When we left Part 1 the Helwan was basically stock except for the magazine and the lock being disabled, and was more or less functional. It would still feed 9x19mm from a stock magazine, and the .380 rounds were headspacing off of the extractor in the oversized chamber. The chamber was causing the brass to ‘balloon’ noticably. Not good.
First things first- getting a proper chamber that headspaces off the cartridge lip as it should. I put the barrel in the vice, mounted a .442″ drill bit in the headstock and bored out the chamber. Next I cut a piece of .356″ barrel liner slightly over-length. NOTE- I bought this rifled barrel liner from Numerich Arms, and both guns I lined with it will keyhole bullets at 7 yards– it sucks as barrel liner but is pretty good for lining chambers. The outside diameter is .440″ so it fit snugly in the bored-out chamber. I slathered it with solder flux, pressed it in and silver-soldered the liner in place. After that I cut the extractor notch and re-ground the feed ramp. I then reamed the chamber so the ammo would headspace on the cartridge lip.
From left to right- the liner in position ready for soldering, the extractor notch and feed ramp ground (post-solder,) and the chamber reamed to depth for .380 ACP
To decrease the ‘stock’ appearance of the gun and just because I liked the look I cut 1/4″ of the end of the barrel so it was flush with the slide and lightly re-crowned it.
I test-fired the gun, and the results were inconsistent. I kept having to tweak the feed lips on the magazine, Eventually I reached the conclusion that the magazine was so crappy that the feed lips got deformed every time the gun was fired. Fortunately I had bought two magazines, and the second was stainless, and a good deal stouter that the first. It was also slightly shorter, so I replaced the base plate with an aluminum spacer to make up the difference in length.
Despite the magazine body being shorter it still holds eight rounds.
this pretty much did for the issues, and I was able to modify the follower\ so that it actuates the slide lock- the gun now locks back after the last round in the magazine is fired.
That being done I decided to modify the plastic grips. Yes, I’ll be making wood handles for it eventually, but I wanted to experiment with the shape a bit. I also domed the grip-screws and re-blued them. They are more comfortable now, and it’s much easier to remove the safety.
Lastly I ground off the writing on the slide and flat-ground both sides at the front. I then used the turbo carver and a tiny carbide bur to engrave .380 ACP on the slide, then re-blued it as well. The engraving doesn’t look too bad; it actually looks better IRL than it does in the photo.
So, this is the basic form of the gun. Eventually it will get wood grips and a modified front sight, but that’s about it.Here’s where we’re at as of this evening-
In the early 1950s Egypt ordered modified Beretta M1951 Brigadier pistols for their military and police. They liked them, but didn’t like the modifications that they themselves had specified. MAADI, Egypts largest gun manufacturer, then licensed the rights to produce the M1951, bought equipment and tooling from Beretta and produced them as the Helwan. A few decades back Interarms started importing these guns. They called them the Helwan Brigadier.
These guns were not well-finished like their Beretta counterparts, but they were cheap and for the most part worked well enough for while. MAADI, unfortunately, did not do a good job heat-treating the locking blocks that the gun depends on, and these wore rather quickly, unless you fired +P ammunition, in which case they wore out right now. Before long these parts became difficult, then impossible to find. Locking blocks for the Beretta-made 1951s were out of production, and soon they were almost as hard to find as the MAADI parts.
When my Helwan packed it in one only very occasionally saw a Beretta barrel w/locking block for sale- generally for more than you would pay for a Helwan. I had a Beretta m1951 by this point, and saw no purpose in spending money on the Helwan. It spent several years doing duty as a paperweight after donating it’s magazines to my Beretta. I occasionally considered fabricating a new locking block in my shop, but it just seemed like more effort than the gun was worth. This last week it occurred to me- what if the gun didn’t need a locking block? Dead simple top grind the locking lugs off the block, rendering the gun a blow-back.
Of course you’d have to be a madman to fire 9x19mm out of this gun as a blow-back pistol, and if you did you might just eat the slide. But what about .380 ACP? It could work. Of course nobody really needs a full-sized service pistol in .380, but it’s better than a full-sized service pistol paperweight. Besides, Linda always enjoyed shooting the Helwan, and as a range pistol who really cares about the caliber? I’m set up to reload .380, and it’s even cheaper to reload than 9mm. Besides, it would be interesting.
First things first- grind off the locking lugs from the locking piece, and grind down the pin in the breech that normally pushes the lock up to disengage it. reassembled the pistol and it hand-cycled fine.
Locking block with the lugs ground off, so I guess now it’s just a block… Necessary to locate the recoil-spring guide rod correctly…
…which it does just fine when the gun is reassembled.
I experimented to see if it would chamber a .380 round from the stock magazine. It would, and further it would hand-cycle rounds into the chamber and eject them. But would they cycle the gun? Yes, they will. But the feed lips of the stock magazine are so far back the round actually leaves the magazine before it enters the chamber, which seems fine when you are hand-cycling the gun, but at the full cycling speed of the gun it either stovepipes the round it’s trying to chamber or throws it right out of the gun with the empty cartridge. Yeah, that’s not going to work…
I tossed around several schemes of varying practicality before arriving at a simple idea- use a .380 magazine mounted in a chassis that mimics the original magazine. This had the added advantage that I wouldn’t need to cannibalize a perfectly good magazine for my Beretta.
I swung by Ben’s Loans and pawed through their Box-o’-Random-magazines and found one that had the same angle as the Helwan magazine. I forked over $8 and was ready to get started.
Left- the mystery .380 Magazine. Center, the Helwan magazine and right, the piece of aircraft aluminum that will become the magazine Chassis.
Fitting the magazine ‘blank’
A few minutes of filing later…
The magazine blank relieved for the slide-lock and with the magazine reliease notch… cut on the wrong side. Oops.
OK, I cut the mag-release notch on the wrong side- an oops, but easy to fix. Next up was turning my aluminum faux magazine into something useful.
Here I have recut the .380 magazine to mimic the stock magazine, removed the protrusion at the front of the base-plate and marked where to cut away the aluminum chassis
Here is the magazine mounted on the chassis. It’s basically glued in place. I had serious questions about the strength of this, but it seems fine; there’s really not anywhere the magazine can go.
I had to modify the follower and tweak the feed lips, but soon the gun would hand-cycle cartridges reliably. Time for the real test. I loaded five rounds into the magazine and fired into the bullet trap. It cycled, but the second round stove-piped. I tweaked the feed lips some more and tried again. This time it worked, but I needed to give the slide a little assist to get the next round chambered. The last three rounds worked fine.
Two more five-round magazines also worked, so it’s basically running, though I am not satisfied yet- there are still two things I want to fix.
1) I want to make a new follower that will activate the slide hold-open on the last round. This is pretty easy- it’s just cutting and bending a flat piece of metal.
2) I want to do something about the chamber. Since 9mm is not straight-walled the rounds are a bit loose, which is hard on the brass. Also, the rounds are headspacing on the extractor- which is not a good way to do things and will probably prove unreliable in the long run. Worst of all if you stick a factory magazine in, the gun will still chamber 9x19mm, which would probably damage the gun and might be quite dangerous.
Most likely I will bore out and sleeve the chamber, them ream it for .380ACP. This will solve all the issues (and probably create some new ones, but I’ll deal with that as it goes.) The I may do something to address the cosmetics and make the gun more distinct. I’ll also mark the gun for .380 ACP
Anyway, the gun is functioning relatively well, so part one is complete.
‘Bring enough gun to the fight.’ You’ll hear this a lot in self-defense circles. The question is what is ‘enough’ gun? Here’s the rub- nobody knows. Every instance of self-defense is unique. A tiny .22 Derringer might be enough, or a Glock 17 with three spare mags might not be enough. The only thing we can know in  for certain in advance is that no gun will never be enough gun.
A gun you don’t have with you when you need it is useless. A small, easy to conceal gun is more likely to be with you. The problem is that small guns, while more concealable, can be harder to deploy and shoot accurately. Small guns are often chosen by people getting their first gun for self-defense because they are easier to hide and less intimidating to them- but they may be exactly the opposite of what they need.
Really little pistol
Practice is essential, and small guns are often not much fun to practice with, especially for a novice. They are harder to shoot accurately, which can make them frustrating and less satisfying to shoot. Depending on the type and caliber the recoil can be punishing as well, which can teach the new shooter to flinch. It’s easy to give up. Despite being harder to conceal a new shooter might be better served by a medium-frame gun, such as a Glock 19 or a K-Frame revolver. Something with mild recoil and decent sights. After they become proficient with that they can move to a more compact gun with a similar or the same mechanism.
More advanced shooters will have less problem with small guns, and some (like me) will relish the challenge of shooting them quickly and accurately. Even a very small gun can surprise you- there’s nothing inherently less accurate about a gun with a short barrel. The short sight radius can make it hard to wring ultimate accuracy from them, but if you learn the fundamentals well enough- sight picture and trigger control- they can be very accurate indeed, and at much longer distances than most people suspect. At any rate a small gun may be better suited to more experienced shooters, a medium or even full-sized gun better for a novice.
Some people feel quite adequately armed with a snub-nosed .38. Some feel better with a high-capacity 9mm. Neither one is necessarily wrong. Given the chaotic and unpredictable nature of an armed self-defense incident either or both could be right or wrong. So how can you have the best odds of having enough gun when you need it?
Bring enough brain to the fight.
People think of Situational Awareness in terms of being observant of the world around them, and while that’s part of it there’s more to consider.
*Be aware of your limitations. You need to have a realistic appraisal of your gun-handling and shooting skills. If you can’t reliably put hits on the target at fifteen yards then you probably shouldn’t try in a shooting incident if you have any choice. Better to put your energy into avoiding being shot and wait for your chance. Likewise if you know you cannot deploy your weapon quickly, if at all possible you should wait for- or engineer- an opportunity where you will have enough time. The point is to have a realistic appreciation of what you can and cannot do, and include those limitations in your planning or response to a lethal confrontation.
Of course it would be helpful to do a lot of practice so you know what those limitations are- and can start to improve on them.
Token snub-nose revolver
*Be aware of the limitations of your weapon. You need to have a realistic appreciation of the capabilities of your weapon. If you are packing a short-barrel .32 you probably shouldn’t be trying to shoot through windshields or barricades. If you are packing a .22 your are going to need to make those hits count, and realize it may take multiple hits; even a head-shot with a tiny caliber is not a guaranteed stop. If you are carrying a gun with slow follow-up shots engaging multiple targets could be problematic. Take these things into account and plan to act around them as needed.
*Be aware of your purpose. If you carry a firearm for self-defense be aware of the ultimate goal, which is to go home to the people that love you when it’s over. Everything else is a bonus or a distraction. You are not the police; it is not your job to apprehend the bad guy. You are not Batman; it is not your job to punish the bad guy. It is not even your job to protect innocent lives if you cannot do so without an unreasonable risk to your own. It’s called self defense for a reason. Yes, circumstances may arise where you feel it is worth risking your life to save an innocent or innocents; I’m going to give us all the benefit of the doubt and assume we are all decent human beings here. Just bear in mind there are people you love and who love you, people that depend on you. That needs to be balanced against the risks of intervening.
In addition you need to be mentally prepared. To some people this means having a plan for any possible contingency up to and including encountering multiple trained assailants with automatic weapons and body armor. (This plan at least ought to be simple- if you can’t run away you’re going to die. This ain’t a tv show.) You should give some thought to the sorts of encounters you are most likely to have based on where you live, what you do and where you go during the course of the day, and plan how to respond to or even avoid those. This is not fantasizing (or shouldn’t be!) When thinking about these instances you’re not planning for glorious victory; you’re planning how best to insure you go home to your loved ones. With that goal in mind shooting is not the first or necessarily the only option. It is the last resort; be aware, be mindful and maybe things will never get to that point.
No firearm fits every need or every situation. there is no ‘one-size-fits-all.’ People have different levels of skill, different physiques and have to deal with different climates, which can constrain the ability to conceal a full-size weapon. Conditions and circumstances may mean we need to carry different guns at different times or in different venues. But no matter what gun you are carrying you always have the ability to observe and think, to plan and react.
A gun is not a solution; it is simply a tool that increases your options. You need to use your most effective asset- your brain- to chose the correct options and make the most of them.
