Looking through the armory for a good piece for Friday Gun Pr0n, something struck me as interesting: I have a lot of just plain odd firearms. I also have plenty of perfectly ordinary firearms, of course - 1911s, S&W J- and K- frames, Colt police wheel guns, and pump-action shotguns - but there's little exciting about a plain-jane 1911 or the 150,000th 4" barrel .38 Special revolver.
Here are some of the wonderfully odd guns in the G. armory, with my rationale for listing them "among the odd" included...
VEPR in .308. If availability of magazines was the sole criteria, this gun would make the cut on that alone. I've owned the gun for about three years now, and in that time have come close to finding one five-round magazine for it. Once. For $110.
Colt Lawman MKIII. 2" barrel? Check. Grips hard to find? Check. Weighs more than a cash register? Check. Should not be dry-fired? Check. In my rush to actually possess a .357 Magnum manufactured by Colt, I neglected to do my homework on this one.
Colt New Frontier. I'm guessing that it was to keep the New Frontier the same size as the Ruger Single Six, but 7/8 scale SAA? Why not have it full-sized? Also has very few grip choices available, hence the frustration at not being 1:1 scale with the SAA. Also has a bizarre safety arrangement where the firing pin block needs to be manually depressed to eject spent casings.
S&W SW99. Perhaps it was Smith & Wesson's embarassment at the Sigma. Perhaps it was their inability to make a semi-automatic pistol that weighed less than a manhole cover. The SW99 was a great gun, but both overshadowed by its Walther counterpart and left to languish as S&W developed the new M&P line.
Browning BDA-380. Is it a Browning made by Beretta or a Beretta made by Browning? Are they interchangeable? Some say yes, some say no. The confusion stems from there being two different BDAs, just to add to the mix. It's quite the odd duck in being a double-stack, high-capacity .380 made at a time when double-stack .380s just weren't done.
Remington Nylon 66. What's most puzzling about the Nylon 66 is that they didn't make a hundred gabillion more of them (albeit easier to disassemble...). The Nylon 66 was lightweight, easy to handle, and required minimal maintenance. It also loaded through the stock and was a holy bitch on wheels if you tried to take it apart.
So, what are the weirdo guns in your gun safe?
That is all.
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19 comments:
I have a Beretta 84, same as your BDA-380.
I once owned a Bren Ten, one of the "military" models.
I have a 1903 Colt I bought on a whim, because it was a good price, and hey, pre-WWI Colt!
Then there's my beloved S&W 1006. Hard to find ammo? Check. Expensive ammo? Check. Nonexistent holster selection? Check that one twice. But man alive, it's a lovable cannon.
Your Colt New Frontier must be newer than mine. Mine has no such safety encumbrance. It is a rather pleasant gun to shoot, and in .22 mag sounds like a .38.
10mm ammo isn't too hard to find on the internet, I wouldn't mind a Colt Delta Elite like my nephew's.
I also have a Nylon 66 so I'll agree that it's odd.
My Browning Challenger II is kind of odd considering factory magazines are virtually non-existent and fetch over $100 when they do come up for sale.
1885 Vetterli rifle rechambered in 6.5mm Carcano for WW1. Got it because it was considered an antique and had original bayonet and sling. Collector's piece and I got a good deal on it along with an 1895 Gewehr 98 Commission Rifle. Odd guns need good homes.
M1896 Steyr-Mannlicher carbine. These can be had cheap at gun shows due to the en-bloc clips they use and the rare ammo. Unique for its straight-pull bolt and making a M-N M44 seem tame when shooting. What clips can be had are WW2 Nazi manufacture and ammo is a tough find. Mine has a beautiful tiger stripe wood pattern. Bought it for the hell of it because it was cheap.
MAS 36 and MAS 49/56. MAS 36 fires odddball 7.5mm French round. Just not many out there and I love the spike bayonet and forward canted bolt.
My 49/56 is a Century rechamber in .308. Fun semi-auto an interesting mating of an SKS bolt with AR-15 type direct gas impingement. I have the grenade launcher fitted along with .308 magazines, pouches and bayonet.
Both MAS rifles are nice since they are very well built, not common, I have thing for the Foreign Legion and I have the even rarer Campana training device designed for that family of rifles to allow for indoor dry fire training. Basically a focused light mounted on the muzzle wired to a switch fitted to the trigger assembly. Included instructions and parts for mounting on the various French service rifles of the day including these two. Pull the trigger, light blinks and fades showing where the shot would have gone. Nifty accessory.
I own these because it makes for interesting history. Certainly the most complete of my acquisitions in that vein.
I've got others but these are they weirdies that attract attention and get people asking "WTF is that?".
I don't have anything amazingly odd but the strangest would be a "Zulu" 12ga. 1850's french muzzleloading rifle, rechambered in the 1870s to something like a 577 snyder with a side opening trapdoor breech. Later rechambered into 12ga x 2.5", 32" barrel, still trapdoor. The trapdoor action is so tall you can't see down the barrel when the gun is shouldered.
Based on the vintage and construction methods, it's blackpowder only - if I get ever work up the courage to even try it.
To preface it, I love rifle/pistol combos.
I have a Thompson/1911 for .45.
But... when I saw a Beretta CX-4 Storm in .45, I had to have it. Luckily it came with 8 mags, because they can't be had for love or money.
So a friend found one in .40 S&W, I traded to go with my Sig SP2340 (another rare gun for which you can't get mags or, well, anything), and he owes me some mags, but you can't get mags for that either. You have to buy an adaptor to make PX-4 storm mags fit.
Veeshir - you should have no problem finding 2340 mags. CDNN had a mess of used mags cheap a couple of years back. I was seriously contemplating a 2340 (aka sig pro) and mags were out there. Maybe not at Sig, but they are available. For many years they sold a lot of the 2340s to LE as the 'blue line'
[I carried a 1911 when I was on the blue line....]
We own several of the same guns, I guess we have similar tastes. I have a nylon 66 too, my favorite 22 ever! Until recently I owned a snub Colt Lawman identical to yours. I liked it but knew that I would never use it so it got traded off. I also have a Colt New Frontier like yours. Always hated that safety, don't know why it's needed, and it makes loading/unloading a pain. But I would never get rid of mine because my Dad gave me it on my 21st birthday.
A Winchester 94AE...in 307 Winchester. I loved the darned thing. It was *the* lever action I dreamed of, a beautiful bluing job and walnut furniture.
I dutifully saved every single piece of brass in the hopes I could find a set of dies to reload it for less than a fortune.
I sold it when I hadn't been able to find ammo for about a year, and found it for $65 a box of 20.
It got replaced by a Rossi 92SRC in 357 magnum, which the wife had to pry out of my hands that night. :)
A CZ 27 7.65 semiauto with BOHIMISCHE WAFFENFABRIK PRAG AG roll marked on the top of the slide.
The firing pin safety was broken, and the gunsmith had to disassemble it like a pocket watch and then carefully rebend a spring for it to be more than a single shot, and I still only have one mag.
I don't guess it saw much use, other than shooting partizans in the back of the head, though ;-)
I also bought an H&R .22 at a pawnshop fora hundred bucks, worked great for about one cylinder until it started shaving lead.
Matt
St Paul
It also loaded through the stock and was a holy bitch on wheels if you tried to take it apart."
You forgot "damned near impossible to mount a scope on."
1937 vintage Walther Sportmodell V.
It's a single shot .22 bolt action. Built like a bank vault- it's a pre-war Walther, after all. Beautiful finely figured stock, nice two-stage trigger. Accurate? yeah.
I've only seen photographs of a second one, and that was maybe 8 years ago. I obtained a vintage Weaver 4X scope and mount which it wears from time to time on the factory grooved action.
25 years ago I had this weird thing for H&R 999 revolvers, but that went away.
Regards,
Rabbit.
What's odd about a BDA...? I love how that gun feels in my hand. Fits like a glove!
Are you saying Beretta's feel that good? If so, I may need to go rent one and consider it for future purchase!
Some people say that you should not take .22s apart. Some that you should not even clean them except by blasting them with a little break cleaner and then putting a drop of CLP in the action.
I am the proud owner of a Rossi switch barrel 22LR / .410 single shot. It has a diminutive youth stock, as it was intended for use by my daughter as a first long gun. While she has since graduated to Mosins and other centerfire rifles, this extremely inexpensive but ridiculously fun to shoot and accurate rifle will likely never be resold.
Had a magazine fed Nylon 66 in college. Must have put around 100,000 rounds through it before I sold it to a collector who just absolutely had to have it. Reliability of .22 automatics is always dependent on good cleaning and the 66 was no different. I didn't think that disassembly & reassembly for cleaning was all that bad; You required a screwdriver or coin but that was it. I wouldn't characterize the gun as a tack driver but it was reasonably accurate for the price and a lot of fun to shoot.
After Remington discontinued the 66, they sold the tooling to a Brazilian company (CBC) who continued to make it for years. Specs weren't quite as tight.
The receiver is nylon, with a light metal cover over it. This metal cover is grooved for .22 scope mounts, but since it is thin metal that is not really part of the receiver, the solidity of the mounting is not ideal.
Don't take it apart unless you drop it in a mud puddle. No reason to. CLP, Q-tips, canned air and a BoreSnake (best firearm-related invention ever) is all you need, if anything.
I imagine there's any number of people kicking themselves for not thinking of the boresnake first. I still don't knwo why the guy who sold me my Glock insisted I buy a conventional cleaning kit for it. (I had already been introduced to the goodness of boresnakes - so I just bought one in medium caliber elsewhere).
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