…that’s also old. Like 135 years old!

Took a trip to Champion Arms indoor shooting range this afternoon. I realized it had been roughly forever since I had taken my 1911 to the range. This was given to me many years ago by a dear friend, who has since passed away. I’ve kept it in exactly the condition it was when he gave it to me- baby-puke green Teflon finish and all. Thinking about it I realized why, despite my love of the 1911, it had been so long. I hate the GI sights, and the checkering on the safety is actively painful.

OK, both things are fixable. I used a cutoff wheel in a Dremel to cut a narrow slot length-wise in the front sight, then filled it with yellow nail polish. I took needle files to the rear sight and enlarged it and squared the opening. Much better. I put a 1/4″ sanding drum in the Dremel next and took down the checkering and sharp edges on the safety. No more pain.

Shooting was, um, interesting. I couldn’t shoot a precise group at seven yards to save my life. I realized I was jerking the trigger, anticipating recoil and probably several other rookie mistakes. I took a deep breath, said ‘Screw it,’ and just started blazing away rapidfire. OK, not going to win any awards, but once I relaxed groups were consistent and not unreasonable for rapid-fire. Oh, and it was fun. I can knuckle down and try for precision next time.

I’ve been making more brass for .44-55 Walker and had fifteen rounds with me. Thumper worked a treat but I only got to fire one cylinder. Newly formed brass always sticks in Thumper’s chambers after firing, and knowing this, I made sure to have a 1/4″ brass rod to take with me to the range… which I forgot at home. Well, it was fun for the one cylinder I got to shoot. Now when I clean the gun tonight I’ll meed to retrieve the brass rod to drive the cartridges out.

After the Action Shooting International match in May I made some minor changes to the Detonics Combat Master Mk.1. It had the original three-dot sights, which I have never preferred; I find it difficult to achieve any real precision with them. I filled in the dot on the front sight and painted it with orange nail polish. I also improved the grip by contact-cementing a piece of 120-grit emery-cloth to the front-strap of the grip.

Precision has ceased to be a problem. Firing standing/unsupported using a modified Weaver grip I put five rounds into a single hole. Quite satisfying.

Last but not least was the newly acquired, and newly modified, S&W .38 Single Action 2nd Model. An online friend has one that he snubbed the barrel on, added ivory grips and re-blued. I’ve admired it for some time, and when another internet pal found one in a local shop at an excellent price the game was afoot! By it’s serial number this gun was most likely made in 1884-85, but mechanically it is excellent, with a very crisp action.

So far I have made a set of antler grips for it, snubbed the barrel at 1-5/8″ to match my .38 Safety Hammerless and made and mounted a new front sight. It’s a little hard getting used to the spur-trigger, but accuracy is quite respectable at seven yards. The gun seems to point very well in my hand, so I tried point-shooting a 3-yard target, basically blazing away without aiming. Three of the five shots were clustered in the center of the paper, with the other two several inches away in random directions. I think with practice that will improve.

Once I got past the oddness of the spur-trigger I really enjoyed shooting this little gun. Next week some supplies should arrive so that I can strip the nickel and rust-blue it. I think this is likely to become a favorite!

The loads used today were:

.44-55 Walker: 200gr Heel-base LSWC over 55 grains (by volume) of FFFG Triple-7 powder with a Federal #150 Large Pistol Primer

.45 ACP: 200gr. LRNFP over 5.6gr. of Unique with a Federal #150 large Pistol Primer.

.38 S&W: 125gr. LSWC over 2.5gr. of Unique with a Federal #100 Small Pistol Primer.

As always you use this reloading data entirely at your own risk.

I’d been a bit out of sorts all day, but leaving the range I was in much better humor. I’ve had a pleasant dinner, and will now more on to cleaning the guns. A good shooting session can be wonderfully therapeutic!

Michael Tinker Pearce, 09 September 2019

…but I could have lived without this one!

I traded a fella for an Iver Johnson Viking .38 recently. These were a top-break in .38 S&W, and look like a near-copy of Harrington & Richardson’s Defender. Like the H&R these are manually ejecting via a rod under the barrel. They were made from 1963-1974 as an inexpensive self-defense pistol. They have a rep for being very stout little guns.

This one arrived with some blemishes on the frame, holster wear and a genuinely pretty nice double-action trigger-pull. The ergonomics are neither great nor tragically bad, and I was eager to give it a whirl. I finally got it to the range today, and on the third shot pieces followed the bullet downrange.

Honestly it wasn’t even scary; it happened so fast I was like, “Well, that happened. Crap.”

Revolver cylinders tend to blow up and sideways when they go, and since I was on an indoor range with dividers between the firing positions neither I nor anyone else was injured.

My first thought on seeing a cylinder like this is ‘overpowered handload,’ and indeed that was my first thought here. Anyone can make a mistake, but I am an extremely meticulous handloader. I calibrate the powder scale before each loading session, and visually verify the powder charge in each case before seating the bullet. No, it could not have been a double-charge; a double-load won’t even fit in the case, and I would have noticed the powder overflowing…

The load used was a 125gr. .361 caliber lead SWC over 2.7gr. of Unique. This is far, far under the maximum recommended load for a top-break. Actually 2.7gr of Unique under a 148gr. lead bullet is not over the maximum for a top-break revolver. I fired this identical load in two other revolvers today without a problem, and in the past have fired it from an Iver Johnson revolver made in the 1880s, so the load itself is not at fault. The specific cartridge might have somehow been overloaded, and while I doubt it it’s possible.

There might be another answer- the steel of the inner chamber wall shows a dark area. This is caused by carbon precipitation when the steel cracks in heat-treat. This most often happens when the steel is overheated during the process, which produces a characteristic pattern of large grain-growth.

OK, that’s definitely some large grain growth, and this indicates a very weak structure. Look at the image below- the top is the cylinder wall in close-up. On the bottom is the edge of a broken piece of properly heat-treated steel. There is a pretty major difference!

Also when a cylinder blows it tends to only take out the chamber being fired and one of both of the adjacent chambers. But if there was a pre-existing crack in the inner cylinder-wall it would explain why the cylinder cracked relatively neatly in half.

Regardless of whether the individual cartridge was over-powered, I think the real culprit is a very bad heat-treat and micro-cracks in the cylinder; this gun was a time-bomb from the moment it left the factory, and I just drew the short straw.

So what now? Well, what is not going to happen is me blaming my buddy for sending me a bad gun. No way he could have known about this. Hell, it might have blown up on him as easily as me. I can replace the broken latch with a part from Numerich arms, but unfortunately they are out of .38 cylinders, so if I decide to repair this I’ll make my own… out of properly heat-treated 4140 steel!

I got this gun because I thought it would be interesting… well, it surely has been that! Though not, perhaps, in the way I had hoped… You win some, you lose some. If or when I get around to repairing this gun I’ll keep you posted.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 26 August 2019

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I’ve been a fan of CZ pistols for a long time. Over the years I’ve owned a number of their small-caliber offerings, and their unique roller-locked fireball in 7.62 x 25 Tokarev, the CZ-52. Without exception they have been well-made, reliable and interesting guns.

In the ’80s, when the CZ75 was unobtainium, I had several of the Italian clones. I loved the ergonomics and found them to be very good pistols. More recently my wife owned a CZ-75 clone, the EAA Witness Carry-Comp .45. Fantastic gun, reliable and a great shooter. I’ve gotten to shoot several actual CZ-made variants in the last decade and loved them. For some time I’ve been contemplating gritting my teeth and paying the price for one, but they are spendy beasts and I had not quite convinced myself to, uh, ‘pull the trigger.’

You might not guess it from the contents of this blog, but polymer-framed guns and I go way back. I owned one of the early Glock 17 imports in the mid-eighties, and have had a few other Glocks since. Fantastic guns; if I needed to carry a duty-gun these days I have often figured it would be a Glock 17. They are wonderfully light-weight, legendarily reliable, but the trigger and ergonomics never thrilled me. I much prefer the more old-school single-action of the 1911, or DA/SA style trigger of the CZ75.

All that being the case, when this gun was offered up in trade I jumped at the chance to try it out.

The Details:

Magazine Capacity– 15

Frame– Polymer

Chambering– 9x19mm

Trigger Mech– DA/SA

Sights– Low-profile fixed Three-Dot

Barrel Length– 3.75 in

Weight– 27.7 oz

Overall Length– 7.2 in

Height– 5.3 in

Width– 1.46

Safeties- Ambidextrous, Decocker or Manual Safety, Safety Stop on Hammer, Firing Pin Block Safety

MSRP– $510.00

The CZ P-07 is very comparable in size to the Glock 19. It is slightly thicker, in part because of the ambidextrous decocker (or safety.) It’s a good size for an ‘all-arounder;’ large enough to be a duty pistol, small enough for concealed carry.

The gun comes well equipped in CZ’s hard plastic case, with two magazines, three back-panels for the grips, interchangeable flat or extended magazine bases, and both a safety that enables the gun to be carried cocked-and-locked or an interchangeable decocker. There is a well-made and detailed user manual (in several languages) and a couple of cleaning tools (missing in this used example.)

The gun uses CZ’s full-length inside slide-rails, front and rear cocking serrations and standard three-dot sights, which I don’t much like. The magazines are stoutly made of steel- a feature I like quite a lot. There are stippled serrations on the frame just above the trigger, nicely located as a safe-position for your trigger finger. The grip panels are stippled also, and there are interrupted lines on the front and back of the grip. The total effect is to provide a secure but comfortable grip.

The low-profile sights offer good visibility. The rear is drift-adjustable for windage, and the front is user-replaceable. Both are secured by Allen screws (the wrench is provided with the gun.) The double-action trigger gives second-strike capability on a dodgey primer, a very useful feature.

Following the included instructions (and a Youtube video or two) I configured the gun to suit me, fitting the largest of the grip panels and the decocker. The extended magazine base-pads were already fitted. The decocker was the hardest to fit, but the only tool required was a small screwdriver to position the return spring.

Take-down is much the same as any Browning-based semi-auto; drop the magazine, line up the witness marks, pop the slide-stop out and the slide comes off the front. The recoil spring is a captured unit!, so it’s very easy to remove and reposition when assembling the gun. The barrel simply lifts out. It’s not quite as easy as a Glock, but it’s not a bother either.

Impressions:

The gun, as I have set it up, feels good in the hand and points naturally. For me the sights line up nicely as the gun comes to bear on the target. Empty magazines are practically fired from the gun when you press the well-located, but not obtrusive, magazine release. The gun has a pleasingly solid feel in the hand.

I am not keen on three-dot sights. They are fine for close-up work and rapid acquisition, but I’ve always found it hard to wring much precision out of them, especially at extended ranges. That’s quibbling though; they are fine for the gun’s intended purpose and can easily be altered to suit.

The double-action trigger is smooth with no stacking. It’s fairly long, but that’s no handicap to someone used to double-action revolvers. There’s quite a lot of slack in the single-action trigger, but it breaks fairly crisp. You really don’t notice while firing owing to the fairly short reset. A well-tuned 1911 puts it in the shade, but it’s good for its type.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road:

I grabbed some ammo this afternoon and headed down to Champion Arms indoor range to give the gun a good wringing out. Some of the ammo I fired was some unconventional old rounds formerly used by the South African Police, the New Generation Sentry 9mm+P. These use an 80gr nickel-plated monolithic copper hollow-point with a ballistic cap for feeding that makes 1375 fps. from a 4″ barrel. They had a good record in service, and I inherited several hundred of them from a friend’s estate. They were handy and they make pretty holes in paper targets so I grabbed a couple boxes. The remainder were 125gr. TCL standard-pressure handloads. The gun functioned properly throughout testing.

First off I loaded a magazine with 15-rounds of the Sentry ammunition, dropped the hammer with the decocker and did a seven-yard mag-dump. The results were encouraging-

The second test was to load five rounds, decock the gun, then raise the gun rapidly from waist height and fire a double-action shot at seven yards, then repeat five times. Again, the results were promising-

OK, the gun feels like it points naturally- but how does that translate on a target? I ran a target out to three yards, loaded ten rounds, decocked the hammer and lowered the gun to waist level with the gun held in the strong-hand. Then I raised the gun quickly to mid-chest level and fired a double-tap, still one-handed, with the first shot DA and the second SA. I repeated this five times. The results were pretty good for a gun I’d never fired before today-

I did a whole lot of general target shooting at ranges from seven to twenty-five yards for a total of a couple of hundred rounds. The gun functioned flawlessly with both the +P Sentry ammo and the mild reloads. Felt recoil felt soft and was easily managed; I really enjoyed shooting this gun.

Conclusion:

This is a well-made, well-thought out gun, and it comes with options to personalize it. Accuracy and reliability are both what you would expect from a CZ- very good indeed! The $510 MSRP is not bad for a gun in this class, and the extra magazine and accessories are a bonus. Of course these guns can routinely be found for quite a bit less than that price.

The combination of the old-school SA/DA mechanism and modern polymer construction just might make this the perfect 21st Century pistol for a dinosaur like me. I’m looking forward to a lot more shooting with this gun, and plan to run it in an ASI match soon.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 8 August 2019