Mystery Colt No. 1 solved, how about Mystery Colt No. 2?

Mystery Colt solved by Jim Watson, senior member at TheHighRoad.us.

Parts gun in a big way.

Frame:
Colt sn 13719 was made in 1912 for the US Army. Therefore it is, or was, a true 1911.
The stamp over the magazine catch is WGP for Major Walter G. Penfield, chief inspector for military production at Colt from 1911 til 1914.
It would have had a big bold "United States Property" stamp on the left side in front of the slide stop. That has been removed to sanitize the frame and disguise the fact that it is stolen government property. Don't worry about that, the FBI and BATF don't care about the origin of a gun any more as long as the serial number is still there.

The finger thingie on the frontstrap was welded up, the rear tang ground to take a beavertail grip safety, an aluminum trigger with holes was installed, and Pachmayr grips added, slit to clear the thingie. The arched mainspring housing looks like a Pachmayr but I would need better pictures to be sure. Hammer is a flat type much newer than the frame.

Slide:
I can't read the slide markings, you say it says .38 Super but has a .45 ACP barrel?
That was a lot of work.

Besides that, the rear sight is a Smith & Wesson revolver sight, which is kind of a gunsmithing chore to install.

Next question, call it Mystery Colt No. 2: What's up with the other .38 Super 1911 in the double auction? It has the 1911 flat mainspring housing, but it has the scallops behind the trigger, which is a 1911-A1 frame change? Serial number is 163679.I'm all ears.

Mystery Colt 1911-A1 .38 Super/.45 ACP: What kinda frame izzit?

I need some help with a mystery Colt. The gun shop where I work bought a 1911-A1 with a Colt .38 Super slide, a .45 ACP barrel and an unknown frame.

That's it in the photos. The frame has this spike on the front grip frame that sticks out from the Pachmayr wraparound grip as part of a very aggressive set of fingergrooves.

It's a standard 1911-A1 that seems to be set up for target competition with an adjustable rear sight and a Patridge front sight.

The slide has the expected Colt .38 Super markings and patent dates the most recent of which is 1913 as expected with a 1911-A1.

But the frame is just plain weird. One of the changes from 1911 to 1911-A1 is the arched rear grip frame of the latter, which this frame has.

But another change on the 1911-A1 frame is the half-moon cuts behind the trigger and this one ain't got none of those. The frame is flat behind the trigger like a 1911.

And on the left side of the frame, behind the trigger guard, is a logo that might be a C with an M and a P. That's my best guess of what the logo says.

The fourth photo is a closeup of that logo. I figured it had to be some non-Colt company's logo.

But when a customer asked me to test fire this pistol to check its function, I did this past weekend. It shoots fine.

And then the mystery deepened. One of my buddies who was at the range is retired Air Force who collects military arms and he said he has some old military Colt 1911s that have that same logo.

So, is it a Colt? And if so, is it a 1911 or a 1911-A1? And is it a genuine .38 Super Colt? Serial number on the frame is 13719.

If you want to see more photos and read the description in more detail, this mystery Colt and a genuine 1911 .38 Super Colt are both listed on gunbroker in an auction for my gun shop.

Anybody got any info on the mystery Colt or about the mystery logo?

Fell in love with two new sweethearts at the gun shop

I've done fell in love again with not just one but two new "sweethearts" among the used guns either traded or sold to the gun shop where I work. First along came a Smith & Wesson 65-3 Stainless .357 Magnum revolver with a trigger job from the S&W Performance Center, 3" barrel and a set of black wood fingergroove combat grips that fit my hand just perfectly. That trigger is so smooth I fell in love instantly with the first pull. Right into the layaway safe it went until I can get it paid off.

Believe it or else, I haven't owned a .357 Magnum or .38 Special revolver since I sold my S&W 19 some three years ago. No self-respecting gun nut can possibly live without at least one .357 Magnum or .38 Special revolver. That's wrote on the wall somewhere.

Then yesterday, a gent sold us a whole passel of high-dollar guns, including a Para 12-45 with a trigger job from Cylinder & Slide. One test of that trigger and it was love at first pull again. Now I gotta sell something to raise the cash for the Para 12. My EAA .38 Super/.45 ACP is going on gunbroker as soon as I can find the time to take photos and list it. That's it in the photo with the .38 Super slide in Wonder finish on it.

I've decided to call that adventure a failure. I acquired it in a trade as an EAA Witness P-Compact .45 ACP. I didn't care for the snappy way it shot with .45 ACP, that polymer frame just can't handle the recoil very well. So I bought a .38 Super slide assembly and three 12-rd. mags, upgraded the trigger from milled-face to smooth-face and added ambi safeties.

But which would I rather have, an EAA in a weird caliber that's hard to find ammo for and won't shoot .45 ACP well plus only 8 rds. in a mag, or a Para 12-45 with a great trigger job? Mama didn't raise no fools and that decision is foolproof. I like .38 Super, but I love .45 ACP and I don't have a carry pistol in that caliber. I've got a full-size double-stack Llama IX-C that shoots great and holds 15 rounds of .45 ACP, plus a newly acquired Sig P220 .22LR that will get an upgrade with a .45 ACP slide assembly when I get the cash. But neither of those is a carry .45 pistol.

But a compact 12-rd. Para Ordnance .45 ACP has been on my gotta-have list for quite some time before this perfect condition used one showed up. The Witness .38 Super/.45 ACP is outta here.

In the meantime, I'll add that Para 12-45 to the layaway safe until I can raise the cash.

Pittsburgh Shootout with Steyroids: 1 Redneck and 3 Yankee gun nuts

Four of us Steyroids (no, it's not a disease of the hinder parts, it's lovers of Steyr weapons) gathered at the Wexford state wildlife range outside Pittsburgh on June 28 and I'm just now getting a round tuit to finding time to upload the photos of the fun.

At the firing line blamming away with my S&W 29 .44 Magnum is the new guy at the shootout, Cheney at Steyrclub. He's an old fart like me and the other two guys in the group are young farts, Big Taco and OffArtist, the guy grinning in the background. He's a former Marine, so he's gotta be a good guy. There ain't no ex-Marines except for John Murtha and Lee Harvey Oswald.

Next photo is OffArtist blamming away with my EAA Witness-P in .38 Super mode. That's Big Taco in the background with the cool orange shooting glasses on and Cheney in the middle. It was the second outing for the .38 Super slide on the former EAA Witness .45 ACP and I like it a lot. Shoots much better and the sights are pretty much dead on. Now I gotta find me some 9x23 ammo for it.

Then you have Big Taco in the third photo, blamming away with my Sig P229 .357 Sig gangsta style one-handed and whoppy-jawed sideways. He says that's the way you're supposed to shoot one-handed and he's a better shot than me, so who am I to criticize? But it still looks weird. I don't have no trouble shooting straight up one-handed, but one-handed or two-handed, BT blows me away so I'll shut up about his gangsta style.

I brought five of my pistols in 9mm, .44, .357 Sig and .38 Super, BT had his 9mm and .40 Steyr Ms and OffArtist had his Steyr too, I forget what flavor.

I also brought my Marlin 1894 .44 Magnum lever rifle and after we got through 10-yard pistol shooting, we moved down to the 50-yard range for some more pistol and rifle shooting. BT and Cheney were shooting Steyr pistols at 50 and doing pretty good.

Speaking of sideways, that first target photo is a 50-yard group I shot with the Marlin lever gun. I had a nice group about 12 o'clock with .44 holes. Those two holes low and to the left was BT poaching on my target with a Steyr pistol. The one hole in the orange is his too, of course.

So I figured if BT and Cheney could hit with a pistol at 50 yards, I'd try it with my Smith 29, which has a 4" barrel. I was shooting .44 Specials, which are a lot more user friendly than .44 Magnums. The last target is another sideways rendition with all of the holes in the black except the bottom two on the edge of the orange 8" bull.

Now if I could get a bad guy to hold real still at 50 yards and let me take my time drawing a bead from a steady rest (plus not be shooting back at me) I might be able to handle the situation. Whatever. It was a lot of fun anyway.

And afterward, BT, Cheney and me went into town and got a bite to eat and some excellent brews at Fathead's Bar & Grill on the south side of Pittsburgh. Much fun was had by all. Let's do it all again next year.

Pau Ferro and .38 Super go to the range and have fun

Pau Ferro and .38 Super went to the range and (stop me if you're heard this one) had a fine old time. That's Pau Ferro on the right, my new grips for my Sig P229, center is my CZ P07 9mm and left is my EAA Witness-P Compact with its new .38 Super slide.

Actually the range is closed until August because it's at at Millstone 4-H Camp which is overrun with kids. How inconsiderate, that kids would want to use their 4-H camp and shut us old farts out of the firing range. I mean why wouldn't a bunch of kids want bullets flying around all over the place while they have fun camping and boating and hiking and riding horses and doing kid stuff at 4-H camp? What is this younger generation coming to!

Where was I? Oh yeah, since the range was closed I went to my fallback spot nearby, an area known to locals as "the claybank." It's a 10-12-foot-high bank of clay alongside the highway. I have no idea what's on the other side of the claybank, but it's been used for a free shooting range for a long time and the only folks who seem to object are hunters who lease the land and don't want the deer scared off during hunting season. It's out of season here in the by-God-it's-hot-already! South, so today was no problem, other than being 97 in the shade and there won't no shade at the claybank.

So I shot my three pistols for the day and got out of there and came back home to the air-conditioning. First up was my EAA Witness P-Compact with its new .38 Super slide, which shoots great. The first target is about 65 rds. of .38 Super FMJs, all I had with me. At first I thought it was shooting pretty far right, but the more I shot it the more the pattern seemed to move toward the center, as you can see from where the ragged hole appeared. Close enough.

Now to order some more mags, a smooth trigger and an ambi safety from EAA. The milled trigger surface is still slapping my left trigger finger just as it did with .45 ACP, which was the original slide that came with the pistol. It's not slapping as hard as it did with .45 ACP, but still an irritation. I'm hopeful EAA has a smooth trigger I can get to replace it but haven't checked yet. Maybe that will make it a pleasure to shoot in .45 ACP, which at present it ain't.

The EAA did fail to lock the slide today with an empty magazine, but it the slide did lock when shooting .45 ACP, so it's probably just the magazine. Not a really big deal but another irritation. Hopefully when I get some new mags, that problem will go away. Generally speaking 12 rds. of .38 Super or 9x23mm ought to be sufficient to solve most problems I could get myself into that need percussion to end. But slides are supposed to lock when the pistol is empty. In a deadly situation, that could cause a really bad day.

Lastly I shot my CZ P07 9mm and the P229 .357 Sig to check the grips of the latter and some more hollowpoints with the former. I was shooting both rapid fire just to check function. And the Sig P229 did something unexpected. It has the Short Reset Trigger and I've shot it fast before, but today I had an unintentional double-tap. The trigger reset so fast I squeezed off a second round right on the heels of the first, bam, bam! It surprised me. I think the hole in the bottom edge of the black is the double-tap but I didn't stop to check at the time, I just kept on shooting to slide lock.

The Pau Ferro Sig grips shoot great and I ran a mag of hollow-points through the P07 in rapid fire, also just to check function. The last three holes in the upper left of the bottom target are three rounds of the new Winchester Bonded PDX1 147-grain loads which I bought after I did the initial JHP testing with the P07. I was aiming at the small cross at upper left. Close enough for standing at 7 yards, which is how I shot today.

Did mention how much fun it is to shoot holes in stuff on a hot Saturday the day before the official start of summer? Life is good.

Who is Pau Ferro? And why can't he spell "Paul"?

When the boss lady at the gun shop where I work ordered a Sig Sauer P229 SAS Gen 2 .357 Sig pistol for me, I asked her to see if the Sig factory rep would get me a pair of those nice Rosewood grips that Sig put on the SAS Gen 1. He said he'd try to get me a set. It's been about two months now and no Rosewood grips have yet appeared and I got tired of looking at those black plastic grips on my P229. That's it in the top photo at right.

So I googled around online a bit and found some nice Hogue wood grips I liked and could afford called Pau Ferro. Which raised my curiousity. Who is Pau Ferro? Some grip designer who can't spell Paul? Not really. Wikipedia sez:

"Pao ferro" or "pau ferro" (Caesalpinia ferrea or Machaerium scleroxylum Tul.) is an exotic tree found in Brazil and Bolivia. Its wood is often used for making fingerboards for electric basses and guitars. It has a similar feel and similar tonal attributes to rosewood, but is harder and has a slightly lighter colour. The wood may also be used for flooring, fancy furniture, and handgun grips. It is also known by the names morado, palo santos, caviuna, Brazilian ironwood, and Bolivian rosewood, though it is not actually rosewood.

I read a little further and found that "Stevie Ray Vaughan's Signature Fender Stratocaster comes with a Pao Ferro fingerboard."

Hey, if it's good enough for the best rock guitar picker since Jimi Hendrix, surely Pau Ferro is good 'nuf for me. They're quite lovely on my new Sig and I'll give them their baptism of fire at the range tomorrow.

Another candidate for blasting tomorrow is my new-to-me EAA Witness P-Compact, which I purchased as a .45 ACP. The previous owner glued some Mahogany panels to the grip, so it looks OK. But I've been wanting a .38 Super pistol for some time, so I ordered a .38 Super conversion slide and mag from EAA last week. I ordered a blue-steel slide to match the frame, but they sent me a matte-stainless-finish slide instead. Hey, it's even better looking than a blue one for the same price. I'll take it gladly.

So I've rounded up some .38 Super ammo and the Witness P-Compact will get its baptism of fire tomorrow, too. And if it is shoots .38 Super good, then I'll order some 9x23mm ammo in FMJs and hollow-points and that will be my carry load in the Witness P-Compact. IMHO, faster ammo with more foot-lbs. of energy delivered is better than slower ammo with less foot-lbs. of energy put on target. And .38 Super is about identical to 9mm +P while 9x23mm is right there with .357 Sig, if not a bit ahead of it in both departments.

Caliber	Grains	Type	Mfg.	FPS Muzzle	Ft.Lbs. Muzzle
357 Sig	125	JHP	Gold Dot DoubleTap	1450	584
9mm	124	JHP	Gold Dot DoubleTap	1301	473
.38 Super	125	JHP	Winchester	1240	427
9x23	124	JHP	Winchester	1460	587
10mm	180	JHP	Gold Dot DoubleTap	1300	676
.45 ACP	230	JHP	Gold Dot DoubleTap	1010	521

Here's a little comparison table I put together of my favorite pistol calibers with the hottest loads I could find data on, trying to keep the grain weights as close as possible for comparison purposes.

I had an "experiental" .38 Super barrel from Lone Wolf briefly for my Glock 20 10mm. I shoulda known a guy who can't spell experimental is not a good candidate for trying out a new product. It was experiential indeed, as it jammed about half the time with .38 Super and about a third of the time with 9x23. The two rounds are virtually identical in dimensions except that .38 Super has a small rim, called semi-rimmed, while 9x23 is a true rimless. And that semi-rim does tend to cause feeding problems with .38 Super. But 9x23 not only feeds smoother, it's also hotter.

My daddy always said I lived by the philosophy that if a little bit was good, a whole lot was more better. He was right. I guess that's why I have a love for all those oddball pistol calibers like 10mm, .357 Sig, .38 Super, 9x23 and also the true 9mm Magnum, 9x25mm. I swapped the "experiental" .38 Super barrel for a 9x25 barrel from Lone Wolf and lived happily ever after.

Range report coming tomorrow if the Good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise.