28/30.

10) Miscellaneous Miscellania: Carcano Mo. 1938 carbine, Steyr-Mannlicher M95/30, Mannlicher-Schoenauer M1903/14, FN SAFN-49.
What I'd like to add: A Remington rolling block of some type, or my ultimate holy grail: A Remington Pontificio.
What I'll likely get: A vz. 52 rifle. I feel this is almost a certainty. (ie. I have one on layaway. :) )

Hints, bird-dogging, suggestions and pointers always welcome. Donations will not be turned away, either. ;)

Gewehr 88: A rifle designed by committee.

2006-11-21T09:31:00.000-05:00

Between 1871 and 1898, the Germans issued four different bolt action rifles. It started with Mauser's seminal Gew. 71, an 11mm black-powder cartridge breechloader. This rifle was standard issue to the armies of the newly unified Germany for thirteen years, when it was replaced by the Gew. 71/84; essentially the same weapon, but with the addition of a tubular magazine below the barrel. After the shock of the French Lebel, the Germans put the Gewehr Prufungs Kommission (Rifle Testing Commission) at the Spandau Arsenal to work designing a new rifle. Initially, it was suggested to just rework the existing 71/84 to a smaller-caliber smokeless round, but this was overridden by a desire to get a quantum leap ahead of the French and their tubular magazine Lebel.

Mauser wasn't consulted, due to the fact that the contracts he had with the Ottoman Empire contained stipulations that any new rifles he made for Germany would also be used to fill the balance of open orders he had with the Turks. Bereft of the country's premier rifle designer, the committe went to work, and produced a result in a surprisingly short time.

ABOVE: Gewehr 88/05, photo by Oleg Volk.

The committee-designed weapon was a hodgepodge of Mannlicher, Mauser, and other odds & sods. It had a Mauser-esque safety and trigger allied to a new bolt, a magazine system so like that designed by Ferdinand Mannlicher that the Germans lost a patent infringment lawsuit to Steyr, and was most notable for its bizzare tubular sheet steel barrel sleeve that was intended to keep accuracy from being affected by stock warps or swells, while still giving a soldier something to grasp during bayonet work that wouldn't burn his hand. The new arm went into service in 1888 as the Gew. 88, but is better known to us as the "Commission Rifle."

LEFT: The distinctive sheet steel barrel shroud of the Gew.88. Photo by Oleg Volk.

RIGHT: The wing safety was a more-or-less direct copy of Paul Mauser's designs. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Paul Mauser took der Vaterland's acceptance of a non-Mauser rifle as a personal snub and set to work designing a series of rifles that eclipsed it entirely. The culmination of the resulting evolutionary tree was the Gew. 98, which replaced the Commission Rifle after the latter had only been in use for ten years, and is regarded by some (including your humble scribe) to be the pinnacle of the era of the military bolt-action rifle.

Ironically, the Gew. 88's major combat debut with the German armed forces took place after it had already been replaced as the standard rifle by Mauser's Gew.98. German naval infantry in China during the Boxer Rebellion were largely equipped with the Commission Rifle. In an interesting twist, its commercial success made it one of the most common rifles used by their Chinese opponents as well. With the coming of the Gew.98 and its faster spitzer bullet, many old Gew.88s were refurbished to use the new rounds and the stripper clip loading system that came with them. The converted weapons, known as Gewehr 1888/05s, could be identified by the stripper clip guides affixed to the rear of the receiver, the sheet metal block closing off the old clip ejection port on the bottom of the magazine, a notch machined in the receiver ring to clear the longer pointed noses of the new rounds as they were loaded, and an "S" marked above the rifle's chamber. Thus modified, they soldiered on well into WWI, long after their obsolescence.

RIGHT: Detail of the Gew.88/05's magazine floorplate, showing the sheet metal cover closing off the old clip ejection port. This was a major improvement, as the old Mannlicher system could introduce dirt into the magazine when the firer went prone. Photo by Oleg Volk.

LEFT: This rifle, originally made at the Danzig government arsenal in 1890, shows the signs of being upgraded to the 1888/05 standard. Visible are the notch for clearance of spitzer bullets and the "S" mark showing that the rifle had been altered to use the newer round. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Commission Rifles were the red-headed stepchild of German rifle collecting for many years, selling for not much over $100 as recently as four or five years ago, and they're still cheap compared to their more famous Mauser brethren. As has everything else in the world, however, they've become more expensive than yesterday, and a really nice Gew. 88 can set you back more than three hundred dollars now. (As a friend commented: "They're actually wanting money for Commission Rifles these days!") Still, no collection of German military rifles is really complete without at least one example of the only non-Mauser rifle that country issued for almost seventy-five years.

(PS: I am going to avoid getting into the arcana of "J-bore" versus "S-bore" rifles, handloads, pressure levels, lengthened throats, rebarrellings, and whatnot, and say that before you decide to shoot your Commission Rifle, you should have it checked over (complete with chamber casting) by a competent gunsmith. Don't believe what the Jerries may have stamped on it under wartime duress; the eyesight you save may be your own.)

Berthier-Mannlicher Mousqueton d'Artillerie M1916

2006-11-12T09:04:00.000-05:00

By the early 1890s, the chickens of France's rush to field the first smokeless powder repeater in the world were coming home to roost. The Lebel, a hastily-designed derivative of the tubular-magazine Kropatschek, and its 8x50mmR cartridge, which was based on the case head dimensions of the earlier 11mm Gras round to theoretically allow for emergency conversions of older rifles, were obsoleted almost overnight by Mauser and Mannlicher designs which were loaded with clips or from chargers. Further, the Lebel's slow-to-load tubular magazine made it ineffecient if cut down to carbine length, allowing for a magazine capacity of only three rounds.

ABOVE: Berthier-Mannlicher Mousqueton d'Artillerie Mle. 1916
Photo by Oleg Volk

In 1890, a carbine designed by Mssr. Berthier, a railroad official in French Algeria, was adopted for use by cavalry and the Gendarmerie. It combined a bolt very similar to the Lebel's with a Mannlicher-type clip-fed magazine. Being saddled with the fat, rimmed 8mm Lebel round prevented the use of a Mauser-style staggered box magazine, and with the cartridges stacked vertically, the new carbine could only accommodate three rounds without (it was thought at the time) making the receiver impractically bulky, but it could be reloaded much faster than any shortened Lebel.

RIGHT: 8mm Lebel rounds are wide and heavily tapered when compared with the more modern 8x57mm Mauser.

The carbine used a turned-down bolt handle, to keep it from snagging on things while the cavalry troops went about their business with their weapons slung. The sights were the same as those on the Lebel; a tangent-type rear sight combined with a coarse front blade that had a thin notch in the middle for fine aiming. Soon, rifle-length versions of the weapon were fielded for France's Indo-Chinese and Senegalese colonial troops.

LEFT: The unusual French front sight blade.
Photo by Oleg Volk

As the Great War ground on, supply of the Lebel rifles could not keep up with demand, and the rifle-length Berthier was modified with a straight, Lebel-esque bolt handle and issued generally as the Mle. 1907/15. Production was expanded: Previously only made at the St. Etienne arsenal, production was now taken up by the Tulle and Chattelerault arsenals, and contracts were let to Continsouza and Delaunay in France and the Remington Arms Company in the USA. In 1916, Berthier rifles and carbines were modified further thanks to battlefield feedback. A sheet-metal extension was added to the magazine, bringing capacity to five rounds, and one of the defects of the Mannlicher system was ameliorated by the addition of a hinged cover over the clip ejection port on the bottom of the magazine, which had been liable to collect dirt when a soldier went prone.

ABOVE: Manufactured at the Etablissments Continsouza, a private contractor
Photo by Oleg Volk

The final carbine variant, the Mousqueton d'Artillerie Mle. 1916 was one of the most popular variants with the troops: light and handy, with a snag-resistant turned-down bolt handle and side-mounted sling swivels, it could be carried comfortably slung across the back without getting in the way; it held five rounds, and although it couldn't be "topped-off" like the Mauser, it could be reloaded just as quickly. It had a wooden handguard atop the barrel for a handhold during bayonet work, unlike the previous Berthiers, and was well-recieved by poilus outside the artillery troops it had been intended for.

The Mle. 1916 is undergoing the same gradual increase in collector interest as other French longarms. Tatty examples can still be found for not much over a C-note, while a really nice specimen may nudge the $400 mark. Ammunition can be difficult to find, and without the stamped sheet metal clips it is, like any other Mannlicher-type weapon, a single shot. One other thing to beware of is that most surplus Lebel ammunition you will encounter is the later "Balle N" round, a hotter loading designed for machineguns. Unless your rifle is marked as converted to accept this cartridge and has passed headspace checks and safety tests by a competent gunsmith, it's best to view it as a wall hanger and not a shooter, at least where surplus ammo is concerned.

Webley & Scott Pistol Self-Loading .455 Mk.I N: The "other" .455 Webley

2006-11-06T09:33:00.000-05:00

Webley & Scott is a company famous for their revolvers. The top-break Webley is as much an icon of the British Empire as the Colt Peacemaker is of the Old West. What many are not aware of is that Webley also manufactured autoloading pistols, beginning with an attempt to interest the British army in one 'way back in 1905. That attempt failed, and Webley contented themselves with turning out a line of pocket autoloaders before making another attempt at a military contract with a new .455 caliber self-loader in 1913.

ABOVE: Webley & Scott Pistol Self-Loading .455 Mark I N
Photo by Oleg Volk.

Not at all a common find, these pistols were used by the Royal Navy during the Great War, as well as being fielded in small numbers by the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Horse Artillery. The RN discontinued their use shortly after the end of WWII, and many made their way through the usual surplus channels to the US, but their small numbers ensured that they would never be a common sight, even on the collecting scene. When one came into the shop as a box of parts and was revived by Shannon, such a rare beastie naturally caused a bit of a stir. Standing around with my gunsmith and a gentleman from one of the more active firearms importers, with probably sixty years in the gun biz between the three of us, not one of us could recollect having seen one in the steel before.

I had to have it.

Unusually heavy, yet with an awkward grip angle, the pistol points like you're holding a t-square and may be the homeliest non-Japanese handgun I've ever seen. Oddly for a gun so rare, repro grips are available, and Triple-K has catalogued magazines. Cartridge cases can be made by trimming .45 Colt brass to length, turning the rim down somewhat (the .455 Webley Automatic is a semi-rimmed cartridge) and machining an extractor groove. The barrel rides in two angled mortises in the frame, and locks up very much like a SIG: a squared shoulder atop the chamber mating into the ejection port atop the slide. Everything is intricately machined from big chunks of steel and fitted together to a fare-thee-well.

Other odd features abound: The lockwork is assembled to the grip safety, and the whole mechanism pivots when the grip is squeezed. The pistol has dual ejectors, as well as two different methods of disconnecting (should one fail, the gun won't run away.) The recoil spring is a massive v-spring under the right-hand grip panel ("If the recoil spring breaks, you don't know me," said my gunsmith.) The slide stop is activated not by the magazine follower, but by the absence of a cartridge in the feedway. You don't need an empty magazine in the gun for the slide to lock back, it knows when it's empty. (I think that's a little presumptuous of it, but that's just me...) The drift-adjustable rear sight has little micrometer hashmarks to help line things up. All in all, a piece satisfying both in its historical provenance and in its mechanical quirkiness; I couldn't be happier to add one to the museum.

Values on these things are all over the map, but a firing example would seem to be at least an $800-$1000 proposition pretty much regardless of finish. The much rarer Royal Horse Artillery model, with its exotic rear sight and slotted for a shoulder stock, commands prices well north of $2k on the infrequent occasions when one comes up for sale.

Radom ViS wz.35: The last horse pistol.

2006-11-01T06:30:00.000-05:00

While it's common to imagine that cavalry went the way of the Eohippus some time in the muddy Spring of 1915, it just isn't true. Most all of the major military powers retained cavalry formations into the WWII years. Russia and Japan both made extensive use of mounted troops, and the last United States Army cavalry charge was made in January 1942 in the Phillipines by three platoons of the 26th Cavalry.

Since the days of the Sixteenth Century caracole, the pistol has been the traditional sidearm of the mounted soldier, and pistols designed as such are frequently easy to tell from their "badge-of-rank" kin. As far back as the days of the percussion revolver, the Colt Navy had a .36" bore, while the Colt Army, a cavalryman's weapon and expected to be able to kill a horse, was a .44. Cavalry pistols tended to be large, accurate, and often slotted to accept a shoulder stock, so as to allow them to double as a pseudo-carbine.

ABOVE: ViS wz.35 Radom, photo by Oleg Volk

Poland's cavalry had long been emulated in Europe, and as the newly-reconstituted nation built up an army after WWI, they searched for a domestically produced sidearm to equip their cavalry troopers. In 1935 a design by Wilniewczyc and Skrzypinski was settled on and, dubbed the ViS wz.35, was adopted by the Army that year. It was made at the Radom plant with the assistance of Fabrique Nationale engineers working under contract, and offered an interesting blend of familiar Colt/Browning features with some new touches.

LEFT: Radom disassembled, showing its Browning heritage.
Photo by Oleg Volk

The trigger was a sliding affair, similar to that used on many Browning designs, and the grip safety would be familiar to any user of Colt pistols. The barrel, while operating on the familiar Browning tilting-barrel short recoil system, used a cammed lug under the breech end to effect unlocking, rather than the more usual swinging link; this feature was shared with the FN GP35 "High Power" pistol that was making its debut the same year, and seems to point to a certain amount of Fabrique Nationale influence. The gun was chambered in the by-now-ubiquitous 9x19mm Parabellum, and was fed from an eight-round single column magazine. It had a butt slotted to accept a shoulder stock, and was provided with a decocker so that the trooper could more safely return it to his holster with one hand than if he was trying to control the fall of the hammer with his thumb while astride a possibly skittish mount.

RIGHT: "S"-rune on barrel lug, indicating contract manufacture for Waffen SS, most likely by inmates at Mauthausen.
Photo by Oleg Volk.

After Poland was overrun by the German and Soviet invasion of 1939, the Radom plant fell in the German -occupied half of the country and the Poles were soon forced to churn out arms for their conquerors, who called it the Pistole 645(p). The wz.35 was a common issue weapon to the Waffen SS, and as that force grew, the pistol was simplified in manufacture so as to keep up with demand. Polished bluing was replaced by a brushed finish that got rougher as the war went on; the slot for the shoulder stock disappeared; finally the frame-mounted takedown catch was deleted. Late-war guns produced by Steyr using slave labor are wretched indeed, with extremely coarse finishes and crude wooden slabs for grips.

In 1945 the Radom plant was destroyed by the invading Russians; it was a sad ending for the last horse pistol. As a footnote, though, a limited run of replica (reissue?) Radoms were produced by a revived Radom in 1997; excellent examples can command price tags of almost four figures; good originals seem to be bringing anywhere from $450 for a sad-looking wartime piece to over $2,000 for a nice pre-war "Polish Eagle" (well over $2k if that Polish Eagle has German Waffenamt proofs.) The pistols are a joy to shoot and spare parts, while difficult to find, are not impossibly so. They make a worthy addition to any collection.

Remington Model 11: A very belligerent fowling piece.

2006-10-29T11:18:00.001-05:00

Unlike most European armies, the American armed forces have always had a place for the shotgun. Used on shipboard, guarding stockades, even seeing irregular use as a cavalry weapon during the Civil War, scatterguns have served with distinction. When the Doughboys went to the trenches of France in the Great War, they brought along the Winchester Model 1897 shotguns that were already serving, and soon pressed them into use as "trench brooms". The Germans filed a complaint in September of 1918 protesting the American use of fowling pieces, and alleging that they contravened the law of war (an odd stance for the inventors of chemical warfare.) The protest was dismissed by Secretary of State Robert Lansing in a formal diplomatic response.

ABOVE: Remington Model 11 riot shotgun, circa 1943. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Meanwhile, the need for shotguns had outstripped the supply of Model 1897's and Model 12's, as well as Remington Model 10's were also pressed into service.

In World War Two, the shotgun was again called to duty, with the Winchesters joined by Ithaca, Stevens, Savage, and the Remington Model 11. The latter shotgun, a John Moses Browning design, was notable for being the first self-loading shotgun.

RIGHT: Detail of Remington 11 receiver. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Browning had shopped the design to Winchester first, as he had all his previous longarm designs, but this time around they declined to pay royalties on the novel weapon and so he next shopped it to Winchester's arch-rival, Remington. Before Remington could enter negotiations their president died, and Browning instead took the gun to Fabrique Nationale, the company originally formed by the Belgian government and Ludwig Loewe to produce Mausers for the Belgian army. Browning had worked with them in the past, selling them several autopistol designs, one of which, a Model 1910, fired the shot that ignited World War One.

FN produced the shotgun as the Auto-Five, and production was licensed to Remington as the Model 11. It was a robust weapon, operating on the long-recoil principle, but was obviously designed as a sporting weapon rather than a military one, requiring tools for disassembly and reassembly. The one pictured above wears the "flaming bomb" U.S. Ordnance mark. Its serial number dates it to 1943, and it was probably used to guard a naval installation, or perhaps as a shipboard weapon.

LEFT: Detail of U.S. Ordnance markings on receiver. Photo by Oleg Volk.

U.S. military use of the scattergun continues to this day, with Remington, Mossberg, and Benelli shotguns being used in a variety of roles, from house-to-house fighting in the Middle East, to its traditional role as a weapon for facilities guards, to specialized short versions used as breaching weapons, for blowing locks and hinges off doors in close-quarters battle in urban settings.

Mannlicher-Schoenauer M1903/14: Revolutionary rotary.

2006-10-27T11:16:00.000-04:00

Germany had barely begun issuing the new Gewehr 88 to its troops when it found itself dragged into a courtroom by Osterreichische Waffenfabrik-Gesellschaft, better known here as Steyr. The Austrians took issue with the fact that the German Rifle Testing Commission had more or less pirated the clip loading system invented by Steyr's star designer, Ferdinand von Mannlicher. The resulting settlement allowed Steyr to manufacture Gew.88's for the German army, as well as for foreign sales.

By this time, Mannlicher had a new protege, and Steyr a rising star, in the form of a fortysomething engineer by the name of Otto Schoenauer. He set about making various refinements to the Gew.88 and, when the older rifle began losing ground to Paul Mauser's newer charger-loaded designs, fitted his modified version of the Commission Rifle with a slick new development: A rotary magazine. This magazine had a rotating spindle in it, notched to hold the bullets, and would feed cartidges very smoothly, as it minimized the friction of the cartridges rubbing against one another in the magazine, unlike the staggered box designs common on other rifles of the day. Packaging his new magazine in his latest upgraded rifle, he began shopping it around Europe.

Above: Greek M1903/14 Mannlicher-Schoenauer, Photo by Oleg Volk

The rotary magazine could be charged with a stripper clip like a Mauser, but could be safely unloaded through the ejection port with the press of a button unlike Mauser designs, which needed the magazine floorplate to be hinged down or removed for safe unloading. The rifle itself was slim and graceful, weighing in at only 8.25 pounds even in the full 48" long infantry version.

Left: The rotary magazine, viewed from above. The button on the right-hand receiver wall releases the magazine's contents. Photo by Oleg Volk.

The action was ultra-slick, with a full-length guide rib, and had several safety and reliability tweaks over the Commission rifle, but this didn't help sales. Fearing complications caused by the slightly Rube Goldberg-esque magazine, armies stayed away from the new design in droves, and Schoenauer's baby was flattened by the Mauser juggernaut on the world market.

In the end, the only nation that bought the rifle was Greece, who, in a bizarre twist of fate, found themselves on the wrong side of the trenches from their main rifle supplier when World War One broke out. By the end of that conflict, Greece was badly short on Mannlicher-Schoenauers, and was making up their losses with captured Austro-Hungarian Steyr-Mannlichers and hand-me-downs from their allies. After the war they needed more rifles, but Steyr was located in the new nation of Austria and, as part of the losing side, couldn't sell military arms on the world market under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Relief was to be had in 1926 when Breda, in Italy, was contracted to supply M/S 1903/14 rifles and carbines. The Greeks eventually phased the rifle out of frontline service, replacing it with Mausers, and later, as a part of NATO, with British and American arms. Rumor has it, incidentally, that the Breda contract rifles were actually merely assembled and marked there, and had actually been manufactured at Steyr.

Right: Gew.88-derived action. Used in Greece. Marked in Italy. Made in Austria? Photo by Oleg Volk.

So as a military rifle the Mannlicher-Schoenauer was a flop, but its smoothness made it a very popular sporting rifle. It was successfully marketed and sold as such from 1903 into the 1950's, pretty much unchanged. One reason that original military models are so scarce on the collector's scene today is that most all of them were turned into sporters after they appeared on the surplus market.

Oh, and about that fragile rotary magazine that militaries of the day didn't like? Maybe it's not so bad; it hasn't stopped Ruger from selling a blue million 10/22's...

Filipino blacksmith revolver: Fruit of a ban.

2006-10-26T00:23:00.000-04:00

On the island of Cebu in the Philippines, village gunsmiths have been turning out home made firearms for over a century now. Working from factory-built guns as exemplars, these shadetree artisans can manufacture weapons that are often astonishing in their sophistication.

Some years back, a gentleman approached me wanting to sell a Smith & Wesson revolver, having heard I was a collector. From across the room it appeared to be a pre-War I-frame .38 Regulation Police. Closer examination proved it to be nothing of the sort. He was desparate to sell, needing money and not being especially fond of guns, but I was short on cash, and not especially eager to buy. I explained to him that for starters, the gun wasn't even really a S&W, and that even if it was an actual Regulation Police, it would barely be worth the $225 he wanted, given its condition.

He left, but returned a couple days later, having no doubt shopped the gun around, and asked for $200. As we talked, the Tale of the Gun was told:

His dad had fought in the China-Burma-India Theater during WWII, and eventually relieved a Japanese fighting man of this handgun. Knowing that Japanese officers were frequently responsible for providing their own sidearms, the story smacked of plausibility. Lord knows that the Imperial Japanese Army had spent some time in the Philippines, where this arm could have been acquired. The soft, fleece-lined leather holster, complete with five cartridge loops on the front, was certainly nicely made enough and, given the prevalence of American and British arms in SE Asia, the .38 S&W-slash-.380/200 chambering also made sense. Where writing would have been on an actual Smith, there was greeking, and the grip medallions had twining crescents and scimitars, shaped into something like the traditional S&W monogram.

In the end, I figured the holster was worth $25, the gun $75, and the story $100, and so I bought it. It sits next to my real pre-War .38 Regulation Police, a cold steel reminder of a dangerous place, a dangerous time, and the skills of the no doubt long-dead craftsman who made it from raw steel with nought but simple tools, his own hands, and lots and lots of talent and ingenuity.

Why old guns?

2006-10-25T11:36:00.000-04:00

"Why these old guns, Tam? What do you find so fascinating about them?"

Let me try to explain...

I've always been interested in history. If I could own one science-fiction gizmo, it would be a time machine. I think it would be absolutely fascinating to travel to various places and times in the past and view things firsthand; see how people lived; talk with them and find out how they saw the world. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear likely that this will become a reality in my lifetime.

Fortunately, however, folks in the past have sent stuff forward to the present, via that time machine that travels into the future at sixty seconds every minute, and some of these artifacts are actually affordable. I can hold a Roman coin in my hands and feel the weight of history in it. I can wonder what it's seen and done. How many cups of wine has it bought? Was it part of a legionary's savings? Did he use it to bribe his Centurion to get out of sentry duty? Did the Centurion treat some friends to a night on the town with it? I have a small cube of teak from the orlop deck of the HMS Victory. If I hold it to my ear, I can almost hear the creak of sails, the roar of a 68-pdr. carronade, a voice saying "England expects every man to do his duty."

It's the same with these old rifles; each one is a history lesson, an invitation to a treasure hunt, a physical link to a long-gone time and a far-off place. There are tangible marks on the gun that can be decoded through research, that can let you find out where and when it was made; words evocative of foreign lands: Solothurn, Chatellerault, Koishikawa, La Coruna, Spandau... And then there are the intangible marks... Was this Mauser clutched in the frightened hands of a Bavarian schoolboy, awaiting the order to go "over the top"? Where has this Krag been? Cuba? The Phillipines? What has this Garand seen in the forty years it spent in exile overseas before returning to its homeland? Where did this nick come from? Whence this ding in the stock?

"What do you find so fascinating about those rusty old things?" indeed. What's not fascinating about them? You can heat the cosmoline out of the stock, but the history is soaked in for good. You can own it, you can hold it, you can learn from it, you can shoot it, and then you can pass it and its story on to the next generation, having added your own small chapter. Until they make a time machine, I'll just have to keep using the time machines I already have.

Martini-Henry Mark III: The Arm of Empire

2006-10-24T09:51:00.000-04:00

The adoption of the Snider breechloading conversion of the old P.1853 Enfield by the British army in 1866 was never intended to be more than a stopgap. Indeed, the commission to select its replacement was formed in 1867, and soon weeded a field of over 100 entrants down to nine finalists. While bolt-actions were considered, a falling block with an internal striker ignition system designed by Swiss engineer Friedrich von Martini was selected, mated to a barrel with 7-groove, 1-in-22" rifling that had been the brainchild of Scottish gun-maker and rifle marksmanship enthusiast Alexander Henry. From such dry technical details was a legend born.

Martini-Henry Mark III. Photo by Oleg Volk.

The Martini-Henry was the standard issue arm of the British military from 1871 through the early 1890's; twenty tumultuous years, spanning such famous names as Khartoum, Isandhlwana, Rorke's Drift. The rifle itself has been the star of Kipling poetry and Hollywood film, with a sword bayonet on one end and Tommy Atkins at the other.

Loading the Martini. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Operation of the rifle is simple: pulling down on the lever behind the triggerguard causes the beechblock to drop at the front, exposing the chamber and automatically cocking the striker. The lever is then raised, closing the chamber and preparing the weapon for firing. There is no safety, but a pivoting indicator on the right side of the action gives visual and tactile confirmation of the weapon's cocked status. After firing, operation of the lever causes twin extractors to eject the spent case. There is a lug for a bayonet on the right side of the first barrel band, and the weapon's sights are graduated to 1,450 yards (experiments in India against screen targets representing massed troops showed that trained riflemen could achieve 6% hits in volley fire out to 1,650 yards!) Recoil was, as they say in the gun mags, "brisk but manageable", and a cutout was placed in the right rear of the receiver to remind one not to wrap one's thumb over the action, which could cause it, upon firing, to meet one's nose with enough force to make one see stars.

RIGHT: .577-450 Martini-Henry round, shown with today's 5.56x45mm NATO round for scale.

The Martini was truly a weapon of transition; a crusty veteran issued one in 1871 may well have received his first marksmanship instruction on a smoothbore flintlock, while the senior NCO's at Mons and First Ypres had undoubtedly cut their teeth on this old black powder warhorse. Ammunition, usually formed from 24ga shotgun brass, is still available from some specialty houses, such as Old Western Scrounger and Rocky Mountain Cartridge, LLC. Be aware that these black powder cartridges are loaded with .451" bullets, and that the bore on a well-used Martini (like mine) can mike out to .458" or more, resulting in keyholing at ranges as close as seven yards. I would encourage any military rifle enthusiast to snag one of these while examples are still available from International Military Antiques and Atlanta Cutlery; there may be no more romantic breechloader to own.

Fabrique Nationale SAFN-49: The proto-FAL

2006-10-24T09:08:00.000-04:00

In the 1930's, the day of the bolt-action military service rifle was about to draw to a close. In the Soviet Union, designers were turning out limited-issue weapons like the SVT, while in the US, the American Army was about to adopt the first general-issue military self-loading rifle, the "Rifle, .30 Caliber, M1" (now more widely known by its designers' name: Garand.)

Meanwhile, in little Belgium, Dieudonne Saive and the engineers at Fabrique Nationale were hard at work on their own self-loading design, but were still in the prototype phase when WWII halted work. Skipping town ahead of the advancing Jerries, the FN crew attempted to interest the British in their new weapon, but the Brits preferred to stick with the Enfield rather than change horses in midstream.

After the war, development work resumed, resulting in the weapon being adopted by the Belgian Army as the SAFN-49. It's a well-made rifle, with an intricately-machined steel receiver, a tipping bolt operated by a gas piston over the barrel, and a ten-round magazine that does not detach for reloading, but is topped off through the top of the receiver with stripper clips. Belgian rifles were in .30-'06 to take advantage of NATO largesse, but export rifles were done in other calibers as well, including 8x57mm and 7x57mm.

SAFN-49, Egyptian contract. Photo by Oleg Volk.

The sights consist of a receiver-mounted aperture on tangent adustable for elevation, and a front blade adjustable for windage, protected by beefy wings. The safety is a simple pivoting lever next to the trigger. The gun was remarkably successful on the export market, especially in light of the fact that it was not very simple to manufacture, and the additional fact that the US and USSR were giving rifles away pretty much for the asking. It saw service in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and all over South America. Mine was made at FN Herstal for the Egyptians. It's chambered in 8mm Mauser, and has its sight labeled in Arabic numbers.

Detail of receiver. Photo by Oleg Volk.

In the end, what put paid to the rifle was the move of the world's armies to select-fire weapons using intermediate-length cartridges. While the SAFN itself didn't survive this change, its genes did, as anyone who looks at one of these side-by-side with a certain more famous FN rifle can see.

As a footnote, this is probably the most modern military surplus rifle a US collector can own without NFA paperwork. Most subsequent designs were select-fire, and while parts-kit guns like FALs, CETMEs, and G3s can be fun to own, there's always something different about holding a true milsurp; a gun that was once actually a service arm, and is now honorably retired without having suffered the indignity of being chopped up with a cutting torch.