My wife of over twenty years has a new love now. Am I jealous? Nah… after putting up with me for all these years she’s entitled to take her fun where she can get it. Besides, it’s a gun.

We are in the habit of picking out our Christmas gifts together and putting them on layaway. This year her gift was a Microsoft Surface, and we paid off the layaway this week… only to discover it was not up to her needs. We returned it for store credit at Ben’s Loans in Renton WA. This is actually a pawn shop, and one of our favorite gun stores. Hmmm… store credit at a gun store… what to do… what to do?

Linda does not shoot nearly as much as I do, but she has a good eye for guns– and bargains. The store had happened across an exceptional deal on a Sig Sauer P238 Legion, and were willing to pass those savings on to Linda. Despite the deal she was a little hesitant; Linda has an unhappy history with sub-compact .380s. She has a dodgey wrist and snappy recoil is painful to her, and tiny .380s are notoriously snappy. After consulting the internet via her phone for reviews she was reassured; they all agreed that the gun was unusually pleasant to shoot for a gun its size and caliber. She was also reassured by the fact that we could certainly sell it for more than we would be paying for it if she didn’t like it.

We snagged a couple boxes of .380 from the store and another of my reloads at the house and headed for Champion Arms gun range. I fired the gun first, grinned at my wife and said, “You are going to love this.” She did. It is not snappy; not at all. Moreover she was able to start getting hits immediately, and it only got better.

Let’s talk a little bit about the P238. It looks a lot like a miniature 1911, and it is a bit like one. It’s a single-action semi-auto of largely conventional Browning-style operation. Disassembly is pretty standard- line up the notch in the slide, pop the slide-stop out and it all comes apart. There is a full-length steel guide-rod with a non-captured recoil spring and a cammed tilting barrel. The single-action mechanism insures a consistent, short trigger-pull and makes the preferred carry method Condition 1- cocked-and-locked. Unlike the safety on a 1911, however, the Sig’s safety can be applied when  the slide is locked open, meaning you can chamber a round with the safety on- a useful feature, I think.  Like a 1911 the Sig has a seven-shot magazine.

The gun is 5.5″ long, 3.9″ tall and 1.1″ thick. It weighs in at 15 oz. empty- about the same as an alloy-frame J-frame revolver, but in a more concealable package.

So what does the Legion package add to this? Quite a lot, actually. Starting with the trivial it has a Cerekote finish called ‘Legion Gray’ and a Legion badge on the grips. Legion Gray is an attractive finish in a medium gray with, to my eyes at least, a greenish tinge. Add aggressively textured G10 grip-panels, checkering on the front-strap, trigger-guard and mainspring housing.  It also has front cocking serrations on the slide, an ambidextrous safety,  a metal magazine funnel for easier loading under stress, high visibility day/night sights and an aluminum trigger to replace the standard model’s polymer trigger. All of this adds an almost $200 premium to the standard gun’s price.

So, how is it to shoot? In a word– excellent. Recoil is soft, the sights are highly visible, the grip comfortable. It’s an easy gun to shoot well, and Linda found it very easy to put rounds on target at standard defensive distances.

The large, green-dot front sight lends itself to speed more than precision, appropriate enough on a self-defense firearm, but precision can be achieved.  

This little gun is a ball to shoot. The trigger is excellent, the sights are easy to use and the grip is quite comfortable for such a small gun. I rode the safety with my thumb, just like I do with a 1911, and the gun never bit or caused any discomfort. Recoil is mild and follow-up shots come fast and accurate. It’s addictive; Linda put more than a hundred rounds through it quite happily, and the next day she asked if I could reload some more .380…

We did experience one malfunction, a failure to eject. This happened with one of my reloads, so I’m inclined to chalk it up to the ammunition. We’ll run a few hundred more rounds through it to insure that it is reliable– believe me, that will be no hardship!

Michael Tinker Pearce, 4 December 2018

 

Tonight I had a gun to test, ammo to test and a new gun to fire for the first time. Well, new after a fashion…

Starting this off with the Webley RIC. I’ve been gradually sorting minor issues with this gun, and it was time for a final test. .450 Adams cartridge is not really commercially available so I have been trying various loads for it. It has shown a marked preference for hollow-base bullets; my go-to utility bullet (Aardvark Enterprise’s 200gr. TRNL Cowboy bullet) tends to key-hole from this gun.  I set up a swage-block and punch to make them into 200gr. hollow-base semi-wadcutters.

I loaded these over 3.5gr. of Unique with a CCI300 Large Pistol primer. This was a deliberately light load, but it turned out to be too light. These might have been coming out at well under 400fps. Better to be too careful in these cases, of course. The good news is the bullets appeared to fly true- as near as I could tell. They tore the paper rather than punching proper holes, but examination of the target did not show evidence of Key-holed rounds as near as I could tell.

I am delighted to report that the gun functioned flawlessly throughout.

 Moving on to the Remington conversion revolver chamber in .44 Colt, I was trying out a load with the .451 heel-base round-nose bullet. These were loaded over 5.5gr. of Unique with a CCI300 Large Pistol primer.

These turned out to be extremely inconsistent- the crimp is not holding the bullets well at all. What seemed to occur on several occasions was that the powder did not ignite properly; it was as if the primer was blowing the bullet into the forcing cone before the powder really got going, resulting in a very large flash from the cylinder-gap and an anemic ‘thump’ rather than a bang. The bullets all went downrange, but at highly variable velocities- many of them quite slowly.  Accuracy was within acceptable limits– however.  Normally I load these bullets with 6.5gr of Unique, and in the future I’ll be using that load with these bullets.

I think I am going to pursue my experiments with hollow-base .430″ wadcutters; while I need to tweak the design of the bullet slightly they are, on the whole, consistent in ignition and velocity even with the smaller powder charge.

Last but not least was a new acquisition in the form of an early Christmas present from Linda- a mint 3: S&W 31-1. Despite having been made in 1970 this gun appears new- possibly even un-fired!

The load I was using was a 96gr. TRN bullet (from Aadrdvark Enterprises) over 3.8gr. of Unique with a Federal Small Pistol primer. This is a stout load- I recommend that it only be used in modern firearms in good condition! I do not, for example, fire them out of my I-Frame .32 Hand Ejector.

My first results at seven yards were un-inspiring; groups were decent overall but there were far to many fliers. This was all me, of course. I realized that I have been spoiled by the very nicely worn-in trigger on the S&W .32 Hand Ejector and the superb trigger on the .32 Colt New Police Detective Special. Buckling down on my fundamentals I focused down and was able to shoot this seven-yard target-

The gun does consistently shoot a little low, but I can live with that. Next time I’ll load some target loads and see about pushing the distance out. The new grip was very comfortable to use; not too surprising since I tailored it to fit my hand!

A fun and informative evening all told. I am very pleased with the Webley’s performance and the new S&W. I’m looking forward to shooting them more on the future- especially that little .32!

Addenda: I will need to modify the left-hand grip panel; the inside casing hangs up on the grip on ejection. That’s a simple fix at least.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 1 December 2018

As much as I like Van’s Instant Blue it has it’s limitations, and depending on the steel results can be quite variable. It is and will remain my go-to cold blue, but I wanted something a little more professional. Rust blue seemed to be an option that fits my circumstances, and after researching the subject I decided to try Mark Lee Express Blue #1. This is a product that claims to produce a good finish in ‘as little as an hour.’ 

I bought the small bottle (4oz.) from Track of the Wolf.  Including shipping it ran about $17. Service was prompt and the package arrived in a couple of days.

I had selected ‘Thumper,’ my ASM/Walker cartridge conversion for my first victi… uh… attempt. I completely disassembled the gun and began surface prep. The barrel, cylinder and frame needed to be done. I used 320-grit sandpaper to completely remove all trace of bluing from these parts, using small scraps of wood as sanding blocks where needed to avoid rounding off lines that I wished to remain crisp. The instructions recommended 320-400 grit for this; any finer and the solution might have trouble ‘biting’ into the steel. This entire process took about an hour; it’s a pretty simple gun…

Next I soaked all the parts in acetone as the first stage of de-greasing them. From the time they went into the acetone until the time it was finished I never touched it with bare hands again. I used standard surgical gloves from there on out, and went through several pairs. After the acetone bath I moved from the shop to the kitchen, where I scrubbed all of the parts with warm water and ‘Barkeeper’s Helper’ powdered cleanser. After that I rinsed them thoroughly and dried them.

The instructions recommend heating the parts to 150-200 degrees with a propane torch or other means. For my ‘other means’ I used our toaster oven. I allowed the parts to heat up, then removed them and applied the bluing solution. The directions specify putting a small amount of the bluing solution in a glass or plastic dish and working from that.  This is presumably to prevent contamination of the product in the bottle. I used cotton balls to apply it. 

It’s important not to overdo the application; whatever you are using as a swab should be damp rather than wet. I applied a thin coating to each piece and, with the parts heated to 200 degrees, they dried quickly. I treated each part and then replaced it back in the toaster oven. After three applications I immersed them in boiling water for five minutes. I used tap water for this, but tap water varies and you might want to use distilled water.

At the end of five minutes the parts came out and I patted them dry. They had turned dark gray. I removed the surface residue with de-greased OOOO steel wool. After only one treatment the finish was darker than I had originally used for this gun. I repeated this cycle two more times- three applications, allowing the parts to dry between applications, then boiling and scouring with steel wool before the next applications. After three cycles of treatment I was satisfied with the result, and per the instructions provided with the bluing solution I immersed the parts in a mix of baking soda in water for 30 minutes. Finally I thoroughly oiled the parts and re-assembled the gun.

The case-hardened frame did not take as dark a color as the barrel and cylinder, but overall I am quite happy with the result. The total time invested in refinishing this gun, including disassembly, surface prep and re-assembly, was about four hours.

I subsequently treated the cylinders of two of my cartridge conversions with very good results, then did a full refinish of a S&W Model 1903 .32 Hand Ejector that I have been rehabilitating, and the results were excellent.

It would seem the key to attaining a good result with this product is simply following the given directions scrupulously, and avoiding touching the parts bare-handed after de-greasing. 

Bluing the two guns and the two cylinders used up the entire 4oz. bottle, and there is already another, larger bottle on the way. I can give it no higher recommendation.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 26 November 2018