Tag: CCW

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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A TJ tune for my Model 60

I had trouble selecting a title for this blog.  The other contender was 50 Shades of Gray to go with the big photo you see above.  I wish I could say I took that photo, but the credit goes to good buddy and master gunsmith TJ.  TJ is the best pistolsmith there is, and one of the things that makes working with him so enjoyable is his photography.  When TJ works a custom gun project, he photodocuments it to keep you appraised of what’s going on, and a couple of the photos you see here are the ones he sent to me on my Model 60 project.   But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let me back up a bit.

If you follow the blog (and you all do, right?), you’ve been watching the Star reloader resurrection project I’m working.  That’s coming along nicely, and I’m already making .38 Special ammo on my resurrected reloader.   This story started with my noticing an ad in my gun club newsletter for a Model 60 at a killer price.  I’m normally not a snubnose kind of guy, but hey, a deal’s a deal and I like the idea of a snubnose .38.  Maybe I watched too many cop shows in the ’50s and ’60s.  You know.  Cannon, Kojak, Hawaii 5-0, 77 Sunset Strip, Dragnet…you get the idea.  All those guys carried snubbies.

Anyway, the Model 60 was a good deal, but swinging the cylinder out to the side was a bit dicey…sometimes it wanted to stick.  The seller told me about that but I didn’t see it as a problem.  I saw it as an opportunity to do another project with good buddy TJ, and that’s what I’m doing.  TJ is doing his Level 1 action job for me (polishing all the internals and lightening both the double and single action trigger pulls), and I’m having him also put a mirror finish on the cylinder, the ejector rod, the cylinder release, the trigger, and the hammer.  It will make for a nice, subtle contrast with the brushed stainless finish on the rest of the gun.  That leaves only the grips, and I’m doing something about those, too.  TJ put into words what I was thinking, and that was that the stock grips (the ones you see above) are butt ugly (pardon the gun pun).

Back in the day Smith used to offer uncheckered rosewood grips, and that’s what I really wanted.  They don’t sell those any more, though, and I mentioned to TJ that I should have bought a set back in the ’70s.  You know,  just in case.  “Try E-Bay,” TJ said, and I did.  I hit paydirt almost immediately, and the grips you see below are on their way to me now.  Rosewood.  Smooth.  Just what I wanted.

The finish on my inbound grips may be a little funky, but that’s another opportunity, too.  It’s TruOil time, folks.  TruOil and a little patience will have these grips looking literally better than they did when they left the S&W factory in Springfield.

The Star reloader is operational now (I’ll show you more on the Star resurrection in upcoming blogs, and I’ll include a video that shows it making finished ammo).  I’ll have the Model 60 back in a few days, so I went ahead and loaded a box of ammo with the outstandingly accurate 158-grain cast bullets I get from my good buddy Roy.  It took only a few minutes on the Star (it would take closer to an hour on a single-stage press).  For a machine that’s probably older than I am, the Star sure does a good job.

When I take my custom snubbie .38 to the range, I’ll grab a few photos and share a range report with you here on the ExNotes blog.  Stay tuned, my friends, and keep your powder dry.

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Aging like a fine wine: My Model 59

The Smith and Wesson Model 59. Mine is a very early one, with a serial number that puts it in the first year of production. These old guns can shoot!

Dial back the clock a cool 46 years (which would put us in 1972), and Smith and Wesson had only recently introduced its Model 59 9mm, double-stack, semi-auto handgun. The 59 was the latest and the greatest in ‘72…a high capacity 9mm with a double stack magazine (like the Browning Hi-Power, the only other gun of its day with this feature) and a double-action first shot (pulling the trigger both cocked and fired the weapon).  It was cool.  Nah, scratch that.  It was super cool.

I first became acquainted with S&W semi-autos with their Model 39, the predecessor to the Model 59.  Dick Larsen, a family friend, had a Model 39.  Sergeant Larsen was on our local PD and to me he defined cool.  I really looked up to Larsen and I loved talking guns with him.  In one such discussion the conversation turned to the topic of the day: 9mm handguns versus the venerable .357 magnum revolver.   I thought Larsen was a dyed-in-the-wool revolver man, until he showed me his off-duty Model 39.  He had it on his belt under a Hawaiian print shirt.  It was a cool thing…small and light. I wanted one. “The one to get today is the Model 59,” the good Sergeant said, “if you can find one.”

The Model 59 was a new limited-production item from Smith and Wesson in 1972, and they were tough to get.  Rumor has it that S&W developed the 59 for the Navy SEALS (nobody outside S&W and the Navy knew this back then). That’s probably why they were so hard to get initially; nearly all the production was headed to Coronado Island.  I was going in the Army and after that conversation with Sergeant Larsen, I wanted a Model 59.  In those days, if you wanted to find a hard-to-get gun you either made a lot of phone calls or you visited a lot of gun shops (the Internet and Gunbroker.com did not yet exist).   My Dad did both (plus, as a world-class trapshooter, he knew people). I got lucky.  Dad found a distributer who could get a Model 59, and I had one before I shipped out for Korea.

I’ve had my Model 59 since 1973, and I’m guessing I’ve probably put something north of 30,000 rounds downrange with it. In my early days, I replaced the black plastic grips with cool tiger-striped exotic wood grips I bought at a Fort Worth gun show (who would want a gun with black plastic parts?), and I had to replace the safety once back in the ‘80s. Other than that, all I’ve done with my Model 59 is shoot the hell out of it and occasionally clean it. It’s surprisingly accurate, it feeds anything, and it’s just plain fun to shoot. It’s a gun I’ll never sell.

Zombies don’t stand a chance against the Model 59. My favorite 9mm load in the 59 is a 125 gr cast roundnose bullet over a max load of Unique propellant.

The good news is the Model 59 ultimately went into high rate production.   More than a few police departments chose the 59 when the migration from revolvers to autos occurred in the 1980s.  All of those PDs moved on to newer guns, and today you can still find used Model 59s for cheap.

Most folks today have either never heard of the Model 59, or they would smile quaintly at its mention and then tell you how great their plastic Glocks are. But don’t dismiss the Model 59.  The 59 is a grand old handgun and I’ll bet you a dollar to a donut you’d love it.  Mine just gets better with age (like a fine wine, I guess), and I love shooting it.

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