Guns – Page 13 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Art’s Browning Hi-Power

Art Benjamins is an artist and a shooter. When I say artist, that’s what I mean…he creates dazzling racecar paintings. Art has done guest blogs for us in the past. Art read Robby’s post recently about his Browning Hi-Power and he asked if he could do one about his Hi-Power. Absolutely, Art!

Here you go, folks…Art’s take on the most-issued military handgun in the world.

It’s funny how everyone has his/her favorite story about their Browning Hi-Power. Like the famous tales from boat owners who can recall only two things of their vessels – when they bought it and when they sold it. Mercifully, not all Hi-Power owners have similar tales of lament. In the heady days of owning self-loading rifles and handguns, the UK offered a healthy choice in types of firearms ranging from the 1800s right to the mid-’80s when the knee-jerk self loading rifle ban was implemented followed by the equally disgraceful handgun ban of the mid-’90s. These were also pre-polymer days, so guns were made from honest steel and wood. Ex-military guns were also cheap and plentiful.

I lived in the east London YMCA from 1974-1976. Inhabited by a hundred or so professionals like myself and students from all countries and walks of life – from the most bland to the most colorful characters. I had befriended an older individual – an unapologetic womanizer who made Warren Beatty look like a eunuch. He had an angry ex-wife and a string of equally angry ex-girlfriends whose lives would intertwine with mine – but that’s another story.

One afternoon he knocked on my door, came straight in, sat in my chair and casually said, “How would you like to date a couple of nurses tonight?” – although those were not the exact words he used. This venue was in Southend – a largish seaside town on the east coast of Essex in the south of England which wasn’t a complete dump during the off-season. He’d been invited to a nurses party there and decided to invite a few others. So it came that five of us crammed into his old car and ended up at some messy nurses dormitory hall where the guys outnumbered the already well inebriated nurses by ten-to-one. After 30 minutes, we positively changed the odds by leaving.

Ten years later the YMCA was a distant memory. I was married and lived in Biggin Hill, Kent – the south of England, and had long taken up with the British shooting sport which was not yet aware of the sweeping legislative changes that hung over its head. The advert in a gun magazine showed a licensed dealer offering his Hi-Power for sale. It was in good working order and only £150. $200 in present money. The firearms dealer was in – Southend, and a smirk came over my face my wife didn’t like the look of.

Unsuccessfully trying to conceal a full-sized Uzi behind his back with his left hand, the dealer opened his door. As he basically invited anyone who may have had nefarious intentions, his idea of some sort of insurance was sound but I felt that his choice may not have offered any form of realistic concealment.

The H-P was a WW2 version made under Nazi occupation. It had the rust brushed and linished away including half the front sight – and re blued. It HAD seen better days but for $200 it would be a nice shooter. It was. Despite the barrel being a replacement, it faultlessly digested 30-year old dirt cheap 2Z Czech SMG ammo with rock-hard primers, 50% higher chamber pressure and which needed almost every single round to be divested of stubborn verdigris. Pachmayr grips and trigger work made into a sweeter shooter – even if I did leave the mag disconnect in place. It never missed a beat – even with verdigris. Our hiking trip in the wild and remote Scottish drizzly highlands one year was a lot safer with my H-P inside a Horseshoe Leathers holster under my army jacket. The others in my shooting club weren’t too impressed with my ‘clunker’ – theirs were of a far better quality. One of the members boasted a highly engraved ‘Renaissance’ H-P which he quite rightly enjoyed showing off.

It would be THAT Renaissance which I saw being laid on the metal desk at the local police station during the 1996 handgun ban. Hundreds of local pistol owners were scheduled to hand in all of their handguns there. My Walther GSP .22” target pistol – my first gun, along with my S&W Model 29, were unceremoniously slid over into the grubby hands of the police officer who gave me a receipt. Some time later, the 40,000 handgun owners would get a government check for their robbed sports equipment which allegedly were going to be smelted down. The biased and rabid media never showed news clips of this happening making us feel that the really good pieces were in storage somewhere. There has never been any official denial of this.

However, I hope my Hi-Power was not among these. I’d sold it a year previous via a local gun shop at a 75% profit. Did the new owner become a member of Belgian or French shooting clubs – two countries which offered sanctuary to the UK shooters by extending membership and gun storage at their ranges and clubs – or WAS in smelted down after all to become a Chinese made manhole cover? Whatever, the Universe still holds the precious spirit of my old clunker but I continue to raise eyebrows when I state that in my life I have visited that grotty town of Southend for only TWO reasons – for a nurse’s party – and to buy a gun.

Arthur Benjamins – 2022

Art, that’s awesome! Thanks so much for sending your Browning Hi-Power story and for allowing us to share it with our readers. Anytime you want to do a guest blog, just let us know!

Eternal vigilance. Gun confiscation happened in the UK, and if were up to some, it would happen here. Don’t let that happen.

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A Model 60 Hand Job

You know, you can have a lot of fun dreaming up titles for blogs. When I told good buddy Mike about this one, he’s the guy who suggested the above. Yeah, it’s racy, but it’s not what you think. This blog is about timing. Life, success, good comedy, and a host of other things are all about timing.

Take revolvers, for instance. Timing is critically important. For a revolver, timing refers to having the chamber precisely aligned with the barrel when the hammer drops. If it’s not, the barrel becomes a salami slicer, which is good if you’re a mohel but bad if you’re a shooter (or another shooter on the firing line).

Take a look at that lead shaving in the photo above. It’s what squeaked out of my Model 60 and went sideways at high velocity between the cylinder and the barrel. It did that because the revolver went out of time. Primers can be another indication of incorrect revolver timing, as shown in the photo below. When the firing pin’s primer indentations are offset like you see here it means you’ve got trouble in River City (or anyplace else you’re firing the revolver).

This blog explains how to correct an incorrectly timed revolver. We’ll start, as always, by making damn sure the gun is unloaded. Once we’re satisfied it is unloaded, the next steps are to remove the revolver’s grips and sideplate. The grips detach with a single screw. Three screws secure the sideplate, and each of them is different. The one at the rear of the sideplate is easy to distinguish because it has a flathead to fit under grips. The other two have domed heads, but they are not identical. The screw at the front of the sideplate is dimensioned such that it locks the yoke in position fore and aft, but it allows it to rotate. If you switch the two domed screws when you reassemble the revolver, the cylinder will not swing out of the frame freely.

Once the grips and sideplate screws are out, don’t try to pry the sideplate off the revolver frame. Hold the revolver over your workbench with the sideplate facing down, and give the left side of the grip frame a few sharp whacks with a plastic mallet or a screwdriver handle. The sideplate will drop out, and the transfer bar will drop with it.

After the grips and the sideplate are off, here’s what the guts of a Model 60 look like. The transfer bar is the piece denoted by the left arrow. It will probably have already fallen off the gun when you removed the sideplate. Our focus in this blog will be on the hand, which is the piece noted by the red arrow on the right in the photo below. The hand will pivot counterclockwise in the photo below. Rotate the hand counterclockwise and you can lift it out.

The hand is what moves upward as you pull the trigger or cock the hammer. It fits through a slot in the revolver’s frame to engage the little nubs on the cylinder’s ejector.

Here’s what the hand looks like after you have taken it out of the revolver. The hand on the left (in the photo below) is the one that was in the revolver and Model 60 to go out of time; the one on the right is a brand new one.

You can see there’s a big difference in length between the old and the new hands. I bought my new hand from MidwayUSA.com. It was about $25.

The next steps involve removing most of the revolver’s internal pieces. You don’t have to do this to get the hand out of the gun, but you will have to remove and reinstall several internal components several times to properly fit the hand. This involves checking both single and double action function testing, disassembling, removing very small amounts of material from the upper part of the hand, reassembling, and repeating the process several times until the revolver is functioning satisfactorily.

We’re going to remove the hammer spring and yoke using the same paper clip custom tool we used for installing the lighter hammer spring (denoted by the left arrow). Those other two arrows denote where the hand’s two bottom pins fit into the trigger. We’ll come back to that later.

This next two photos show the hand’s bottom pins. The third pin is a stop. We’ll come back to that later, too.

At this point, push the revolver’s cylinder release forward, lower the cylinder out of the frame, and slide the yoke and the cylinder off the revolver.

We’ll next remove the revolver’s hammer. It lifts out to the right. Then we get to the trigger spring and rebound slide. It’s tricky. It’s the piece just below the hammer in the photo below. Note that it has a spring acting against a post at the rear. After you have removed the hand and the hammer, you can pry the rebound slide away from the revolver’s frame, but make sure you cover that spring. If you don’t, it will go flying. Don’t ask me how I know.

Here’s the trigger spring and rebound slide after removal from the revolver.

At this point, you can lift the trigger out of the revolver.

This is where things get even more tricky. We’ll fit the new hand to the revolver. Doing so will require installing it as delivered to get a rough feel for how much material we need to remove from the hand, reassembling the revolver to check functionality, disassembling again to remove the hand, stoning the upper surface down a little, reassembling, and repeating the process. It took me three assembly/disassembly/reassembly cycles to get it where it needed to be. Slow and gentle is the approach here. You can take material off the hand; you can’t put it back on. Take too much off, and you’ll ruin the new hand.

The first thing we need to do during the reassembly step is install the new hand in the trigger, and that’s tricky, too. There’s a tiny torsion spring in the trigger, and its purpose is to keep the hand pressed forward against the extractor. You can see the red arrows pointing to the spring in the photo below.

That little spring needs to be on top of the hand’s smaller lower post, and in order to get it there, the easiest way is to push it up from beneath the trigger before you attempt to install the hand, rest the spring on the side of the trigger, install the hand, and then push the spring back into the trigger. Here’s what it looks like with the spring pushed on the side of the trigger.

After you have inserted the hand into the trigger (as you see above), you can then push the spring back into the trigger’s slot.

We are now ready to start the fitting process. Put everything back together again except the transfer bar, the sideplate, and the grips. When you reinstall the rebound bar, make sure the little shaft that extends from the rear of the trigger engages the cavity in the front of the rebound bar. You can see that cavity in the photo below.

When you look at the revolver from the rear, you’ll see the hand inside the revolver frame slot, and how it moves up and down when the hammer is cocked (if you are firing single action) or when the trigger is pulled all the way to the rear (if you are firing double action). The hand acts against the little nubs on the extractor to rotate the cylinder. You can see one of the extractor nubs in the photo below.

On a new hand, the hand will most likely be too long. The revolver may or may not rotate the cylinder when you actuate the trigger in a double action mode, and the hand probably will not actuate the cylinder when you cock the hammer as if you were firing in the single action mode. That is because the hand is so long it slides along the rear of the extractor nubs without dropping in between them, which it needs to do to ratchet the cylinder so the next round comes into battery. In the photo above, you can see a little bright witness mark at the bottom of the upper red arrowhead where this occurred.

We next disassemble the revolver’s guts as described above to fit the hand to the revolver. We’ll remove a bit of hand material from its top portion using a stone. I angled the top edge of the hand. Here’s what that looks like.

The lower arrow in the photo immediately above shows where I removed hand material. The upper arrow shows the hand’s angled surface that completes the cylinder’s advance. Leave this area alone.

The photo above presents another look at the same angled portion of the hand as it is delivered. The red arrow points to the area where I removed material to fit the hand to the revolver. The larger angled area is how the hand came from the factory. It looks rough as hell, like it is begging to be polished, but I left that part alone and my revolver is silky smooth.

After we’ve done the above assemble/check/disassemble/remove hand material a few times, you’ll get to where the revolver looks the cylinder in place right where it is supposed to be (you’ll need to reinstall the cylinder and yoke to do this). What we want to do is put your finger on the cylinder so that it has a little drag while cocking the hammer. When the hammer is fully to the rear, the bolt at the bottom of the cylinder should click into place. Then we want to do the same thing (put your finger on the cylinder to impart a little drag) and pull the trigger to the rear double action style. The bolt should snick into the cylinder just before the hammer falls.

When you think you’re there based on the above checks, it’s time to fully reassemble the revolver. Lay the revolver on its left side and place the transfer bar on top of the hammer as you see in the photo below. You have to have the transfer bar all the way up so the pin in engages is at the bottom of the transfer bar slot. If you don’t have it positioned as you see below, the sideplate will not fit back on the revolver.

After doing the above, good buddy Paul suggests loading dummy rounds in your Model 60 to make sure it cycles correctly. Before you go to the range after doing this kind of work, it’s a good idea to take some fired cases and cycle them through the gun in both single action and double action modes. If you have some with the primer indentations off center (as shown in the photo at the start of this blog), check to make sure that the new indentations are now more centered (they were on my Model 60). DO NOT put live primers in an otherwise empty case for this test; they can back out of the cartridge case and lock the gun. You also want to make sure that there’s no interference between the new hand and the case rims. I haven’t encountered this on a Smith and Wesson revolver; Paul has on a Taurus revolver.

I used the fired empty cases you see in the photo near the top of this blog (the ones with the off-center primer strikes) and cycled five through single action, and another five through double action. The gun cycled flawlessly, and the previously fired cases now had primer indentations in the center of the primers. Things were looking good, but the real test would be on the range.

I set up a police qualification target at 7 yards and pumped a box of ammo (5o rounds) through the Model 60 shooting double action rapid fire. Wow, was I pleased with the on-target results.

After the first few cylinders of ammo, I looked at the forcing cone around the frame. Unlike earlier, when there was a heavy lead spatter pattern on the right side of the frame only, the spatter was now evenly distributed around the forcing cone. That’s another indication that the cylinder was centered in the forcing cone (i.e., aligned with the barrel). Things were looking good.

I then examined the primer indentations in fired cases. They were smack dab in the center of the primer, right where they should be.

And folks, that’s it. This revolver is between 50 and 60 years old, and it’s now as good as new. It’s a favored handgun and it does good work, as that target above attests.

Watch the blog, as the Model 60 will continue to appear here. It’s just too good and too much fun to relegate to the safe.

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The CZ 2075 9mm Rami

As concealed carry powerhouses go, it doesn’t get much better than the CZ 25 Rami. One of my good buddies owns one and I had an opportunity to play with it. I was impressed. On the plus side, it is an all-metal gun with a flat black finish, a hammer (greatly preferred by yours truly over a striker-fired pistol), great sights, and a marvelous trigger. My bud had a trigger job on his, and it was awesome (light and crisp, with zero creep, just like it should be).

The three-dot sights on the CZ are crisp and non-gimmicky. There’s no glow-in-the-dark nonsense and they stand out. In the photo below, the sight picture is just the opposite of what it’s supposed to be (you want the front sight to be in sharp focus, and the rear sight to be a bit fuzzy, but I couldn’t get my iPhone camera to cooperate when I shot these photos).

I liked the feel of the CZ. I didn’t get to fire it, but I think I might have an opportunity at some point. The one you see here is chambered in 9mm. The Rami was also available in .40 S&W, which I think might be a bit much for a gun this small.

The Rami was discontinued in 202o with the introduction of newer CZ models. I haven’t seen the new handguns, but I can’t see how they can be any better than the CZ 2075. This pistol just feels right.

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Whole lotta end shakin’ going on…

I love my S&W Model 60 and I shoot it a lot. It’s particularly cool after I had TJ (of TJ’s Custom Gunworks) do an action job on it. Not content to leave well enough alone, I convinced myself that (after tracing the occasional double action misfire to not-fully-seated primers) that what I really needed was a lighter hammer spring (in addition to the lighter trigger spring I had already installed). Wolff Springs sells a lighter hammer spring kit, and I went for the lightest hammer spring I could get.

The Wolff Springs hammer spring kit. I went with the lightest spring.

The lighter trigger spring affects single action trigger pull after you have already cocked the gun and it has nothing to do with the occasional double action misfiring I had experienced in the past. Double action trigger pull is affected by both the trigger spring and the hammer spring, but the hammer spring is a much beefier spring and it drives most of the resistance when firing double action. The hammer spring, if too light, can induce misfires.

The Wolff hammer spring kit includes a standard strength spring (an 8 1/2-pound spring), a heavier spring (a 9-pound spring), and a lighter spring (an 8-pound spring). I wanted a lighter double action pull, so I used the 8-pound spring. The tradeoff is this puts less force on the hammer, which means it has lower velocity when it hits home, and that ups the likelihood of a misfire.

The hammer spring is easy to change, and if necessary, I can go for either of the two heavier springs at the range. All it takes is a small screwdriver to remove the grips, and the same exotic custom tool used for disassembling the Rock Island Compact 1911 (a bent paper clip). The photos below show how this is done.

The Model 60’s hammer spring, with the hammer in the uncocked position.

The Model 60’s hammer spring, with the hammer cocked. Note that the hammer yoke (the rod running through the center of the hammer spring) has been pushed back, exposing a hole in the rod.

A high tech, German tool steel special assembly/disassembly aid? Nah, it’s a bent paper clip and it works gang busters.

To remove the hammer spring yoke and the hammer spring, insert the paper clip into the yoke and gently release the hammer by pulling the trigger and lowering the hammer.

With the hammer dropped, the spring is captured in a compressed mode and the hammer spring and the yoke can be removed from the gun. Once this subassembly is removed, you can manually push the spring cap to further compress the spring, remove the paper clip, remove the spring cap and spring, and install the lighter hammer spring. Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.

While installing the new hammer spring, I noticed that my normal gun cleaning routine just wasn’t cutting it on the Model 60. There was still a bit of lead in the barrel, and the powder residue was building up around the yoke. I selected a bronze bristled toothbrush and went to work on the cylinder, the yoke, and the frame, and a bronze bore bush for the bore. When the remnants of gunfights past were gone (you know, my encounters with zombies, as previously described), I spritzed the gun with the universal cleaner (WD40) and then I wiped it down before applying gun oil.

That’s when I noticed that the barrel-to-cylinder gap was nonexistent. Zip. Nada. Zero. The front of the cylinder was touching the rear of the barrel. Uh oh. That’s no good. There’s supposed to be a gap there (like you see in the photo below), because if there’s no gap the cylinder will drag on the barrel. That will degrade the double action trigger pull and, in a worst-case scenario, it can drive the revolver out of time (the chamber won’t be aligned with the barrel). The technical term for the fore-and-aft cylinder movement that assures a minimum clearance when the cylinder is fully forward is called end shake. There needs to be some, and there needs to be a gap. Ideally, that should be 0.004 to 0.008 inches. Any less, and powder and lead residue will bind the cylinder, any more and too much gas escapes (and velocity suffers).

The barrel-to-cylinder gap. This is about .004-inch with the cylinder pushed forward, and that’s the gap I want. This was after I installed the TriggerShims.com cylinder shim.

You measure the barrel-to-cylinder gap with a feeler gage, just like you would when setting the valves on a motorcycle. I’ve done that (as you know from reading this blog and any of the CSC shop manuals), and I already had the feeler gages I needed.

My feeler gage. I’ve probably owned this tool for 40 years. It still works. I use it for adjusting valves on my Royal Enfield, too.

After a bit of internet research, I learned that the way to address inadequate gap is by shimming the cylinder and its fit on the yoke. That’s when I first learned there’s a business that specializes in making shims for this exact purpose. In short order I was communicating with Lance Shively, who heads TriggerShims.com.

The cylinder shims from TriggerShims.com. They were well packaged and sent in a standard business envelope.

The cylinder shims out of the pack. I ordered the four-piece set because I had not worked with these before, I didn’t know what I would need, and they were inexpensive. They are color coded by size.

Lance and his wife, Tammy, run a real Mom and Pop operation that manufactures gun specific shims for a living. Lance has an extensive background in small engine repair and tool and die making, and he and Tammy parlayed that into TriggerShims, which has been doing well for more than 14 years now. Lance told me his primary concern is customer satisfaction, and I can tell you my perception in working with TriggerShims is they have mastered it. I had the Model 60 custom end shake shims in three days, there was no postage charge, and the price was more than reasonable for custom gun parts. Lance runs a Christian business, he believes in God and country, and he’s not bashful about letting people know that. He and Tammy also sell select items from other vendors when he finds a company he likes and believes in, but that is a very select group. The two biggest ones are Wolff and Volquartsen.

I received the shims I ordered from Lance in just a few days, and installation was trivially easy. I had to remove the yoke, disassemble the ejector rod from the extractor, install the shim I wanted to use (I went with a single .003-inch shim to give the clearance I wanted), and then reassemble everything. It only took a few minutes, and the only tricky part was remembering that the ejector rod had a left-hand thread.

This screw has to be removed to allow removal of the yoke and cylinder from the revolver. You don’t need to remove the revolver’s side plate.

With the yoke removed, you unscrew the ejector rod (the knurled piece you push on to eject empty brass from the cylinder) and everything comes apart. Hold on to the ejector rod as you unscrew it so parts won’t fly away, and remember that it is a left-hand thread.

The cylinder shim(s) fit beneath the extractor spring. They are pushed into the cylinder by the extractor spring as the cylinder and yoke subassembly are reassembled. The shim(s) position the cylinder further to the rear, increasing the barrel-to-cylinder gap.

TriggerShims.com manufactures over 100 firearm-specific shims with thicknesses from .002-inch to .007-inch, with some specialty items as thick as .010-inch and as thin as .0015-inch. Lance sends shims worldwide, with Australia and Canada being the biggest international customers (he also ships to more than 100 other countries).

Lance and I had a good conversation, during which he told me he enjoyed exploring the ExhaustNotes site and our blog. One thing led to another, and TriggerShims.com is our newest advertiser. You’ll see the TriggerShims.com logo on the ExNotes blog and all ExNotes pages, and Lance asked if he could post links to some of our Tales of the Gun stories on the TriggerShims.com site. Hey, you bet, Lance, and welcome aboard.

I had the Model 60 on the range yesterday morning, and it is a much smoother running revolver. I confirmed another issue I’ve experienced on this revolver before, and that’s a slightly out-of-time situation when firing double action (probably induced by the cylinder drag described above). That’s going to take a new hand to correct (“hand” is the nomenclature used for the part that advances the cylinder). The replacement hand is on order, and there will be another Model 60 blog coming up in a couple of weeks on it. As always, stay tuned.

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A Tale of Two Hi Powers

Good buddy Robby has been a friend for 30 years. I first met Robby on a consulting gig in Georgia. He’s a fellow engineer, a firearms aficionado, a reloader, and a hell of a shot. Robby and I see each other whenever our paths cross, and more often than not the talk is about guns and reloading. Robby is a competitive pistolero and a hunter, he enjoys a finely-figured bit of walnut as much as I do, and we both appreciate the finer points of Ruger No. 1 and bolt action rifles. Robby shared with me that he recently acquired an FN Hi Power. I asked him if he would do a guest blog for ExNotes and what follows is the well-crafted result.

My grandfather: The man who taught me basically everything I know. Hunting, fishing, archery, how to shoot, how to walk through the woods silently, how to approach anything that needed fixing. Everything. He grew up during the Great Depression, he was a highly decorated recon scout during WW II, he was a cop and a security guard and he retired as a postman. I saw my grandfather as the definition of a man. He owned two handguns, one centerfire rifle (a Model 70 Winchester), a .22 and a very illegal shotgun that he sawed off because his brother split the barrel.

I own one of his handguns (a Colt Detective Special) and I have the .22 and the Model 70. The Colt Detective Special is a fine little snubby with a black paint job because someone let it rust while I was in college. I painted it and took it into my possession.

My grandfather’s Nazi war trophy with artillery sights.

My younger brother has the other handgun. It is an automatic that my grandfather took from an SS officer after dispatching him in northern Italy. It is the first automatic that I ever saw, held or fired. My grandfather kept it in the car when he delivered mail on the rural route he ran, he took it on camping trips with my brother and me, and he kept it close everywhere he went. He kept it in a holster with the German’s name written on the flap. It was a mystical gun that seemed more like Excalibur to me than some manmade object. I had all of the other firearms, so I was fine with my brother hanging on to Excalibur.

Another view of the World War II German Hi Power.

What was this mystical weapon, you ask? Just a fine Belgian copy of John Moses Browning’s “improvement” of the 1911. A 9mm Browning Hi Power, to be exact. The design was unfinished when JMB departed this mortal world, but a Belgian named Dieudonné Saive finished the design and after incorporating a few of Browning’s older patents, created the most widely-issued sidearm in history. Anyway, I am making a short story extremely long.

My brother possessed Excalibur and I needed one for myself. I bought lots of different pistols, including a couple of 1911s, and built a few custom polymer pistols with all the trimmings, but I still didn’t have a Hi Power. I was super excited when I saw Springfield and FN resurrecting the Hi Power, and I was determined to have my own.

Well, after looking for unicorn teeth in the retail shops and online, I was thinking my Hi Power was a pipe dream. The SA and the FN are made of unobtanium and the one I found online was priced accordingly. Before heading off to find The Lady of the Lake, I stopped by a local gun shop to see if I could find a 9mm AR lower. Yes, I have wide and varied tastes when it comes to things that go BANG. The owner and his minions were all tied up, so I decided to window shop a bit. I saw the Hi Power before I made it to the case. I pretended to look at everything else, hoping that no one would notice that Excalibur’s brother was RIGHT THERE in the open!

Once I got the attention of a person employed by this fine establishment, I asked to hold “that one.” “That one” had oversized, red, laminated wood grips that were apparently sized for Andre the Giant and looked much like lipstick on a large sow. I asked the owner if he knew the vintage and he replied that he thought it was a 1980s production gun. The tag affixed to the trigger guard said “consignment” and the price was $1199. That was a quick “nope” from me and I headed back to the truck with no AR lower and no Excalibur.

A week or so later, I ended up at the same shop again after dreaming up some other materials that I might need to finish the AR 9 I started. I asked to hold the Hi Power again. I noticed that it had been marked down $100 and the owner told me that it came with a spare mag and another grip. The red, behemoth handles needed to go, so I was glad to hear there was an immediate option. I still wasn’t keen on paying north of a grand, though. If it had been an actual Browning with that deep Browning bluing, that might have been much harder, but it was a well-worn FN with circus handles and non-OEM sights. It didn’t even have the “artillery” sights that my grandfather’s had. That’s what he called the adjustable-to-500-meter sights that Excalibur wore. I handed it back again and left.

My 1952 Fabrique National (FN) Hi Power with Hogue grips.

Viewed from either side, the Hi Power and its new grips look good.

A couple more weeks rocked on, I received my yearly bonus from work, I finished the AR 9, and I couldn’t get the Hi Power out of my head. We were headed that way to pick up one of my daughter’s friends and I decided to stop by and see if I could talk the guy down to $900. I walked in, eyeballed the cases and found it nestled between a couple of other pistols that I didn’t even look at long enough to identify. I asked the guy that offered to help me how much was being asked for the Hi Power this week. He yelled across the shop and asked the owner. $850 was the answer! I holstered my negotiating skills and said, “I’ll take it!”

When I made it back to the truck with it in a plastic grocery bag, I took it out and showed it to my very unimpressed better half. She said,”That is the “gun-est” looking gun I have ever seen…”

I responded, “Exactly, it is beautiful!” And off we went.

I got it home after a few hours of birthday shopping with my 15 year old, her friend and the wife and had to go straight to the yard and shoot my newest acquisition. It did not disappoint! The aftermarket sights are installed properly and are right on the target. The trigger breaks cleanly, there’s no hammer bite, and there were no failures or hiccups of any kind. Perfect…just like I hoped. Except for the furniture. I ordered a set of Hogue hardwood grips in Kingwood after a pretty thorough scouring of the internet in search of something fitting for my wooden desires.

I started my research on the serial number and completely struck out. Apparently, FN is pretty liberal and somewhat random with their numbering system, so I dug deeper. Thumb print on the right side, *S on a couple of parts, internal extractor and the five-digit serial number helped me narrow it down to a 1952 production run.

Both Hi Powers shoot well. These are 50-ft targets. My grandfather’s (and now my brother’s) Hi Power shot the group on the left; my FN Hi Power shot the group on the right.

I messaged my brother and asked him to drop Excalibur by so I could compare the two. I shot both and they are equal in all things. Except mystique. Hopefully, in time I will add a bit to mine.

Robby, that’s an awes0me story and a fine-looking pair of Hi Powers. Thanks so much for sharing it with us and our readers. You and your brother are a couple of lucky guys. Always a pleasure to hear from you, my friend, and our best to you and your family.

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Gats and Hats II: A Jovino Model 25

The revolver you see in the blog today is a rare animal, one of 650 customized by New York City’s John Jovino Gun Shop. I guess the best way to start this post is with the John Jovino story. The Jovino Gun Shop is no longer in business, having fallen victim to the Covid 19 pandemic, but until then it was the oldest gun shop continuously in business in the entire country. John Jovino opened the store in 1911; he sold it to the Imperato family in the 1920s (the Imperatos are the folks who started and now operate Henry Firearms). Jovino’s was famous and it’s been in more than a few movies (and even in my favorite TV show, Law and Order).

The John Jovino Gun Shop in Manhattan, said to be the oldest gun shop in both New York City and the United States. Unfortunately, it is no longer in business.

Back in the 1980’s, Jovino’s built custom guns. Their primary clients were the NYPD and other police departments, as well as individual police officers, so many of the Jovino customs tended to be duty-oriented carry weapons. The one you see here is no exception. Jovino’s started with 6.5-inch-barreled Model 25 Smiths chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge and they turned them into 2.5-inch snubnosed revolvers. The conversion from a stock Smith and Wesson Model 25 to a Jovino snubbie, though, was not just a simple chop job. Here’s what the wizards at Jovino did to these guns:

- - Shortened the factory barrel to 2.5 inches.
  - Installed a crane lock to replace the ejector rod lock.
  - Relocated the red ramp front sight.
  - Rounded the butt to the S&W K frame round butt configuration.
  - Tuned the double and single action trigger.
  - Radiused the hammer spur (you can see it in the photos).
  - Polished the trigger face (you can see that in the big photo at the top of this blog).
  - Fitted Pachmayr rubber grips.
  - Reblued the cut barrel (the new bluing is actually a bit darker and more polished than the stock bluing).

As you probably already know (and you certainly know if you follow the ExhaustNotes blog), the 1917 platform Smith and Wesson and Colt revolvers can fire .45 ACP ammo if the cartridges are mounted in clips, or they can fire .45 AutoRim ammo. .45 AutoRim ammo is essentially the .45 ACP cartridge with a rim. For this test series, I used reloaded .45 AutoRim ammo. It’s the ammo you see in the photo below.

A gat and a hat, with six rounds of reloaded .45 AutoRim ammunition.

The original grips that came with the Jovino Model 25 snubbie were Pachmayrs, and they probably make more sense (more on that at the end of this blog). I didn’t care for the appearance and for reasons it would take a therapist to explain, I wanted ivory grips (I think it has something to do with watching Patton too many times). I settled for fake ivory, which provided the look I wanted without the cost. Don’t tell the General.

The Pachmayr grips that originally came on the Jovino Model 25 snubbie.

When Jovino cut the Model 25 barrels down to 2.5 inches, there wasn’t enough room left in the ejector shroud for the front cylinder lock, so Jovino incorporated the ball-detent cylinder lock you see in this photo.

When the new grips arrived, I liked the S&W escutcheons and I liked the look, but I didn’t like the fit. I didn’t realize what I had in the Jovino and the extent of the customization that went into these guns. I ordered grips for an N-frame round butt Smith and Wesson, but they stood a bit proud on the revolver’s grip frame (the back strap). That’s because the Jovino customs reworked the frame from a square N-frame grip profile to a Smith and Wesson round butt K-frame profile, but I’m told the K-frame grips won’t match exactly, either. I bought the larger N-frame grips figuring I could take grip material off, but I couldn’t put it back on. I didn’t dare attempt to sand the grips on the gun, so I very gently went to work on them with sandpaper off the gun, repeatedly installing and removing the grips to take off just enough material to get a good grip-to-frame match. When I was just about there, I found that by stepping down to 400, then 600, and then 800 grit sandpaper, I could match the polished look on the rest of the grip. I was pleased with the result.

The grips look good. So does the revolver. One of the Jovino custom touches was to round the hammer spur profile. I like what they did.

I tested three .45 AutoRim loads:

- - A 200-grain Speer swaged semi-wadcutter bullet loaded with 4.2 grains of Bullseye.
  - A 200-grain Precision Cast semi-wadcutter bullet loaded with 6.0 grains of Unique.
  - A 233-grain Missouri K-Ball cast roundnose bullet loaded with 5.6 grains of Unique.

.45 AutoRim ammunitiion. Note the rim on the brass cartridge case. The case is identical to .45 ACP ammo in all other dimensions. From left to right, you see the 200-grain swaged Speer semi-wadcutter bullet, the 200-grain Precision Cast cast semi-wadcutter bullet, and the 233-grain Missouri Bullet cast roundnose K-Ball bullet.

I had already tested my Jovino revolver for accuracy at longer distances a few years ago; this test was to be different. Like the .38 Special Model 60 accuracy tests we wrote about a couple of days ago, I set up a few “Betty and the Zombie” targets at 7 yards and I fired double action as quickly as I could. I’m told the typical hostage rescue zombie gunfight occurs at 7 yards, so I wanted to get a feel how I would do in these encounters. You know, so I’d be ready.

What was surprising to me was just how incredibly smooth the double action trigger was on the Jovino. In a word, it’s amazing. Shooting double action was fun. The slick trigger and the Model 25 Jovino’s red ramp and white outline sights seem to glue the front sight to the zombie’s left eye, until that part of the zombie disappeared and I was shooting at a hole. These guns are impressive.

The 200-grain semiwadcutter with 4.2 grains of Bulleye was a very pleasant load (for me, not the zombie) with modest recoil. The 233-grain K-Ball Missouri load was a much more emphatic load. That one pounded me around a bit more, but it still hung in there on the zombie. All of the loads shot essentially to point of aim. Each of the targets below were hit by five full cylinders of .45 ammunition, or 30 rounds apiece. There was not a single miss among all 90 rounds.

Zombie versus .45 AutoRim ammo loaded with 200-grain Precision Cast bullets and 4.2 grains of Bullseye.

200-grain Speer bullets and 6.0 grains of Unique. Sometimes zombies don’t go down with the first shot, so I lobbed in another 29.

Betty was plenty nervous, but she held still. The zombie did, too. He took 30 rounds of 233-grain K-Ball Missouri bullets propelled by 5.6 grains of Unique.

So what’s the bottom line to all of this? The Jovino .45 ACP revolver is accurate, it has a superb trigger, and it is just plain fun to shoot. That last load was a bit much. The 233-grain K-Ball Missouri looks pretty much like their 230-grain roundnose, but the difference in recoil is both perceptible and significant. You can go quite a bit hotter with this load, but I won’t. When I finished shooting, I was surprised to see I had done a bit of damage to my thumb. I think it happened on the last round or two because there’s no powder residue where the skin tore away, and it happened because the faux ivory grips have a bit of a corner to them. The rubber Pachmayr grips wouldn’t have done this, but they don’t look as cool as the grips the Jovino wears in these photos. The gun doesn’t do this firing single action, but I guess my hand rode up a bit firing double action. Sometimes these things happen when you take on the odd zombie or two.

Zombie combat. It’s a tough job. Somebody’s got to do it, though.

The Jovino Model 25 is probably the finest and smoothest revolver I’ve ever shot. It’s a keeper.

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Reloading .45 ACP for 1917-style revolvers.

Gats and Hats I: The Model 60 S&W

There’s a Facebook group called Snub Noir and I enjoy it. They have a lot of good info there about concealable revolvers, and it projects kind of a ’40s/’50s/’60s vibe having to do with private investigators and police officers (and movies, TV shows, and novels from that era). It’s centered on the Colt and Smith snubbies of the day, and on today’s snubbies, too. If you’re into snub nosed revolvers, you’ll like this place. If you visit it, you’ll understand the Gats and Hats thing.

That beautiful S&W Model 60 you see in the big photo above is my personal carry gun and it’s a sweet piece. It’s been selectively polished, it has Altamont grips, and it has a TJ action job (you can read more about TJ’s work on his website and I’ll give you a few more links on my Model 60 at the end of this blog). I’ve done a fair amount of load testing with the Model 60 and I know the loads it likes from accuracy and shoot-to-point-of-aim perspectives. The best load is the FBI load, which is a 158-grain bullet over 3.5 grains of Winchester 231 propellant.

Five rounds of .38 Special, with a 158-grain flatpoint cast bullet and 3.5 grains of Winchester 231. It’s a great load. You can read about it in the links provided at the end of this blog.

I wanted to try something different, though. I’ve shot the Model 60 at 50 feet, 25 yards, 50 yards, and 100 yards. I know, I know: Those latter two distances are not really what the snub nose revolver designers had in mind when they designed these guns. But I was curious when I did those tests. I know a retired police officer who can hit a clay target at 50 yards (the kind you dust in trap or skeet shooting).

The police sometimes qualify at 7 yards, and I think that’s more in line with what a snubbie is intended to do. And, you know, there’s this zombie apocalypse thing that’s coming down the road. I’ve done my homework, and I know that most zombie hostage incidents (i.e., where a zombie is holding a damsel in distress) occur at 7 yards. I wondered: How would I do firing my Gat double-action as quickly as I could at 7 yards? I want to be prepared, you know.

Five rounds is all the Model 60 holds. It sure is slender and it conceals well.

Fortunately for me, zombie-holding-hostages targets are readily available on Amazon, so I grabbed a couple and headed to the range to test my hostage rescue skills with two different loads. The first was the old bullseye target competition .38 Special standard: A 148-grain wadcutter (in this case, copper-plated wadcutters from Xtreme Bullets) over 2.7 grains of Bullseye propellant. It’s the load I’m set up to produce in large quantities on my Star reloader, and it’s the load you see in the top photo (the Dr. Seussian Gat in the Hat pic). The other is the FBI load mentioned above: A 158-grain bullet and 3.5 grains of Winchester 231 secret sauce.

So how’d I’d do? The short answer is not too bad. Not as good as I thought I would, but good enough and certainly close enough for government zombie work. The first target (the one immediately below) shows the results of six full cylinders (30 rounds, as the Model 60 holds five rounds). The good news is 29 of those shots went directly into the zombie’s noggin and none hit Betty (the hostage).

Betty and her zombie captor. He’s toast. Note the one round that tumbled just above Betty’s head. These were low-velocity wadcutter loads.

The bad news? One of the wadcutter bullets tumbled. Fortunately for Betty it went right over her head. You can see the bullet’s outline in the target above. It might have been that the Star threw a light load on that round, or maybe a case split and let too much pressure escape, or maybe these light target loads are marginal in the Model 60’s short 2-inch barrel. Win some, lose some. Betty’s okay, though…that’s the important thing.

Not surprisingly, the FBI load did much better (old J. Edgar know what he was doing against both zombies and commies, I think). The 30 holes you see in Mr. Zombie below went into a tighter group, none of the bullets tumbled, and most importantly, none of them went into Betty.

Betty liked the FBI load better. So did I. The zombie offered no opinion.

I feel better now. I know if I can keep my wits about me and I have my Model 60, and if I can get the zombie to pose with Betty like you see above at 7 yards, he’s toast and Betty’s going to be just fine. For any zombies who follow the ExNotes blog: You’ve been warned.

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As this blog’s title states, this blog is Gats and Hats I. Will there be a Gats and Hats II? Stay tuned, my friends. Two more days, and we’re calling in the heavy artillery.

More gun stories? Hey, it’s what we live for!

Want to know more about the Model 60 featured in this blog? It’s all in the links below:

Getting hammered, and the effects of incomplete primer seating.

ExNotes Book Review: The Devil’s Hand

As airport bookstore thrillers go, it doesn’t get too much better than Jack Carr’s The Devil’s Hand. Yeah, it’s a bit formulaic, and yeah, the ending is predictable (spoiler alert: the good guys win), but the plot basics are timely and a bit unusual. Instead of just plain old bad guys, rogue nations, and Middle Eastern terrorists, this one involves unleashing a bioweapon on US soil. The good guy, James Reece (why do they always have such WASPy names?), manages to thwart the effort and limit the death toll to about 5000 people. The parallels between the plot’s Marburg U virus variant and Covid 19 (and the riots and insurrections that follow) are eerily similar to what the world has gone through in the last two years.

Reece checks all the airport bookstore thriller main character boxes: Former special forces operator on a revenge mission, the US president’s personal assassin, martial arts expert, handgun expert, rifle expert, shotgun expert, knife expert, tomahawk expert, and on and on it goes. That’s the formulaic part. The plot basics are where the story diverges from what you might expect, and that makes The Devil’s Hand interesting enough to be worth a read. At 576 pages, you probably won’t get through it on a single flight, but that’s okay. You can finish it on the return leg.

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A Competition Taurus .44 Special

I recently visited with my good buddy Paul and he let me photograph his Taurus Model 441 .44 Special revolver. Paul and I grew up together in rural New Jersey. We’re both firearms and reloading guys, and I love getting together with Paul and talking about both topics.

Paul told me he purchased the Taurus new in 1986 or 1987 from Harry’s Army & Navy store on Route 130 in Robbinsville, New Jersey. That shop is no longer there, but back in the day it was a major gun store in central Jersey. Paul said he is 98% sure he paid $249 for it.

I know Paul likes this 5-shot .44 Special revolver very much. He used it extensively in monthly defense revolver matches. Those matches required a defense revolver with a barrel length of 4 inches or less and a caliber of .38 or larger. The matches were shot at distances up to 50 yards. Paul did well with the Taurus in the Eastern Regional Defense Pistol matches, taking many medals in his class. The matches attracted over 60 shooters from Maine to Florida and they were held over three days. The awards you see below are just a few Paul won with this handgun.

The frame size is between a Smith & Wesson K and L frame. The grips you see in these photos are from Hogue. Paul has the original grips. He told me the Hogue just feels better in his hand. Paul did all his match shooting with the original grips and changed them for the Hogue grip about two years ago.

Paul is a very competent machinist and gunsmith, and he modified the Taurus to his tastes. He did a trigger job on it and replaced the springs with a Wolf spring kit. He also added the trigger over-travel piece on the back of the trigger. That’s to limit any further rearward trigger movement after the hammer has been released. It helps to minimize gun movement and improves accuracy. I dry fired this gun both single and double action at Paul’s place and the gun is silky smooth. It’s a really nice weapon.

Paul is also a very experienced reloader and he does it all, including casting his own bullets. He’s the guy I call when I have reloading questions. For this gun, Paul uses the 429215 Lyman gas check bullet mould, but he does not use a gas check. Paul’s preferred .44 Special load is the 215-grain Lyman bullet and 7.0 – 7.1 grains of Unique. Paul told me it’s very accurate in this gun and the load has mild recoil.

While handling the Taurus, I was impressed. I was tempted to make Paul an offer on it, but I knew doing so would be pointless. When you have a handgun you shoot well, you modified to fit your tastes, and you have a history with, you keep it. It sure is nice.

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A Custom TJ Combat Commander

We’ve featured TJ’s Custom Gunworks a few times here on the ExNotes blog. I’ll take credit for influencing another good buddy who had TJ work his magic on a Colt Combat Commander, and this one is a honey. Colt’s Combat Commander is a 4.25-inch barreled version of the 1911. This TJ custom auto is hard chromed and it is a stunning example of TJ’s workmanship. You can see it in the photos and you can see the results on the range.

The Combat Commander shown here has had the following modifications:

- - Polished hard chrome finish over stainless steel.
  - Throated and polished barrel and frame.
  - Fitted and polished extractor.
  - New match trigger and action job.
  - New match hammer.
  - Smoothed breech face.
  - Polished full length guide rod.
  - Satin polish on barrel hood and chamber.
  - Extended slide catch.
  - New and rounded steel mainspring housing.
  - Trigger pull set to 3.0 lbs.
  - Melted sharp edges.
  - Reduced strength and smoothed magazine release button.
  - DayGlo red front sight.
  - Honduran rosewood burl grips.

I’ve seen this gun in action on the range and it is a thing of beauty. I’ve had a few guns customized by TJ, and I’ve steered a few friends there. I’ve had six handguns and a rifle customized by TJ, and every one of them is a stellar example of his craftsmanship. These include a Model 59, a bright stainless Colt 1911, the MacManus Colt 1911, the Rock Island Compact, a Model 60 Smith and Wesson snubbie, a Ruger Mini 14, and a new Colt Python. TJ’s emphasis is on reliability and perfection and on all of my guns he met those objectives in every case. When it comes to custom firearms, it doesn’t get any better than TJ’s Custom Gunworks.

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