Ep. 466 | Cool Guns with Ian | Historic Swiss Pistols

0:00Welcome to the Vortex Exonation Podcast brought to you by lovers of hunting, shooting, public lands, the Second Amendment, and good food. What is up everybody? Mark on the mic and across from me, my good friend, Mr. Ryan Muckiner, and my also really good friend, Mr. Ian Clem, and this is yet another episode of Cool Guns with Ian. I know you guys have been waiting for this. I've been waiting for this. I'm going to say guys, there's a lot of popular, renowned, well-known Swiss things. We've got Swiss watches. We've got case with shoes. We've got Swiss mists. We've got Swiss mists. It makes the list. We've got Swiss bank accounts. That's where I keep my millions. How do you make your first million mark? Well, I'm still working on it.

1:02We also have fine Swiss pistols. Ian, you have a selection on the table right now. If you're not watching on YouTube, you're going to have to use your imagination. If you are, you can see them. They're super cool. Now, Ian, we were talking the other day. You said, yeah, I've got three. I'm no math magician. This is three. I know it looks like five, right? But it trust me. It is three. That's the same line I give my misses. And she gives me this incredulous look like you're giving me right now. Hey, no judgment here. OK. It's technically, there's a couple of variants of a couple of them. It's three. Yeah. Hey, and also let it be known, I stand for this kind of firearm math that's saying this is three. So, Ian, really cool stuff. Ian, you kind of give me a couple of options, pre-podcast. You're like this little this or that. And I said, we got to do this. And it's kind of what's the word, trying to be talking and trying to be somewhat humorous.

2:04But you talk about Swiss watches, right? I mean, they are renowned for their precision. And now we've got Swiss pistols, which to me are much cooler than Swiss watches. So I'm excited, excited to hear about these. I like learning about, we've got a couple watch-a-fishing idols in our group upstairs. And they teach me about the mechanisms and the level of craftsmanship and QC that go into those movements. And that's fascinating to me too. Like I like functional art. And if it highlights craftsmanship, all the better. And that's kind of the same ethos with, you know, when I looked into adding some Swiss pieces to my collection, it was with that anticipation of, hey, I'm going to be able to appreciate, you know, what they bring to the table in terms of manufacturing precision, maybe intelligent, you know, design cues along the way. And just really good execution. That's what I get from these things. So. I mean, let's dive in, man. I mean, Ryan was trying to dive in. As he normally does, the second you opened up this case earlier.

3:07You came out of him hard with question. John, I bet, man. All right, let's get after. Yeah. So we can do, let's do chronological. And the way I selected a sampling that would kind of tell a little bit of a story from a, like a service pistol lens. And we'll do earliest to latest in sort of how they transitioned. And I think that'll make it a little bit more cohesive, instead of Pope Fictiony. So. You're right. This is, this is where we're going to start. That's too free. Has the tax year of a number two lead pencil eraser was number one in our, in our pre podcast pickled fish conversation. Was it a fitting descriptor? It was, it was instantly resonated with me. You know what though, I know you've had a number two lead pencil eraser in your mind. Well, it's sort of like if I use that, I'll just decide as a new idiom, then you will instantly know that I've chewed on pencil erasers.

4:08But it was worth it. Right. Specimen number one, if we will. This is the Swiss ordnance model of 1882. Okay. So you know, it looks like a lot of other side arms, military side arms of the time. It is a single action, double action revolver, but it's gate loading. It's got this, uh, Abidi gate loading system. The camera can see here. We've got this gate on the side, right? And you've got to, you've got to open that gate. And that's the only way to rotate this cylinder is actually then by advancing it with the trigger. Okay. So this gate, I'll show you guys this Abidi gate loading system. It's sort of reminiscent of like a single action only, right? But it is a double action, single action revolver. But this is the way you both load the cylinder and also, um, eventually unload it with your sort of conventional ejection rod.

5:10So, uh, you know, this was pre-checked beforehand, you know, not loaded. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull the trigger here and show you how this cylinder uh, advances. So you basically rotate it, eject, rotate it, eject, rotate it, eject and so on. And the same thing for loading, you'd load a, load a shell, rotate it, load a shell. So this disconnects the hammer. The hammer is totally disconnected when this gate is open. That's how they can justify, you know, using the trigger as a, as a loading mechanism. Um, so in terms of gate loading revolvers, this was the fastest. Yeah. Out there. There's, I've never seen one of these. Okay. And so this is, go on. I have a lot of things that I want to say. So then I'm assuming once you load it, when you open the gate, you load it essentially using the trigger mechanism to, uh, you know, uh, get exposed each, you know, spot where you can place around, uh, the, you know, each part of the cylinder there.

6:11That's my scientific way to talk about it. It's chamber, yeah. It's chamber, yeah. And then you close her up and then she's now like a typical revolver. Now the hammer's engaged. Yep. So now you see it's in this half cock position. So safe to, to holster without that firing pin resting against a primer. Um, now you can operate it in either conventional single action style or double action. As you normally would. So single action is actually, you know, pretty crisp, pretty, pretty nice. Um, it's got an automatic rebounding hammer. Uh, double action. You guys can dry fire it for yourself to see, but it is smooth, but it is a firm trigger pull. It looks like you got to want it a little bit. Yeah. You have to, it's sort of like, uh, um, well, obviously issued to officers, uh, you know, last ditch, you're under duress, you're kind of stressed out. You're going to be yanking on this thing, but quite a hard trigger pull for, for its double action. But the thing I really like about owning this and, and just sort of taking it off the

7:14shelf every once in a while is it's got that old school flat spring, very distinct crisp, positive mechanical movements. You know, coil springs are obviously better for, for a couple of different reasons, but those flat springs there, there, there's no wiggle to them. They don't rub. They don't bulge to the side. And it's just got that really neat turn of the century, um, sort of steampunk aesthetic to it. But see what you think for yourself. So a few things right off the bat. I said 1880 to 82 vulcanized rubber grip. Yep. Yeah. A couple things. Oh, interesting. I thought that was going to be steel. It was a vulcanized rubber and I think as it aged it became a little brittle. So later models were replaced with wood. So 1873, not nine years earlier, one of the most revolutionary revolvers pistols period came out and it was pulled, 1873, right?

8:15So we'd had wheel guns for a long time. 51 navies, late 40s, Remingtons and similar. But the 1873 cult was like the, it was the Tesla to, yeah, to a steam engine, right? It was a single action gun, it was a gate of gun, wildly simple, right? And it wasn't, it wasn't until probably 40 years, 50 years later that the Americans had a viable double action. And if you know those guns and if you know like the predecessors to the Smith, J and K frame guns, they're still pretty simple and they're still kind of crude. This is nifty. Like I'm watching you flip these levers and do these things. Number one, it's double action years ahead of its time and not like a crappy double action. Like this thing has some zazz to it. It has some really interesting safety mechanisms.

9:18And everything, I'm just, do you even watching you manipulate things? You know that the fitment is good. Like there's no like bind, bind pop. Everything slides as if this is like modern machining. Which cool, I think anyways, about the unload tool is that it nests on the side and it like flips as opposed to the fixed on like the 73 pattern guns. What I also do love though is we retain the octagonal barrel. Yeah, I was going to point that out. You can, you can take the tradition or you can take the craftsman out of tradition, but you can't take the tradition out of the craftsman. Yep. Service no function other than aesthetic. It really is pretty. Maybe timing. I don't know. A couple other neat features. So one single take down screw on this side of the frame here. As soon as, and that's captive by the way, he can't lose that thing. So three or four turns. And now it pivots the trigger guard and this whole side of the frame, it pivot counterclockwise

10:23to expose all of the internals for servicing, cleaning, but there's no springs going and going into the field anywhere. It's all captive to take it down that same unloading tool. So this is in the unload position. You rotate it further 90 degrees. And now you can take the armature out and that's how you remove the cylinder for for thorough cleaning and whatnot. Unbelievable. Yeah, just super nifty. I mean, just some incredibly smart engineering going into this really tiny little pistol. And I think that was part of the impetus of this pistol was it was going to, it was much smaller than that predecessor. Yes. Yeah. So it was preceded by a pretty large frame shooting a 10.4 millimeter cartridge. It might have been a rimfire cartridge, but you know, the consensus after a while was, hey, we don't need a 10.4 millimeter for officer issued side arms.

11:28You know, we're developing, we're entering this smokeless era and we're developing a 7.5 millimeter smokeless rifle round. Let's go ahead and have a companion round for our side arm in 7.5. So that's what they did. The round is, let's be honest, it's relatively anemic. It's a, it's a black powder era power level. So we're talking about like maybe a 106 or 107 grain projectile going about 650 feet per second. Sure. Yes. So put that into perspective from modern alternatives. It would be slightly less powerful than like the 32 auto 3280. Fyoki might have some old stock of correct designated head stamped ammo for purchase still, but other than that, it's pretty much obsolete now. So what people collecters do if they want to fire these, and I've done this is they use

12:3232 Smith and Les and Long's. They'll shoot a target load, which is usually not the spiciest round available for that cartridge, usually a wild cutter. And they function great in that, in that pistol. So the fact that that's got flats on it. So it, I mean, I mean, everything makes so much sense when you start. And it all, it's not rattly. It's not clapped out. It's not loose. Everything is tight. And we, we're pushing a square peg through a square hole so that we don't have any rotation problems. Yeah. Pokedwork needs to be. It can't bind. It's remarkably tight. Yeah. Like remarkably tight. So the other, the other cool thing is, you know, when a container of these came and hit our shores about eight years ago, this, they were selling depending on grade. That one I paid $400 for. Really? Yeah, it's a lot of nice machining and craftsmanship for $100. I would have expected more. Yeah. So I've got a 1917 cold in my desk right now.

13:36And when you bring that hammer to cock and you, you check what kind of wobble you have this. That colds double. Yeah. What this has? This thing is magnificent. This is cool. So you notice it also does have provision for a butt stock to attach. Sure. On the hill to that grip. Yep. Yep. That's to help you lean into that probably 20-ish pound double. Yeah. That's probably more than 20. Get some leverage. That is something. It's, it's not, it's smooth. Yep. Like it doesn't really stack, but you know it's, you got to pull it. I've got my grandfather's pre-locked J frame. And you know similar, similar grip style, similar length from back of butt to hook of trigger. And again, a very concerted effort to pull the trigger. And yeah. I mean, that was the flavor of the day. Yep. Lads were lads back then though. So they, they knew how to shoot double action well, I guess. And then look at the sights. It's a fairly defined you notch, right?

14:36Yeah. But then what you don't see all that often is a ball profile, you know, beat almost for your front side. Yeah. That is pretty darn cool. That is a nifty gun. So you know, this was actually in service longer than you might think. It wasn't a hard transition when they decided to go to an auto loader. They basically, you know, said, hey, these can still be made and made well for about half the price of the luger that they eventually transitioned to. Let's keep them in service. Maybe they go to garrison officers or transportation officers or maybe some calvary. And then we'll reserve the lugers which, you know, cost twice as much to make for more of a status symbol piece as a side arm. Yeah. I mean, it seems highly practical and from a revolver standpoint, I mean, obviously like a 1917 you flip the gate open, you can hit the ejector rod and dump your two half moons

15:39out, but it's not slow. It's not like a single action. All right. Well practice. I think you can be pretty quick. Yeah. I mean, that is cool. And what is the cartridge called? It's called a 7.5. I think it's the 7.5 Swiss, right? Or at least I don't say the, no? Yeah. That might confuse it with like the 7.5 by 55 Swiss rifle round, the famous K31 round. I always call it the 7.5 ordinance. Okay. Yeah. Round. It's neat because you look at like other contemporaries of the time, like especially the French revolvers. Yeah. Oh man, we're those bad. And then just like a short carriage ride away neighboring country. You end up with this piece of equipment. That's, that's really interesting. I was watching a video about a French submachine gun yesterday.

16:39It was like, that is the Microsoft paint rendition of a subgun in comparison to literally anybody else's. That is it. That's a nifty piece. It's super impressed by that little thing. Yeah. It's modest, but like it'll, it'll always have a place in my collection. It's just nifty. And you fired it. Oh yeah. Yeah. Shoot good. Oh yeah. I mean, about what you'd expect. Sure. Yep. That's pretty cool. Okay. So fast forward. So that's 1882. Now they decide, hey, you know, firearms technology has advanced. There's something that offers a little bit more firepower. They take a look at some of the auto loading. This is the Swiss military we're talking about. They take a look at the board shards and those kind of predecessors to the luggers. And they like them, but there's some, you know, pretty common criticisms of them in terms of reliability and weight and size.

17:40And can someone please take the board shard? I think it's the C93 and just improve it in these regards. And Gary Luger, you know, kind of answers the call and ends up designing in the last couple years of the 19th century that what we know as the Luger pistol. And this is so iconic because obviously it's been in service with many countries over many decades. See it in movies all the time. There's nothing else that looks quite like it. This is the Swiss variant. So this was coming out of Waffen-Fabrik, Bern. And it was the first country to adopt the Luger a good six years before Germany. Isn't that wild? Yeah. And so like most would look at a Luger and just immediately think, well, that's the Nazi

18:40officers gun. Right. And it was, but it was, it was prolific prior to them. And so it's a super interesting thing. They're one of the neatest designs. And it's funny because like we have convergent evolution of firearms technology over the course of human history and firearms, right? One country or one region in the world uses what we would expect is a reciprocating slide. Like we see on every single pistol out there today. This is kind of that and then kind of not that. And it was a, I'm not going to say brief flash, but it never carried on. We don't have a, that ended. Yeah. We don't have a pistol that uses a mechanism similar to it. And wildly accurate guns, wildly reliable guns, very comfortable guns to shoot made a decent little machine pistol differentiated itself in just gripping a little away from a lot of the contemporaries that it was competing with for some of these military tenors, tenders.

19:45You know, a lot of those French moths type pistols were very vertically gripped in the board shards as well. And the Mauser and the ugliest pistol award was given to anybody would be the board shards. Oh yeah. Are you familiar Mark? I'm not. Okay. So picture this back end, but like five times as large, this bulb is too, tumor-looking thing back here, just to how is like this convoluted coil spring arrangement? So it to basically affect the exact same return on this toggle link that this guy does. I feel like I have seen what you're talking about at some point in time. Yeah, a bastardized version in like a Star Wars prop gun. Yeah. Or something. It's like the engineer showed up for the job after lying on the resume and got it to work. But like there was a better way. Yeah. So a couple differences between the most ubiquitous version of the Luger that we all kind of know,

20:46the PO8, the German Luger and this one. So this is called the 1904, sometimes it's called the 1904-29 because it made some changes in 1929. But essentially this was designed in like, you know, 1898, 1899. And then in service in 1900 with Switzerland. And then later, you know, 1906 or so for Germany. German Navy first and then German Army maybe two years later in 1908. But it's got a grip safety. A la, you know, Browning 1911. The German ones did not. The safety lever for whatever reason, I don't know, they're neighboring countries, but it's reversed operation from the PO8. So PO8 would be, you know, up or forward to fire, rear for safe and this is backwards. So this would be safe. This would be fire. You wonder why. Yeah. Was it like, it's in the holster, you pull it or it's in the holster, you push it, they

21:50had different ideas on what was, or it was just, I want to, you know, use AI to hopefully suss that out. It's got to be an intelligent reason. I mean, if it's the Swiss, you can see, you can see the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, the disconnect between the, um, yeah, the grip safety and that, um, I guess it would be a barrel extension block right there. Uh, what else? A little bit different barrel length. Oh, the, the, uh, the caliber. So this is in 7.65 per barrel. Yeah. Yeah. Now, you know, the Swiss, it's a country that's sort of obsessed with precision and accuracy, which is why, you know, it's always sort of appealed to me as well. And they really believed in those 30 caliber cartridges for precision. I mean, it started probably, um, you know, with that revolver, we just looked at. So a lot of their citizenry were, you know, a big fan of the 7.65 per barrel.

22:51It hadn't really bought into this 9 millimeter per barrel. You know, Germany was sort of pushing the 9 millimeter, touting, you know, kinetic energy and, and lethality through, through kinetic energy. And, you know, the Swiss were like, yeah, but the, the 7.65s just shoot so well. Maybe it's the lower recoil. I don't know what it was, but they had this, this ethos with the Swiss population. So initially, you know, these were eventually they acquiesced that the military didn't said, okay, we're going to for commonality and other reasons. We're going to go with the 9 millimeter per barrel. But they were still offered, uh, as private sales in your choice. So a lot of citizens chose 7.65. Yep. That happens to be, this is an example of one of those early pistols that was sold to a private citizen, uh, hence the, the marking there, the P marking, uh, in 7.65. So this shoots what we commonly call in the state's 30 luger. You can still buy the cartridge today, talked about it in a couple of their podcasts, but

23:53it's the little, you know, 21 millimeters long, 9 millimeter neck down to, um, 7.65. Space age round for its time too. Yeah. And we, I was saying that we, everything, nothing is new, but like nine by 25 Dylan, um, uh, 357, six. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you look at it like, wow, space gun cartridge. Right. Uh, because of the new HK, yeah, it is at the four six, four six. Yeah. We've been here before. I was going to say we have a tiny little bottleneck to pistol cartridge. Yeah. That's putting up some very, very respectable numbers from a velocity perspective. 1900. Okay. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. It is interesting though when we think about things like firearms, like we're talking about today, like you said, you, you're, your environment is off oftentimes shapes your reality, right? And if you're not, uh, firearm historian, you look at the, uh, the five, so you go, look

24:56at this new concept. Yeah. I mean, and this, I'm just, you know, just emphasizing what you were just saying, but it's just, it's so funny to me because not too many things are new. Now it's pretty hard to reinvent the wheel. Pretty hard to reinvent the wheel indeed. And it is a brilliant little cartridge. And you know, I often think like, wouldn't that be sweet in an MP five? Oh, sure. Or some sort of subgun, but it's just, it's just faded now from what was extraordinary popularity at the time to effectively obscure, uh, because it's only in old guns. Like you could, you could get a rowdy little situation going on with a 30-leugered MP5 or similar subgun. That's like this 30 super carry, but you know, yeah, 130 years earlier, you know, look at the base plate of that magazine. It's actually would, believe it or not, love it. Incredible. Yep. Uh, no lug, bandit lug for not bandit, but a stock fixing lug like the German luggers

25:58would have. Later variants of this Swiss Luger, I believe in 29, they made some simplifications to, sort of streamline manufacturing. And you'd find like a straight grip here instead of this nice curved heel and, and maybe some sands knurling on some of these knobs and take down lever and, and that sort of thing. But this is one of the earlier ones. And it does have a lanyard looping back, the fixed rear sight. It's a very sharp V notch, but it's, you know, it's an extension of this toggle link part of the action. So, you know, it's dynamic. The pistols firing and, and you know, this, this goes out of your sight picture and, you have to wait for it to come back. Not too dissimilar, I guess, from a reciprocating slide with a fixed, fixed sight, a little bit different. Oh, I just like the sort of a carryover from the 1882. You know, there are certain hardened parts that don't receive the same finishing.

27:01You get this straw yellow, you know, look on the extractor and the, the mag release and, and the take down pin there. This gives it a neat, a neat, classy look. But yeah, we'll see. Do you guys think they are so, they are so cool. They're, they're just, aside from an iconic firearm, they're just mechanically marvelous. They're so nifty. Yeah, I, I get to kick out of all these things. I haven't shot a Luger in probably 20, probably 20 years. I was surprised with its accuracy, to be honest. I wasn't expecting much. There's somewhat known for that though, aren't they? I think they are. I think they are. And I think they set a precedent for what would come to follow with this was military. Now there was a benchmark that what we have to be at least as accurate as the Luger. Right. Right. Yeah, that is so cool. Right. Earlier you were asking about in the pre podcast when I started, when you were starting

28:01a pre podcast, you're asking about the magazine and if the serial number potentially matched. So I didn't realize that we were on Swiss firearms. I was speaking to the that that that socialist group out of Germany. Gotcha. Yeah. So you would often, you know, if you're, you're buying it or grading a Luger, you'd check the magazine and does it have the, the, the Nazi eagle on it and does this here on the ver match. But this one's got the little crosses on it. So yeah, this is, this is even cooler. And I mean that it's even cooler. And it's a 30, which I absolutely love. Got these things to fit like a glove. They do. There's something aesthetically pleasing about even just the trigger guard and, you know, you see, you see cues in today's, today's firearms, you know, from, from way back then. Man, that's nifty. And 30 Luger. I just like I said, I love, I love the little cartridge. We stand boxes and mag tech 30 Luger at the shop because we had a, you know, few, few guys that had, you know, like a C96 or they had, you know, Luger's like this and I'd

29:07pull the boxes open. I'd look at it and study him. Like, Gally, look at that little nifty thing. Yeah. But, you know, not inexpensive to make fairly complicated mechanism, right? You know, to get it, you know, to the level of reliability that it enjoyed. You, you should, you should single stack, you have a PSA match with this. Oh, sure. I don't know how many mags you have, but is there a special category for single stack? Yeah. Well, there is. I think like horribly disadvantaged from capacity and our factory. I like built in excuses though. Yeah. Same. Is that eight rounds in the mag? What do the, what do you think? Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yep. That's, that's cool. Everything is, is so neat on these things. They would eventually go to, I don't know, kind of a, someone will correct me in the comments, but it wasn't quite bakelite, but it was like this red, phenolic, a red plastic type grip material eventually. Not, not hand-checkered wood. No.

30:07Yeah. That's pretty nifty. Fun fact about Luger's not necessarily related to this. There was a couple of these things made in 45 auto. Oh, yeah. Yeah. For, for, for, ever mid trials. Oh, wow. Yeah. Million dollar guns. Wow. Yeah. So that's, that's kind of nifty. Yeah. These are neat, neat, neat, neat guns. Yeah. There's a, there's a lot of different variants and some people just spend their whole lives concentrating their collection on Luger's of different variants, which, you know, that would be fun for sure, but definitely needed a representation in my collection. So why not a, this one? Yeah. Couple, couple neat things and it depends on who you ask. Who did Bill Ruger model the Mark one after? Right. They say it was a hand drill. Looks an awful lot for Luger. Yeah. What was it? He said, what is art imitate life? And the life imitates art? I think it was Luger. Wow. So for folks that aren't, you know, we kind of glossed over the mechanism there, the

31:08toggle action, but sort of a cursory overview. There's a bolt, right, that rides inside that barrel extension. And it's got raceways, the bolt travels in raceways. How long do you show that? Yeah. Sure. So barrel, barrel extension, bolt. You can see, you know, there's some movement of the barrel and barrel extension independent of the frame. So that travels rearward. I had not noticed that before. Yeah. And I'm going to call it, you know, half inch of movement or so. But then the bolt is moving relative to the barrel extension as well in those raceways. And it's actually directly impinging a set of cams in the back that provide the vector of force, you know, in this direction that will break that locked joint, that toggle joint. And then it'll ride up those cam surfaces to complete the, you know, the rest of the

32:11motion of that of that toggling. But pretty ingenious, very outside of the box way of designing another mouse trap. Yeah. I feel like you saw an inchworm and said, I got an idea. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's nifty to think like with, I should say 1911 or a clock or whatever, you get that same initial unlock movement, right? So this, this, this minor, real movement of that extension, just in the pistol slide. And then the barrel hood drops down and then allows the rest of the thing to happen. The same thing's happening here, only instead of the barrel being fixed or hooked to something not fixed, it would be a drop reach, it was fixed. The rest of the movements in the bolt and upward as opposed to rearward and a super short little stroke, they have, they have their own recoil impulse. They don't feel like a regular gun when you shoot it.

33:11Like if you've shot a similar weighted nine millimeter, you'd shoot a luerine back. Oh, it's a little different and just different, not harsher, just different, super cool little guns. And as you said, they're super accurate. They're like a, they're like a little rifle. Yep. I think they were, they were kind of prized possessions of a lot of Canadian and US GI's, you know, over there. So that's how we, we got to see, you know, examples in the private sector here, bring backs. And then how does this, how do I close this mechanism? Pop the mag out. Yeah, so it's got a mag catch like a contemporary pistol with it. And then, and then you can complete that cycle by just pulling back on those charging lugs. Okay. As if you're racking it. Yeah. There you go. Push down. There you go. Still got to. I mean, I, I have no previous experience with this pistol, right? It just feels like it points. It points.

34:11Yeah. There's something to that is that intuitively it just feels like it points. Yeah. It's a lot of it is grip angle, you know? You look at, you look at Olympic style free pistols, both rapid and slow fire. And they will have very, very similar grip angles to that. It just puts you at the structural alignment of your forearm and your elbow and your shoulder in a really good place to, to shoot well. Yeah. No fatigue. There's no training of the wrist or anything like that. Like it's very natural. That's so nifty. Okay. What a cool pistol. Now we're going to transition to, you guys have heard of the SIG P210. Oh, yeah. Okay. So the military variant, they called the SIG P49. And it was, you know, issued in, in 49. I, this is where my Swiss pistol collection started because I like all things precision

35:12and accuracy. So like literally 20 years ago, I was like, well, what's the most accurate auto loading pistol? Sure. And I'd get responses back that were like, well, the Smith 952 or HKP7 is known to be very accurate. And then, you know, the cream sort of rising to the top in these searches revealed the SIG P210 is, and I said, well, how can that be? That's a service pistol. I'm talking about, you know, not service, but any pistol. And they said, yeah, it's a service pistol, but it's still known to be one of the most accurate nine millimeter pistols, auto pistols ever, ever designed ever made. So a lot of people think it's a target pistol masquerading as like a service pistol. But that's just a testament to how well it was made. I think that's where we're seeing the level of quality control, fitment and just execution in manufacturing with this, with this pistol. So we were talking about the Luger and how well it shot.

36:13That was the benchmark and they sought out to say, you know, well, we're going to replace it with, with something that is even more reliable in the field might not be, you know, a big jump in firepower, you know, still single stack, you know, steel auto loading pistol. But it's going to be, you know, even more reliable, even more accurate than the Luger. And you know, people think of, you know, SIG and they think of, you know, the American SIG or the German SIG, but, you know, SIG started out in the mid 19th century as, you know, three guys that just tooled up to make wagons. And they were responding to the Ministry of Defense and Switzerland's call for a national, you know, entity as a weapons manufacturer. So they started in Newhouse and they started, you know, SIG as a, you know, the S and SIG is, it's depicts Switzerland.

37:15I can't remember what the exact word is, but SIG started as a Swiss company and that's, these are artifacts of that effort, you know, 100 years later. Yeah. So this is an example of a P49 and it is chambered in nine millimeter parabellum. Same, you know, you've seen these heel release mags in a lot of European pistols, but single stack date round magazine. But where it differentiates itself from a lot of, you know, the Browning high power 1911 contemporaries is you've got now the frame that is housing the slide. So it's inverse. And you've seen that before in like maybe a CZ 75, typically very Eastern European, very, yeah. I think it borrowed that design cue from like a French, a mass style pistol. In fact, it might have been co-developed with the French Swiss collaboration there.

38:21But what it yields is this very long guiding surface. This is a continual raceway, not an abbreviated one like in a modern pistol. You're left with a slide to frame fit that feels not like a service pistol. It feels like like a custom 1911 that you'd buy these days for many thousands of dollars probably. I mean, I feel like I can even see that. Yeah. What you're talking. You can hear it, feel it, see it for sure. Yeah. So when I said, yeah, it's actually three pistols. So these are variants of the same pistol. So this is a military never privatized P 49, third release of them. And then this one here is a privatized P 210-2. And this is again in 765, Parabellum. So this is the 30-luger.

39:22And just like with the luger, a lot of the Swiss private sales, they opted for the 30-luger because they just really believed in it and its precision potential. So that's why this one is wearing some nail grips, some target grips. But I've shot the 30. I haven't shot the nine yet. I wanted one of each just so I could compare like how does a 30 compared to a nine for precision potential? Is there anything to you know that rural legend in Swiss communities that the 30 was better from a target standpoint? What about recoil between the two? You know, it's basically the same cartridge, just a lighter bullet in the 30 obviously. Okay. I think there's like a barely perceptible difference in the recoil as far as I can tell. It's going to depend on the platform you shoot it out of. But yeah, when you're shooting 147 grain versus you know a 90 grain or 100 grain, you should be able to tell a little bit of difference. Yep. But yeah, I'm going to, let's see.

40:23I'm going to go ahead and take this one down so that we can see that, you know, workings of that framed rail fit. So it takes down just the same as you know a lot of a lot of the burning high powers and what not to familiar with. You take out that, take down, take down lever. And then the slide pulls right off the frame. The recoil spring guide rod is captive. Here again, you want to talk about technologies that are relatively and rather old. Exactly. So that's nice. The barrel, you know, we've seen, you know, barrel lugs, integral lug recesses into the frame that accomplish the lock up. And then the other kind of neat thing about these P210s is the fire control group or trigger pack you might call it is like unitized.

41:24Yeah. So it's like this little, this little self-contained cassette that you can take out and swap over a service clean and then pop back in. We have seen modern polymer pistols using what is now that catch word of the day fire control. Yeah. Catch phrase of the day, fire control this, fire control that. I remember when Glock was some, some prints came out about some patents, you know, that hit the Google market, you could go find them and people had postulated on the fact that oh, perhaps Glock is coming out with a fire controlled version of their guns, much like SIG did with 320. And, you know, they attacked, oh gosh, how revolutionary that is to see that entire trigger pack come out as opposed to, you know, the, I'm not going to call it horribly complex, but a pretty wildly complex trigger mechanism that you would find in something like a locker and M&P where you've got linkages and springs and get a hold your mouth right when you put it together.

42:25Definitely. And, you know, if you, if you look at this design, what, what, what your manufacturer was this one, did you say that one, I believe is late 50s. And adoption was 49, 49, hence P 49. All of that is old hat for them, like they've been doing that the whole time. There's a lot of design cues in this too that were just seeing come back around. And I often would say that 210 was what the 1911 would have become had it been updated. Okay. Like if you were to change the things about 1911's that were a bit of a pain in the butt, you know, bushing, spring, you know, needing a specialized tool to technically take it down correctly where we have a contained recoil spring and guide rod assembly, one piece, no bushing on the front because it's not necessary. Little, little shallower tilt requirement for the, the barrel. Right.

43:25And then that frame around slide that you had mentioned earlier, and I'm so glad that you did. And, and spot on like you look at a 10 folgaleo or you look at a CZ 75, that frame around slide fit does obviously wonders for alignment, but then the recoil impulse feels less. And I don't know if that's just because it's translated across that long, long, long, bearing surface or what. But if you shoot, if you shoot a 10 folgaleo or a witness or a 75 or an 85 or one of these 210s versus a similarly weighted slide around frame, they feel different when you shoot them. This feels so much more linear and so much just better. I think a smoother, a smoother recoil. It feels like a softer recoil. Yeah. And for those of you wondering that if you're not watching this, if you own a glock or you own an M&P or you own a lot of the other modern pistols, if you pull your slide off like a glock, for instance, we'll have two small tabs. It's the best way I'll describe just a stamp steel tab in the back that then ride a groove

44:32cut into the slide and then two slightly larger, nonetheless, tab designs in the front that are holding it. Whereas the entire length of the frame from the beaver tail to the end of the dust cover is all real and then corresponding notch cut on the slide. And they're just, they're such a cool pistol. You can still buy two tens to this day. Yeah, they resurrected them, didn't they? And they are ex-encised. Are they? Yeah. They're a fairly niche pistol. They're a pistol for somebody who wants exactly what you wanted, a hyper accurate target gun. Yep. If I'm going to try to be critical, I'm going to say, well, it's not a practical EDC gun these days. I mean, who wants us all steel, single stack, heel magazine release. I love heel magazines. I think they're awesome. But man, do they shoot? Yeah. Yeah, they are nifty, nifty pistols. And I love the, like the aesthetic of the gun, like this thing screams 1950, 60, 70s

45:35with the grip collar, the, you know, the shaping there. And then that very European selector paint selection collar. It's like it's get the faded, faded white. And then the red F, I love it. Good single action trigger pull. Yes. Yeah, that thing is marvelous. If you grab onto the 30 luber there, you'll instantly appreciate the grips, the nil grips on that one. Yes. That's pretty nifty. So ultimately, you know, they had a great in service. I think the Danish picked them up. Other smaller groups, like maybe the German customs, it was the service pistol for them. But yeah, through the 70s, really, left little to be improved on. They had variants, dash fives and dash sixes had some, you know, adjustable sights and some lengthened barrels for a longer sighting radius as target variants.

46:40But you know, the reputation that they earned for shooting so well eventually, you know, SIG with another partner company in Switzerland, homerly, who was known for sport shooting and target shooting firearms, they collaborated in this thing we have here to finish out. And this is the P240, right? So instead of P10, it's the P240. They only made about 5,000 of these. But it was an experiment to say, okay, let's take the P210 and let's now people say for a service pistol, it shoots so well, let's see how it can shoot as a sport pistol. So they optimized, you know, the trigger pole, it's nearly two inches longer in both frame to slide interface and obviously barrel. My crometer adjustable rear sights that you'd expect to find on a target pistol today. So this is like late 70s, right? But nice broad, chunky front post type target sights.

47:41Chambered in 38 special wad cutter. So this was a, we're not going to pretend this is anything other than a bull's eye pistol. Yeah. And that's exactly what it is. I mean, it came from homerly, homerly made the pistol and co-branded it with SIG. But you know, came from homerly with these target grips. And this thing is just as smooth, if not smoother. It's got one fatal flaw to it. Do you see that barrel taper? How it gets fairly thin and then enlarge and you know, for alignment at the end? Well, because this is chambered in 38 special wad cutter, sometimes the projectiles that would be loaded in that ammunition had fairly severe hollow bases to them for observation and fairly soft alloy. And so they could separate mid-blowers. The base could separate from the rest of the projectile.

48:42Well, that leaves an obstruction unbeknownst to the fire because they, you know, see a new hole in the target? Because part of it is left, right? And so the successive round then would cause a bulge in the barrel. So before I bought this one, you know, I did a careful look and make sure that, you know, that hadn't, that hadn't, you know, happened to this example. And the ammo that I shoot in there is very, you know, specific in terms of avoiding that problem. But holy cow, is it accurate? I bet. I bet it's just bananas. And in response to that bulged barrel phenomenon, they went ahead and they released the same thing in a strict blowback design for 32 Smith and Wesson long wad cutter and 22 rimfire. Yeah, sure. So you can, you can compete in center fire and rimfire, you know, bullseye competitions with those two rounds as well. So just a slide swap on those are independent guns? I think they're fully independent guns because, you know, those were blowback only. There's such weak rounds. Yep. So this is so cool.

49:44I'd sold a couple of the homerly target pistols. Okay. Like two 12s. Yeah. The trail sides. Yeah, trail sides, which was another kind of co-brand there. So that was a, they called it the sig trail side, but it was a homerly design, right? Yeah. And they were, I mean, they were a wild. When, when all you had at the time, if I was selling 22 rimfire pistols would have been like Ruger Mark series guns, Smith and Wessons 22 A. Yep. And then the Beretta Nios, if you've ever seen one of those goofy bastards. That's obscure. Yeah. Like that was the flavors that you had. Walter had a P 22. Hold on. Soko had like their ace maybe. Yeah, we never, we never got into any of those, but we did get through regular distribution, those trail sides. And, you know, they had that white hopper like white is the best way. That's right. Yeah. And black, black sculpted grip on them. And a lot of guys and gals come in and they go, what the hell is that? And hyper accurate guns and homerlies, you know, their, their bread and butter is Olympic

50:49style shooting. Yep. But this thing is so cool. It's got some of the, the looks of homerly that are, are distinct to them. A lot of that obviously in the grip, but in the trigger guard, in the dust cover, oversized trigger guard. Yeah. In the way that they shaped and sculpted the slide. And then when you look at the pistol, and if you don't, like, if you don't know 38 special versus say 38 super. So these two cartridges are, we'll call them ballistically equivalent. The 38 super being a highly modernized version of 38 special, 38 special has a rim on it. And that goes into revolvers. 38 super is rimless and goes into originally 1911's. This is the rimmed version into a semi auto. Yeah. Of which there are very, very few functional designs out there. This being one of them, another outstanding one that people would probably have heard of before would have been like a Koonan, which was a modified 1911. And when you look at how they did that and how they accommodated it compared to say the

51:54other two examples. It's like, oh, that all makes sense. Elongated ejection port, lugged hood. Yep. And then the extractor is significantly different where these have this cute little nested extractor. Yeah. Yep. This thing we've got to go full tang on there. And that is so. And if you pop the mag out. Gowley. It's once again heel release. Yeah. Can't get away from that. That's a bit of a three handed operation. It is. Yeah, it's, it's a snug fit. You'll see provision for that ribbed case in that in that mag. That is nifty. Wow. So cool. And you can only shoot wide cutter in it. Because of the way the chamber is cut. Yeah. It doesn't have what we would consider like a lead or forcing cone for O'Gyve to. Yeah. Yeah. It feels like a sewing machine, doesn't it? And it's $4,1911 each. That's your heart out. That thing is tight. And then I suppose COAL, right?

52:55So if we were to put even like 125 grain round nose and that's standard 38 special, you'd never fit in the mag. But you know, as a zero compromise example of what, what, you know, the smallest group you can print on paper, I don't mind that it's what. No, not at all. And just a hammer, huh? Yeah, yeah. Man, is that neat? So much so that like I'm brainstorming non permanent mods to put one of our dots on it. Yeah. I have a solution for you. Do you? Okay. We need to talk that. Yes. If any, if any pistol like vintage 70s, 80s pistol deserves a little bit of a retrofit just to see what you could ring out of it. That one does. What is that recoil spring poundage? Do you know? No, I don't, but I'm going to guess eight. I don't know. That's light. That is such an, but everything is so right that even with as light of spring as that is, like I can ride that slide all the way to the hood and it has to lock into place.

53:58Yeah. You know, I ran as low as an 11 pound spring in some of my competition clocks. And I had to be careful with that. I shot 17 long slides. So the big giant long side. Oh, sure. And if you ease forward, you could get it to hang on the hood, but you can't on this. Like, oh, man, is that cool? And so the 32 and the 22 variants weren't locked breech like that. They just blow back. But I think this one's more, more interesting. And you saw someone took the time to build up that sugar face for a longer, longer reach to it. Did it taste really too? I'll probably dissolve that and get it back to the original. That is nifty. Yeah, they pulled that thing out. They made a form. Yep. They filled it with what I'm assuming is Bondo. Pretty typical. I mean, see a lot of grips that are Bondo for Olympic shooters. And it is, it is, that is just right. And that is cool. You got to hand that thing over. Man, I wish they made a viable 38 special wide cutter.

55:02What grain is there 158? Are you shooting? I imagine so 148 to 158. Sure. I wonder what you could safely drive that to and if you could shoot a deer with it. You know, sometimes wide cutters really effective. They are. Yeah, it's that flat face kind of just disturbs a little bit more liquid safety on the side by your thumb. Sweet down. No, I know. I was just feeling, I mean, your finger just does. Yeah. It just cradles. Go ahead and drive fire it if you'd like. It's like it, I'll say it's a two stage, a light first stage. Oh, deer. Yeah. That's quite, quite crispy. I mean, you're not kidding when you say light first stage. Yeah. I didn't feel the first stage. Yeah. You feel your finger moving and you feel the shelf and that's about it. Oh, yeah. Man. That's so cool. Sweet. This is cool, Ian. I want to see you shoot this thing. We'll have to, we'll have to do maybe an episode on, on like target pistols because there's

56:05a few others that would rival that one in my collection. And they're chambered for like 32 Smith and Lesson what? Cutter. Another rimmed cartridge. There's one on my short list. You have a Benelli by chance. I do have a Benelli. And it's one of the more rare ones. It's an MP3S. Cool. So that's a variant of the B76. What I'd like to get is a pardonee. Oh, yeah. And like 32 ACP, one of the newer ones. That trigger brings a smile to your face. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, the whole thing does. I'd love to set that up against one of these $5,000. It's 2011's. And you say, who's got it? I'm shooting a revolver cartridge, you know? Yeah. Well, you know, this is, that's cool. That's a nifty gun. That's one of the coolest pieces of machinery. I've had the opportunity to touch. We'll have to shoot it sometime. Yeah. Mark had an opportunity to shoot a piece. He's seven a couple of weeks ago.

57:05And he shot it. That was the best I've ever seen. You shoot a pistol. I really like that. Right. And when you get to that level, which these are, things happen better differently. Yeah. And I can only imagine like I've shot a 210. That has to be just a new 210 or a vintage. It would have been older. Okay. Yeah. So this would have been back in the day. But that has to be just a different experience. Man, that is cool. Well, that was fun. Thanks for humoring my Swiss pinky up collection. Yeah. No, I love it. And gentlemen, it is always an absolute pleasure having you here and you having these things, being able to bring them in and talk so eloquently to them and just their features and their history. I always learn so much. I'm equally fascinated every time we do one of these talks. And this one did not disappoint.

58:08I think I say it every time. I'm like, oh, this is one of my favorites. And this is definitely one of the favorites that we've been able to do on the podcast in general. And these pistols are, they're so cool. They're so unique. And they just exemplify just engineering and precision. Craftsmanship, but simplicity at the same time, maybe not simplicity, but practicality in the way you can access them to service them. It's all those things coming together and just such an elegant package yet built to simply do work at the same time. Yeah. And it's nice that they're all shooting examples. You don't feel bad bringing them out and passing them around to shoot at the range. The rest of their lives should be that way instead of being holed up. So the big part of owning these things is getting to bring them in and share them.

59:11And otherwise, it's just something tucked away. Well, I know. Every time you bring something, I'm like, can I touch it? I don't even want to get my finger prints on it. But it's cool that that's how you think of these things. And the precision, they're like, just the press, it's like all these firearms are different. You can see the evolution. But the precedence on the, I guess, the overarching attributes or how they wanted them to perform is consistent all the way through. Yeah, that's cohesive. I agree. Yeah. Man, those guys knew what they were doing a long time ago. There's just no, we've standard butts about it. That is cool. Yeah, target pistols, but not, but not target pistols today. Yeah, right. Target pistols from my dad was a kid. That Benelli, it looks like it stepped out of like an 80s Lamborghini poster that I had

1:00:13on my wall. Like it is so 80s. It's a great name to be in. Yeah. I love it. Well, thank you guys. Thanks, everybody out there for listening. I know, I know you love this one as much as I did. Comment below. What are your thoughts on this podcast? Do you want to see another cool guns with the end? Hit us up. Let us know in the comments below. We're going to keep googling over these for a little bit. Until next time, we'll catch on the next one. Bye, everybody. See you. All right, that'll wrap it up for this episode of the Vortex Nation podcast. Thanks, everybody, for listening. If you like what you hear, hit that subscribe button. Give us a review or leave a comment. We want to hear what you have to say. If you have a question or topic suggestion, let us know that as well via the Vortex Nation podcast YouTube page or any of Vortex's social platforms. That helps us cover exactly what you want to hear so we can provide the best information to help you with your hunting, shooting, and related activities and ultimately enjoy

1:01:14them to their fullest potential. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you on the next one.