Going to the range twice in two days- I’m getting spoiled! Linda- the Mrs.- had yet to shoot her new gun, a Vz70 .32 ACP and was eager to do so. After running errands and some gardening we set out to do that, and of course to shoot some other guns because why wouldn’t we?

To address the term ‘Rapid Fire’ for the purposes of this article: the range we usually shoot at, Champion Arms, limits non-members to a maximum of one shot per second. Firing faster or shooting double-taps is restricted to members that have been cleared to do them by range staff. When I refer to ‘Rapid-Fire’ I mean as fast as I can get away with before the Range Officer takes exception. Generally this will be 3 shots/ 2 seconds or just a bit faster.

The Vz70 is a blowback-operated pistol made by CZ. It borrows a lot from the Walther PP and PPK, though it’s the same size as the PP. It is a largely conventional DA/SA semi-auto. One of the main operational difference between this gun and the Walther is the safety- not only is it mounted on the frame rather than the slide, it does not drop the hammer. This means that the gun may be carried ‘cocked and locked’ or with the hammer down and the first shot fired double-action.

The double-action pull is long but quite smooth and not overly heavy. Single action pull is decently short and crisp. I fired the first group at 5 yards since we had no idea where the gun was ‘printing.’ Dead-on to point of aim as it turns out- not a spectacular target but indicative of the gun’s potential:

Linda took over from there and fired several magazines at five and seven yards, and after thirty rounds or so was clustering her shots around the bullseye and even the flyers were inside the large circle.  I ended by shooting an 8-shot rapid fire group at seven yards:

I really like this gun; contrary to my expectations the slide did not chew up my hand the way Walthers, Makarovs etc. tend to do. Recoil is predictably mild, the trigger is decent and the sights are actually reasonably good. The only flaw was that at first the gun would not lock open on the last shot. It would manually lock open on an empty magazine though, and by the end of the session it was functioning normally.

We’ll be trying this gun with Lehigh Extreme Cavitators as a defensive load, and if that works well this will be a nice little SD gun for Linda. Yes, in this day and age there are 9mm guns no bigger than this, but Linda has a bum wrist and is recoil-sensitive, so this seems to be just the ticket.

Linda also fired the Steampunk Snubbies, both my EDC and her pearl-handled gun. These are a pair of S&W .38 Double Action Safety Hammerless revolvers with the barrels shortened to 1-5/8″ with ergonomic grips on my gun, and antique Mother of Pearl grips with a T-grip style grip adapter on Linda’s.  She was easily able to keep her shots on target, but she finds the Pearl/grip adapter combination a bit small for her hand and neither gun is really comfortable for her. I ended the session with this rapid-fire group at seven yards:

Some explanation here- this is ordinary printer-paper and low-velocity bullets tend to tear it. In addition to the two holes there are three gray rings visible where the HBWCs tore the paper rather than punching a clean hole

The more I shoot this gun the more I like it. The trigger is not light but is quite smooth and sweet.

Linda next requested to shoot the Shopkeeper’s Special, a Cimarron Richards/Mason conversion customized with a barrel cut to 2-1/4″, improved sights and a bird’s-head grip. It is very easy to cock and has a very light, crisp trigger. It’s heavy enough to easily absorb the recoil from standard-pressure .38 Special loads and Linda proceeded to demonstrate a respectable ability with it at seven yards. She really enjoys shooting this gun, as do I; if it is not my favorite revolver it’s certainly in the running. These are two groups I fired at seven yards at a pace of about 1 shot/second.

Last I did some shooting with my 6-1/2″ barreled S&W M1903 Hand Ejector. The double-action trigger on this gun is amazing; I really enjoy shooting it but the long barrel isn’t my favorite thing. Despite the much longer sight-radius I really don’t shoot it much better than the short-barrelled guns unless doing deliberate fire at 25 yards. Still, it’s a great gun, and I produced this rapid-fire group at 15 yards:

I need more practice with this gun; while I can shoot it decently I have the feeling I am not even beginning to push its limits.

So a grand afternoon of shooting, with both of us happy with the results and, on my part at least, with the guns.

As an addendum- all the .38 Special rounds fired today were Hornady 148gr. HBWCs over 4.7gr. of Unique with a CCI small pistol primer. The .38 S&W loads were my standard- the same HBWC over 2.5gr. of Unique with a CCI primer.

A further addendum- examining the two targets shot with the Richards/Mason I realized that the group on the left was shot with a different load than the one on the right- that one was shot with the HBWCs. The target on the left was shot with Montana Gold 125gr.Hollow-points loaded on top of 5.6gr. of Unique with a CCI primer. the difference in the size of the holes is conspicuous.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 14May2017

For those of you that have to been following this project you might want to read up on how we got here:

https://tinkertalksguns.com/2016/06/28/remington-bulldog-project-part-1

https://tinkertalksguns.com/2016/06/29/remington-bulldog-project-part-2

Since Part 2 I have further shortened the barrel to 2-5/8″, fabricated and added a front sight and made a ‘pinky-groove’ at the bottom-front of the handle. This last modification really improves the comfort of the grip, BTW.

OK, now that you are all caught up the final part of this gun has arrived- that being a Kirst gated cartridge conversion in .45 Colt. This arrived last week from Kirst. Price was $325; not inexpensive but well worth it for what you get.

So what do you get? A 5-shot cylinder with a ‘dead position’ to drop the firing pin and a breech-ring with a firing-pin and loading gate. The dead position for the firing-pin borders on brilliant; there really isn’t room for six .45 Colt cartridges in the cylinder, and since the only safe way to carry a gun of this design is with the hammer down on an empty cylinder having five equally spaced chambers would basically give you a four-shooter.  The original cylinder gets around this by having places to drop the hammer between cylinders, and while Kirst could have done the same thing they instead gave you a single position for the hammer. Less machining and a quite positive safety.

To install the converter you simply withdraw the cylinder pin, remove the percussion cylinder and replace it with the new cylinder with the breech-ring mounted. Then just slide the cylinder pin in and… it doesn’t go all the way. OK, they say there might be some fitting required. I looked and the ‘feet’ that brace against the frame were a skosh too long. The directions say to carefully file them until it fits. OK, I can do that. A dozen passes with the file and it was almost there- a few more and it was good to go.

Next I needed to relieve the blast-shield so that cartridges could actually be inserted through the gate. The website said that a template for doing this is included with every conversion. It wasn’t, but there were instructions. Basically mount the converter, mark where the gate is and then use a Sharpy-marker to mark where the gate is. Remove the converter and all internal parts of the gun. Use a 5/8″ sanding drum on a Dremel-tool to remove material until it is possible to insert an empty cartridge into the cylinder. Then use finer grit to finish, polish and then re-blue with cold blue. Estimate time: 2-3 Hours. Helpfully there are no pictures of what this will look like when you are finished.

5/8″ sanding drum on a Dremel-tool? PAH! We don’ need no stinking Dremel! I have a 5/8″ contact wheel for my Bader B-III Belt grinder. 2-3 hours? Try 2-3 minutes.

This is what it looks like. Note that for a rimmed cartridge like .45 Colt you need to cut well into the frame to clear the rim.

It took a couple tries mounting the converter and checking, but it was done very quickly, and applying Van’s Instant Blue directly to the hot steel produced very satisfactory results. Now it was possible to load the cartridges.

Anyone familiar with old-school single actions know the drill-  half-cock, open the gate, load one, skip one, load four. Then when you bring the hammer to full cock and lower it the hammer rests on an empty cylinder. Starting with the hammer indexed to the rest position on the cylinder (which is marked by a cut-out on the rim) load the first chamber and follow this procedure. The result is the same, except instead of coming down on an empty chamber it will come down into the safety position. At first the cylinder was reluctant to turn freely at half-cock, but after a bit of manipulation that cleared up and it worked just as it should.

I’m impressed with the Kirst converter. It required minimal fitting, lockup and timing is good and needed no adjustment. The cylinder gap looks to be .0015-.002″- very tight. Maybe a little too tight for black-powder, but better too tight than to too loose. I expect I will shoot some black-powder shells at some point and we’ll find out.

A particularly nice feature with the Kirst converter is the ability to drop the percussion cylinder back in the gun and use it. Not that I intend to, but this is still important to me. When you take a percussion revolver ( a non-firearm according to ATF) and put a modern cartridge cylinder in it you are, in effect, manufacturing a firearm. This is no problem in states that allow it, but it makes selling the gun problematic unless you are a licensed firearms manufacturer. The ability to drop the percussion cylinder back in with no hassle makes it possible to sell the gun or transfer it easily to an heir. Not that intend to either sell it or die any time soon…

The finished gun. All Italian markings and proofs have been removed.

Went to the range this afternoon with a box of HSM 200gr. RNFP Cowboy Loads. So, how does it shoot? See for yourself-

First shooting

And the target I was shooting at ten yards in the video:

With the mild cowboy loads this gun is a pussycat. I am going to have to reduce the height of the front sight as it’s shooting low, but that’s easy enough. I’m really very happy with this gun’s performance. In the future I’ll try some (modestly) heavier loads, but I am confident it will handle them with aplomb.

I’m pretty delighted with this gun- the looks, the handling and now the shooting. It’s a peach if I do say so myself.

Tinker Pearce, 22 April 2017

Phase One of this project is where the gun will assume 90% of its final form. Phase Two will involve the fitting of a cartridge conversion to .45 Colt.

The starting point for this conversion is a Pietta 1851 Navy Colt reproduction fitted with a .44-caliber cylinder and barrel. I’m not sure this is something that ever existed in history, but that’s OK. This gun is old and well-used. Most of the color-case hardening is worn away and there are nick and scratches indicative of long use. While there is fine pitting throughout the bore the rifling is strong, so I am not overly concerned on that point.

This is the gun in its original form- 7-1/2″ barrel, loading lever, full ‘plow-handle’ grip. I looked at a number of concepts ranging from a full-length ‘steampunk’ version of the gun to a very snub-nosed ‘Avenging Angel.’  What I settle on eventually was a reshaped handle and a relatively short but not ‘snub-nosed’ barrel. I settled on a length of 3-1/2″ because that’s the shortest practical length if I decide to add an ejector to the gun after it’s converted to fire metallic cartridges.

To go with the shorter barrel I wanted a more compact handle and the go-to shape for guns of this type is the ‘bird’s head.’ Frankly Ive done that a few times already, and was looking for something else. Thinking of N-Frame S&Ws fitted with K-frame grips it occurred to me- what if I grafted the grip of an 1849 onto the 1851 frame?  OK, it won’t work- not to mention that I don’t have an 1849 grip frame lying around. But I could approximate the size of an 1849 grip-frame.

To start with I removed the one-piece walnut grip and the bottom retention screw, then squeezed gently to narrow the width of the grip until it approximated an 1849 grip. This left approximately 1/4″ of the back-strap protruding from the bottom front of the grip. I drilled a new screw hole, threaded the screw in and cut off the excess. I also ground a bit away at the bottom front of the handle to eliminate some of the ‘hook’ in the original grip. For esthetic reasons I rounded the bottom of the frame a bit as shown below-

So, now I had my grip-frame. Now for the grips… I cheated of course. I cut the single-piece stock grip into two pieces and ground them flat on the bottom to make two grips. I’ll tell the story with pictures and captions for a bit:

Here’s one of the new grip panels with the outline of the new frame. I carefully ground each side to fit the new profile, and rounded the outer surface to approximate the original.

I drilled the hole for the grip screw, counterbored them for the nut on the left side and the bushing for the screw on the right side, mounted the grips and shaped them precisely to the frame.  I drilled through the bottom front of the frame for a 1/8″ brass pin, then bored each grip to fit over the pin. This prevents the grips from slipping out of place when the grips are screwed on. I then polished the grips and frame together to get the proper fit.

I’ve always found dealing with the wedge-retention screw a pain, so I flattened one side. Turn the screw 3/4 of a turn and the wedge can easily be removed.

Next I removed the loading lever and cut the barrel at just over 3-1/2 inches using a bimetal blade on my metal-cutting bandsaw. I squared this up on my Bader belt-grinder, then re crowned it with a conical burr. I also took the opportunity to remove the markings and italian proof-marks. 

I could have simply reinserted the loading-lever screw, but this looked clunky to me and lacked intention, so it was back to the Bader for some judicious reshaping. The result was much more complete and purposeful looking:

At this point I detail-stripped the pistol; quite a bit of gunk around the innards, which I cleaned off and oiled the parts. The color-case hardening was worn and in bad shape, so I polished the frame and cylinder.  The barrel, cylinder and frame were the immersed in Van’s Instant Blue for several minutes, then removed and thoroughly hosed down with WD40.

After a good soak I cleaned off the excess oil and thoroughly buffed them vigorously with paper towels. Time for a front-sight, and I planed a simple post like the pistol originally had.

I drilled a 1/8″ hole approximately 3/32″ deep in the tip of the barrel, and returning to the workbench I used a 1/16″ burr in the flex-shaft tool to undercut the edges of the hole so the bottom was wider than the top. I inserted a short section of 1/8″ brass rod and hammered it into place. The caused the base of the peg to expand into the undercut section of the hole, essentially forming a blind rivet. I then trimmed the post to my best guess at the correct height and buffed if to remove the corners. I ground a slight ‘swoop’ a few hundredths deep in the top of the barrel on a whim, leaving the front sight on a slightly raised ‘platform’ and re-blued it without polishing so that the top of the barrel is less reflective than the polished surfaces. Using a round needle-file I enlarged the rear-sight (the tip of the hammer, actually) to a good size to work with the post.

Time to reassemble the essentially finished gun. I find the ergonomics and balance quite delightful; the gun is eminently point-able and comfortable in my hand. It feels much lighter and handier than it did in its original form, though at 38oz. it’s still not exactly a light-weight. A good thing, that; .45 isn’t exactly a powderpuff, even with loads limited to less than 1000 fps.

So, here is Phase One completed- Phase Two, the fitting of the Kirst gated conversion, will occur at some indefinite future point when I can afford the conversion.

Tinker Pearce, 14 April 2007