What's way cooler than a Walther PPK but lacks the movie fame of "Bond, James Bond"?
That would be Mauser HSc.Blame it on Tam and Michael Bane, who got me thinking about Mauser pocket pistols. But if I was gonna buy a pocket pistol of .380 or smaller, and I ain't because I refuse to get smaller than my Kel-Tec PF9 9mm, I'd rather have one of the old Mauser pistols than anything I've seen from among the plethora of new .380 pissants now sold.
I shot photos of three old Mauser pocket pistols recently to post them on gunbroker for the gun shop where I work. And they all have much more allure, not to mention being much more shootable, than any of the new pocket .380s I've seen.
The Mauser HSc is the most recent of the trio and IMHO a better .380 than the Walther PPK, which has an awful trigger as well as being a bad hand pincher if you get an old model with the heel-mounted magazine release. James Bond made the PPK cool, but cool don't make it shoot any better.
The Mauser HSc that I shot photos of is a post-war American Eagle version that despite its collectibility is still cheaper than a new PPK.
And then there two golden oldies, the Mauser 1914 model in .32 ACP and the Mauser 1910 model in .25 ACP, or as the Europeans refer to those two John Browning calibers, 7.65mm and 6.35mm. What I found remarkable about all three of these Mausers is their rather ingenuous design for closing the slide.
The slides lock back with no visible slide stop when you jack the slide back, leaving you to wonder, how'd it do that? And then how do you close the slide? Simply remove the magazine, presumably in normal use either reload it or swap it for a loaded one, then reinsert the magazine. As soon as the mag locks in, presto, the slide slams shut and chambers a round. Them Mauser dudes were pretty darn smart, as all German engineers are. There's a feature that got lost in time that oughta be revived.
But I just took the time to show these Mausers off because they're cool and shootable. I have no plans to get any of the three, the calibers are just too puny for my taste.
Maybe one of these days if I ever get around to buying pistols just because they're fun to shoot and have no self-defense or serious carry use.
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Those German engineers were not that smart after all. I have a 1910 and 1914, both have failure to feed and eject problems. All parts are pristine and I even put new springs in both and still FTF/FTE problems. Here's where the engineering problem arises. A FTE leaves a round in the chamber with another rammed into the rear. This jam cannot be cleared by cycling the slide. If the second round is cleared the slide rams another upon cycling. Remove the mag and the slide locks back with no way of releasing it - other than inserting a magazine - which just strips another round and perpetuates the problem. The only solution is to have an empty magazine handy. No wonder they lost both wars.
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