Bought some new guns

[Nyles]

Picked up a couple of guns this month that, believe it or not, I've been looking for since 2009. They're both WW1 French issue "Spanish 92" revolvers, from when the French were desperately short of handguns and bought anything they could in 8 x 27mm M1892 from the Eibar gun trade.

The first is one of the best, a Trocaola S&W M&P knock-off. It's actually mechanically closer to a Colt on the inside, and has a couple clever improvements over a real S&W - a much wider rear sight notch than found on contemporary Smiths, better suited to combat shooting, and a wide hammer spur for the same. It's obviously not a S&W in terms of fine workmanship or materials but is still quite decently made, enough so that I wouldn't feel terribly badly armed with it.




The second is one of, and probably the, worst. It's marked "mle 1915" (modele 1915) and is obviously a knock-off of a Pieper revolver, but quite badly made and there's no record of by whom. It's covered in rough hand-cut tool marks and has just an awful trigger, and requires a bit of fiddling to open. The French didn't buy many of these and passed apparently passed them on to the Romanians as soon as they had anything else on hand to use instead.



Any of these French WW1 Spanish 92 revolvers are very hard to find in Canada - I got a screaming deal on the Trocaola in an auction and probably overpaid for the Mle 1915 from a dealer, but I figure together they balance out.

I also picked up a couple of bayonets from a local antiques store, the first of which was a rather large and impressive Portuguese M1885 yatagan sword bayonet for my Kropatschek (note how its side-mounted):



The other, though missing the scabbard, is a super-rare Finnish M27 made by Fiskars (they probably made your scissors). You won't find many Finnish Mosin-Nagant bayonets as Finn soldiers apparently preferred to fight with their hunting knives and often ditched their bayonets. Oddly this doesn't fit on my Finn M27, I'm not sure why.

[Jcordell]

I like the mle 1915. Reminds me of the Spanish S&W breaktop DA revolvers in 455 that they made for the Brits in WWI. The Spanish knock-offs are a hoot. My local gun shop had a 1930's Spanish M&P that was fun, but nothing spectacular. What was spectacular were the genuine ivory grips that were on it. The shop owner took those grips off and sold them on Gun Broker for almost three hundred dollars! The revolver he sold for $100.00. He made like a $250.000 profit.

[Nyles]

WOW. I didnt realize ivory brought that kind of money, but I suppose it makes sense. The Mle 1915 is definitely neat. What really fascinates me is that a great power was desperate enough to actually use something like that. Not all Spanish guns are bad, I'd probably even use that Trocaola in preference to my M1892, but the Mle 1915 is every bit as bad as their rep suggests!

[Jcordell]

Originally Posted by Nyles

WOW. I didnt realize ivory brought that kind of money, but I suppose it makes sense. The Mle 1915 is definitely neat. What really fascinates me is that a great power was desperate enough to actually use something like that. Not all Spanish guns are bad, I'd probably even use that Trocaola in preference to my M1892, but the Mle 1915 is every bit as bad as their rep suggests!

My good friend (and best man at my wedding many years ago) owns three handguns, a rifle and a shotgun. His rifle is a Remington model 700 in .308 Winchester and the shotgun is Remington 870 Wingmaster in 12 gauge. He hunts deer, elk and ducks. Good guns. He spent some money.

His handguns are all Astras. A 4" bl Astra .357 Magnum, an Astra 680 snubbie in 38 Special and an Astra Constable in 380 ACP. I teased him about those handguns when he first purchased them about seventeen years ago. But they're solid handguns and they work. The 357 Magnum goes with him on his hunting trips. The 680 is his CCW piece and the Constable is just something he liked so he bought. They might not be as refined as a S&W, colt or a Walther, but they're solid and honestly made. And they cost him less than a S&W, Colt or Walther.

[Jcordell]

Originally Posted by Nyles

WOW. I didnt realize ivory brought that kind of money, but I suppose it makes sense. The Mle 1915 is definitely neat. What really fascinates me is that a great power was desperate enough to actually use something like that. Not all Spanish guns are bad, I'd probably even use that Trocaola in preference to my M1892, but the Mle 1915 is every bit as bad as their rep suggests!

Pre-ban Ivory is very pricey in the U.S. He said that there was a bidding war for the grips.

[Nyles]

Last weekend I took a trip to Brandon with my girlfriend (who's from there) for the big gun show, and also spent a morning at the CFB Shilo artillery museum, which I've wanted to go to for years but never had time in the many times I've been to Shilo for training.

I picked up a WW2 Bulgarian Mannlicher M95/30 carbine in 8 x 56mm Mannlicher. Now these aren't super rare guns, in fact when I first started collecting in what must have been 2002 there was a big import of them and they could be had for a song. I actually bought a M95/30 long rifle back then and to be honest it was never my favorite rifle so I never paid much attention to them.

I bought this one because, unlike the vast majority of Mannlichers on the market, it's an original carbine and not a cut down rifle - you can tell by the short rear sight leaf and the front sight being mounted right on the barrel instead of on a barrel band. I've since realised that since I bought my long rifle there's been a ton of research into M95/30s and we know a lot about them now, and that there's actually quite a lot of interesting variations on them - rebuilt carbines vs cut-down rifles, rebuilt in Austria, Hungary or Bulgaria, originally built for the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army, Austrian Landwehr, Hungarian Honved or on contract for Bulgaria.... the list goes on.

Mine was built for the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army (KUK) in Budapest in 1915, and rebuilt by the Bulgarians and rechambered to 8x56 in the late 30s, then would have been used by the Bulgarian army in the Balkans or the Eastern front in WW2. It's in lovely shape, they're actually nice handy little carbines, and it will kick like an absolute motherf*cker when I take it out shooting.

[Nyles]

Haven't posted in awhile... or bought many guns for that matter, as we're doing some pricey renovations at home.

Picked this up in an auction a few months back... another Mannlicher carbine, this a quite rare M90 Cavalry carbine. This was the predecessor of the M95 - very few mechanical differences, but note the quadrant sight and lack of handguard and lower barrel band. This one is missing the front band as well, which is going to be a pain to fix as it's a rare gun, and has had the bottom of the stock sanded, but it wasn't very expensive for a very rare gun. These were adopted by the Austro-Hungarians specifically as carbines in response to the weaknesses of the M88 rifles, and were so successful with a couple of refinements replaced the M88s entirely as the M95. This one was made in 1892, served through WW1 and escaped all the postwar rebuilds because it was given to Italy as war reparations, and issued to their colonial forces in East Africa.



This next one is more common, and probably more interesting for most of you! A late-WW2 Browning Hi Power, made at FN under German occupation and used by the German military (if you look really close you can see the German proofs above the trigger) - these were ostensibly mainly used by the Fallschrimjager and Waffen SS, although there's no specific markings on them to prove that.

This one was almost certainly a Vet bring-back (which was a lot less common in Canada than that States given our restrictive handgun laws), as it was recently found in an attic in Vancouver by a friend of a friend. He almost tossed it into the ocean, but thankfully it found its way to me instead! It certainly looks like it spent 60 years in an attic, but aside from the pitting the finish is actually quite good (by 1944 they were pretty roughly finished to begin with) and the internals are great - the bore looks like it's barely been fired. Certainly not the nicest gun in my collection but you have to love the story!



Just for fun, a Canadian Inglis and German FN, both 1944ish, that could very well have been used on opposite sides of Market Garden and the liberation of the Netherlands!

[Jcordell]

Glad you saved the Hi-Power from a sea-salt bath. That would have been a real shame.

[StanTheMan]

Cool scores!

[Jcordell]

I finally picked up a Mauser 'Bolo' Broomhandle today. It was at an auction and I got it. Mechanically it's in good shape. Most of the blueing is gone and the grips are aftermarket, but it's still a genuine Mauser Broomhandle with all matching parts (as in all matching serial numbers).......with the exception of the grips. This has been one of my grail guns for many decades. I'll post photos later.