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Old 11-30-2008, 02:58 AM
Nyles Nyles is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2008
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Default Some Guns From My Collection (bandwidth warning)

Saw the post your guns thread and thought you might enjoy some pictures of some of the rarer or more interesting guns from my collection of military small arms. First up, handguns.



This is a Webley & Scott Model 1910 in .38ACP (or .38 High Velocity as it was known in Britain at the time). Webley & Scott of course made the break-action Webley revolvers used by the British Army, but also made a series of quite good automatic pistols. These were unique in that they actually had an enormously strong V-shaped mainspring in the left side of the grip rather than a conventional coil spring.

The Model 1910 was designed in hopes of a military contract, but never got one, and was dropped from production in favor of the .455 calibre Model 1913 which would be adopted by the Royal Navy and the Royal Horse Artillery. This is one of less than 1000 made.




This is British army issued Garate Old Pattern No.2 Mk.I revolver, made in Spain. Spain has a long history of making (often parent infringing) firearms of various levels of quality. Because of their neutrality in WW1, they were a huge source of substitute standard handguns for the Entente, including these copies of the Smith & Wesson 1884 Frontier Double Action in .455 Webley calibre. They weren't very well-made and overshadowed by the Colt and S&W revolvers purchased in droves, and of course the standard issue Webleys.



These are a pair of WW2 Finnish service pistols. The top one is a Luger M/23 with a Finnish-made 4 3/4" barrel in 9mm. Originally purchased in 7.65mm Luger calibre and with 3.9" barrels (because of limits on Germans arms manufacture imposed by the Treaty of Versailles), they were rebarelled during the 1941-1944 Continuation War with the Soviets to better match the Lahti L-35 that had replaced them.

The bottom one is a Czech-made CZ-38 in .380 purchased from the Germans by the Finns during the Continuation War. It's a unique design, in that in spite of having an external hammer it's double action only, and strips simply by pressing the catch on the frame and lifting off the slide - it has a captive mainspring and the barrel is hinged to the frame. Handles really poorly, but it's surprisingly accurate.



This is a French SACM mle. 1935A in 7.65mm Longue. It's basically a modified 1911 updated by Swiss firearms designer Charles Petter - who would go onto design the famed Sig P210 pistol, which has very similar lines to this. It fits the hand like a glove and points naturally, however it fires an underpowered cartridge and has one of the strangest locations for a safety I've seen. As an aside of trivia, thanks to the bureaucratic hiccup this is the only .32 calibre pistol in Canada that can be purchased on a standard handgun liscense.
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