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Axel’s post on the P-38 part 2

Chuck — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 08:00:31 +0000

The myth of east-german newly manufactured P.38 pistols

PART II

Thanks for all the comments on our P.38 post!

Initially we wanted to make a video covering all the questions raised but rather doing another post.

First we will talk about the technical aspects and then the historical context.

So why new barrels?

The old ones were often in poor condition due to corrosive ammo (primers) and steel jacketed bullets.

What holds the sleeved barrel in place?

Most likely interference fit but could also be braced even though no traces visible.

The post war P.38/P1 pistols have a fully sleeved barrel.

At the first variant the barrel liner was held in place only by a cross pin.

That prooved to be unsatisfactory because the barrel liner started to walk out towards the muzzle under intense use.

The second variant features a collar all around (first a smaller, later a wider one) giving the barrel liner sufficient support.

A croatian P.38 inspired gun (PHP) features a barrel sleeved into the barrel block secured with a cross pin. Wasn’t manufactured for long and didn’t see much use.

Years ago at the IWA trade show I’ve seen chinese copies of the SIG P226/P228 with the barrels clearly sleeved in the square block which is forming the locking/unlocking cam and locking shoulder.

PIC 1a

So with a barrel only press fitted to the barrel block they probably would have experienced issues sooner or later. The barrel on the pictured gun looks brand-new. Wouldn’t shoot any of those much.

First N-series gun being N1000 – correct!

The book we referred to in part one actually lists this number among the guns that are confirmed to exist also including N1120. Which would actually mean that 121 N-series guns were made…

PIC 1b book cover

When looking at the fired Vopo P.38 cartridge casings those markings looked somehow familiar. Took me a while. Well, haven’t fired a Luger P08 in years!

PIC 2

To the left two shells from the Vopo P.38 – on the right two shells from a 1939 Mauser P08.

So looking down the barrel of two Luger pistols (1939 Mauser right, 1916 DWM left) they have a step in exactly the same spot as the Vopo P.38 barrel in the middle.

PIC 3a

At the 9mm Luger pistol that step/sealing rim was employed to achieve a better gas seal. They apparently didn’t trust the almost straight-walled 9×19 casing compared to the bottlenecked .30 Luger.

Didn’t worked very well on the Luger tested here since the cartridge casings look a lil bit fouled past the sealing rim. The P.38 though never had that stepped chamber.

According to the book “The Mauser Parabellum 1930-1946″ that sealing rim was dropped at the Luger pistol sometime 1941/1942 since it caused extraction issues with steel cased ammo.

PIC 3b book cover

So did they actually made complete new P.38 barrels in East Germany or conveniently covered the sleeving by arranging the ring joint being in the same spot as the sealing rim at the Luger pistol?

Or if they made complete new barrels why employing that unnecessary sealing rim at the P.38?

Not enough tooling so they used the same chamber reamer they used for the newly made Luger barrels?

BTW, do east German Luger barrels have that sealing rim? No Vopo Luger was available to check.

And why would they have reintroduced that sealing rim anyway since East Germany used steel cased ammo as well?

Speculation at this point. To me it still looks like a sleeved barrel. Esp. those peening marks where the barrel sticks out of the barrel block. Only the new Vopo P.38 barrels have these markings and I can’t even figure out what machining operation would have left these marks and for what reason other than covering a ring joint.

The only way to find out indeed seems to be cutting on of those Vopo barrels. Maybe there is a cutaway model out there that could help to clarify the matter.

Was also looking for deactivated barrels as they are common in Europe with the barrel slotted or otherwise cut open. No luck so far…

Now lets go to the historical aspects…

In 1945 the Walther factory was first inspected by American troops and their technical intelligence teams:

https://forums.g503.com/viewtopic.php?t=250311

PIC 4

“The P.38 Pistol” states on page 55 – when on April 4, 1945 American troops arrived at the Walther plant 1,600 P.38/HP were found ready to ship and others still unfinished were assembled and taken as war souvenirs.

So after the Americans took everything they were interested in plus everything else they didn’t wanna leave for the Russians, the second raid happened when the Russians arrived on July 3^rd 1945.

And the Russians took everything!

Two aspects played a role. First they wanted to strip the former enemy of all resources that would make Germany a powerful and dangerous player ever again. And they were still traumatized by the experience not having enough guns when WW2 started.

In Stalingrad they only had one rifle for every other soldier. The unarmed ones were supposed to pick up a rifle from a fallen one with a rifle!

The second aspect is that Russia was lacking almost everything regarding modern equipment (by standards back then).

My grandma told me when a group of Russian soldiers was looting the house right after the war one of them was putting his boot in the toilet trying to figure out what that appliance was good for! He simply didn’t know what it was.

Now before the thousands of Russian readers we have will all get butthurt – they had a very few big and some smaller cities in Russia but 95% of the country was just outback. With these primitive farmer’s cottages, unpaved roads, a well in the backyard and a hole in the ground to take a dump!

So they took EVERYTHING they didn’t have back home in Russia. Nothing remotely usable was left!

According to documents of the Soviet Main Directorate “Beutegut” (war booty) 60,149 pianos, grand pianos and accordions, 941,605 pieces of furniture, over 3 million pairs of shoes and 1,2 million winter coats, clothing, bed linen and furs were removed from the Soviet occupation zone (SBZ).

And in 1946 the buildings of the Walther factory were demolished.

That’s why the Walther factory never became a part of the ETW conglomerate (VEB Ernst Thälmann-Werke, founded 1954).

Same story happened with the Mauser factory in french occupied Germany.

There is a very interesting book telling a lot about these post-war aspects:

PIC 5 book cover

Before the demolition of the Mauser factory was ordered in November 1947 several trains with guns, parts, equipment, machinery etc. were leaving for France.

The question that there was enough experienced personal available. In that book German engineers questioned in 1945 stated that they were already lacking trained staff after 1942! And it would take an estimated two years to get production and R&D to the level before 1945.

And in the soviet zone no one was employed in essential functions who was formerly engaged in the NSDAP. In contrast to the western Allies who used former cops etc. after a short de-nazification period. That was reducing the available qualified workforce in East Germany even more.

And we are talking about the late 40’s and early 50’s when these “new” P.38’s were made.

According to the aforementioned book East Germany received a large number of WW2 guns from the Russians in 1953. The better ones were reworked the others used for spare parts. Coincidentally all the N-series barrels both P.38 and P08 are dated 1953, most 9/53?

And when the mass production of the P.38 was already planned why having a production line for the way more complex P08 set up as well? Regarding the limited resources at that time it wouldn’t make any sense.

So could all these “newly made” P.38’s and P08’s be reworked WW2 guns? Absolutely.

Same goes for the Walther PP post-war production. All of those “1001” guns could be reworked WW2 guns. Here you can see serial No. 132270.

http://www.hermann-historica-archiv.de/auktion/hhm50.pl?db=S-50.txt&f=ZAEHLER&c=1153&t=temartic_S_GB&co=1

They for sure didn’t make over 130,000 of these! That’s a rework retaining the original number.

The expert literature often gives conflicting info as well and should be taken with a grain of salt.

“The Parabellum is back” on page 90 shows a list of guns manufactured at Mauser under French control stating that 35,000 P.38 pistols were made until March 1946 and 20,000 Mauser HSc pistols. Manufacturing ended in May 1946.

On the same page a production overview including April 1946 lists only 13,971 HSc pistols!

The book “The Mauser Parabellum 1930-1946″ shows the very same list for the complete time frame till May 1946 but only 3,500 P.38! Which clearly looks like a transcription error. Both books published 2010.

The book “The P.38 pistol” (2017) gives on page 176 a total of 37,855 P.38’s made under french control. Which could very well be since the chart in “The Parabellum is back” on page 90 lists 36,720 P.38 made including April 1946 plus likely a few more made in May before production ceased.

I’m aware there is the wish of every collector to possess something special, only made in very limited numbers, but except for a few special markings not even consistently used, I haven’t seen any physical evidence proving actually newly made (not assembled) P08/P.38/PP at that time.

Things were changing quickly though in the mid-50’s with establishing the West German Bundeswehr in 1955 and the East German NVA in 1956 …

If any of our readers has more information or other aspects we should cover – please let us know.

The myth of East-German newly manufactured P.38 pistols

Chuck — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 08:00:51 +0000

There is the tale of 120 P.38 and 120 Luger pistols allegedly newly manufactured in East Germany in the early 1950’s. Also known as the N-series guns.

The very comprehensive book “The P.38 pistol” by Alexander Krutzek, Dietrich Jonke & Orvel L. Reichert is giving some conflicting info on that matter.

The serial number range for these allegedly newly made P.38’s according to this book is N1000 – N1120.

On page 278 though they picture the very first pistol N1001 which is clearly using an old cyq slide.

PIC P38 1a

But on page 301 they are listing these guns as: “GDR production (Suhl) 1953. All major parts newly produced.”

Here you can see the P.38 N1031 with Mauser byf44 slide:

https://www.p38guns.com/N1031.htm

And here is N1080 with a byf43 slide:

https://www.legacy-collectibles.com/rare-east-german-ab9-p-38-soviet-block.html

PIC P38 1b

If you don’t have the above mentioned book at hand – there is a very interesting website showing among others a few more East German P38.’s.

https://www.p38guns.com/East%20German%20Guns.htm

That A.B.9 marking is no indication for a newly made part.

On the post-war East-German “Walther” PP pistols this marking (A.B.70 used as well) appears sometimes on the frame and/or the slide and maybe not at all esp. on the 1001 marked PP’s.

According to an article in DWJ (Deutsches Waffen-Journal) 2/2002 there was a complete P.38 production line ready set up in 1954. And a production of 60,000 P.38 planned for 1956 which was cancelled in 1955.

So how come that the known N-series pistols are dated 1953, before that production line was ready?

Considering the fact that in 1958 the first year of manufacturing the Makarov pistol in East Germany just a handful were made, that production goal of 60,000 P.38 sounds pretty optimistic.

Growing up in East Germany and doing my mandatory military service there as well I can tell you there was always a huge difference between the plan and the official success messages and reality.

For example the one new plant for manufacturing concrete walls for those prefabricated buildings – it wasn’t ready in time. So they simply picked up some concrete walls from another plant and at the official opening ceremony these parts were rolling out at the end of the manufacturing line!

Well, let’s check this by reference to an East German “VOPO” P.38 pistol.

It’s a plain vanilla Spreewerke cyq gun which got a new barrel in East Germany and with the VOPO markings defaced later on before importation to the U.S.

PIC 2 + 3

There was an import restriction for guns from combloc countries and by peening out the VOPO star the origin of these guns should be hidden. I wonder if anybody at U.S. customs in the 1980’s would have known the VOPO star…

Now if you take a look in the cartridge chamber of that newly made East German barrel you will notice a small ring joint.

PIC 4 + 5

What they did – they cut off the old barrel right in front of the barrel block and drilled the block out from the front almost all the way and sleeved it with a newly made barrel.

To hide the ring joint at the front where the barrel sticks out of the barrel block they peened over that small gap. All East German made P.38 barrels I’ve seen were like that except for one where the peening was left out and the ring joint was clearly visible.

PIC 6 + 7 + 8

That partly sleeved cartridge chamber also leaves clear marks on the cartridge casings.

PIC 9

It tells us that – just a few years after the war and stripped of all manufacturing equipment by the Russians – they simply were not able to manufacture the complete barrel.

They had some lathes to turn simple barrels but nothing to make more complex parts like the slide and frame much less the way more complex Luger pistol!

Some small parts like springs, the slide release lever and firing pins were newly made to rework old WWII guns but as far as I can see no newly manufactured main parts like frame, slide and complete barrels.

That N-series was made from old existing guns and a few maybe assembled from spare parts they found in some military armory or received from the remaining P.38 manufacturers in Czechoslovakia. Since all the guns, parts, machinery from the former Walther factory in East Germany were confiscated by the Russians right after the end of the war and shipped to the Soviet Union.

If any of the readers has one of those N-series P.38 available it would be great if you could check the barrel to see if it was sleeved and give us a feedback.

And you could also check under the left grip panel for the manufacturing number which I’ve seen on several cyq frames which were supplied to Spreewerke by another manufacturer. You wouldn’t have that on a newly made post-war frame.

PIC 10

If you don’t have the above mentioned book at hand – there is a very interesting website showing among others a few East German P38.’s.

https://www.p38guns.com/East%20German%20Guns.htm

Axel experience working on a AMT automag 2 22magnum

Chuck — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 08:00:46 +0000

AMT Automag II – replace safety lever

A few days ago a friend left one of those Automags on my work bench.

“Just needs the broken safety lever replaced and doesn’t eject properly.”

He supplied a new safety lever and two springs and bearing balls (BB) each.

Ok, first thing I always do is checking online to see if anybody posted some info on this.

There was a promising video headlined “AMT Automag II Full Disassembly”.

Sadly it leaves the disassembly part for the slide completely out because it’s “a PITA”.

Well, somebody built it so somebody can take it apart.

First you have to punch out the roll pin that serves as axis for the rear sight.

Since I’m German pins get pushed in from the right side and out from the left.

Of course this didn’t work. Trying from the right side worked hassle-free though.

Heck, these things were made in California so everything is possible.

PIC 1

After removal of the roll pin turn the elevation screw on the rear sight to max elevation.

The rear sight should come off now. Make sure you don’t lose those both tiny springs underneath.

PIC 2

Now you can push out the firing pin retaining pin from below. It doesn’t need to go out all the way.

PIC 3

Now pull out the firing pin. Shaking out the remains of the broken safety lever and ready to go!

Put the safety lever detent spring in the corresponding hole. Now try to place the 2.36mm dia. BB on top of it… It won’t stay there – guaranteed.

To avoid endless searching for the BB that fell on the floor to be gone forever, you clamp the pistol slide inside a plastic bag. This way the BB is landing in the bag and we are happy.

PIC 4

To keep the BB in place and being able to push it down in the detent spring hole you’ll need a fixture.

Since I’m not planning on doing this ever again (!!!), a simple piece of round wood I found in my trash can was used. Needs a cutout about the diameter of the BB and slightly off center since that matches the location of the detent spring hole in the slide.

PIC 5

Then clamp the slide in the bench vise slightly canted to the left side so the BB will stay in position.

PIC 6

BEFORE you continue make sure the BB is going all the way in the detent spring hole!

Both springs provided were either too long or the hole too short. Remember – made in CA!

So I slightly shortened the spring (flattened end towards BB) till the BB was clearing the hole for the safety lever.

With the fixture in place (press fit to the safety hole) the BB has no other way to go when you push it down with a punch.

My friend who dropped that project on my table just showed up and told me: “You need new punches, they suck!”

I guess he grabbed the one I had modified for this exercise and hadn’t been changed back to normal so far.

You have to push down the BB at a slight angle approaching from the cutout for the hammer.

So it helps if you angle the tip of the punch accordingly. Using this specialized tool on something else might become a lil frustrating I can imagine…

While keeping the BB pushed down, you pull out the fixture and (try to) push the safety lever (pointing in the 12 o’clock position) in.

You still will have a hard time to get it in so a slight chamfer on the safety lever as pictured helps a lot.

PIC 7

Once I got the safety lever in it worked nicely – so far…

BUT after installing the firing pin the safety lever was only rotating about two thirds!

The cutout for the firing pin was not radiused so the safety could not properly rotate under the firing pin and was off center same as the chamfered area on the rear of the safety!

PIC 8a and 8b

That required some grinding and fitting on the safety lever – after removing it from the slide!

So BEFORE installing the detent spring and BB, test the interaction between safety lever and firing pin! Saves you the trouble to do it all again.

BTW – it can never hurt to have a large reference collection at hand where you can simply pull a similar gun for comparison!

PIC 9

Word of caution – NEVER let the hammer fall against the engaged safety at full force!

That’s very likely the reason for the broken safety on this gun.

Engage the safety, pull the hammer slightly back, then pull the trigger and gently lower the hammer.

The safety on this gun doesn’t offer a decocking function. But even with other guns that feature that, I always keep the hammer back and lower it slowly after engaging the safety.

I have experienced damage to the safety at the Walther PP/PPK and P.38/P1 if you just let the hammer drop.

The only gun with slide mounted decocking safety that seems to withstand permanent hammer dropping is the Beretta M9. On the other side I don’t know what the maintenance schedule on these guns is with precautionary replacement of the safety lever.

The only pistols where the decocking function is properly desgined IMO are the SIG 220 series guns and the Sauer & Sohn 1938H of course which was their inspiration. Here the hammer is actually gently lowered against the force of your thumb pressing down the decocking lever.

This is NOT the case with some other guns with similar decocking levers like Astra 80/90/100 or Taurus 92/99.

Finally the test firing to see about the “ejection issue”.

With some random .22 WMR ammo it worked right from the start.

PIC 10

Happens all the time when people show me guns that don’t cycle properly.

Self-loading guns esp. recoil operated ones (with the lone exception of inertia systems) need to be firmly supported (hand/shoulder) to cycle and eject/feed.

Time to wrap this gun up and hope to never touch one of those again!

Building the baby Ruger pistol

Chuck — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 08:00:58 +0000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSRqPorFM0o&feature=youtu.beBabyRuger Mk 1

Always was a fan of the classic .22 Ruger MK series pistols. Just didn’t like the disassembly/reassembly procedure.

How it all started…

Right after coming over to Arizona I found a few Ruger Mk 1 grip frames at a gun show for $20 each!

PIC 1

So I had a starting point for one of my long time want to do projects – a Baby Ruger.

There are Baby Lugers out there but I couldn’t find a single Baby Ruger. Given the fact that the Ruger MK series is probably one of the most customized and tuned .22 pistols that was quite surprising to me.

Anyway – here at Gun Lab we do what we like to do…

Since there first was the idea to have a grip safety – just for the looks though, having some hump protruding from the rear of the grip – there was no way to use the original way to keep the rear end of the receiver held down on the grip frame.

So I added a tube section to the grip frame, somehow mimicking the contour of the Luger pistol.

PIC 2

Next step was cutting down the grip frame by half an inch.

PIC 3

After that the original hammer spring housing needed to replaced.

PIC 4

Hammer spring assembly had to get a different layout as well.

PIC 5

Inbetween, when you get stuck with some technical issue you can handle other stuff that needs to be done anyway – like them grip panels.

PIC 6

PIC 7

Next thing was to cut down the barrel to 88mm. Why exactly that length? Just for the looks! Minimum for reliable function without changes to recoil spring and bolt mass I considered to be 78mm.

PIC 8A

Got that receiver/barrel assy at gunbroker. I was looking at all the gun shows for some ugly, rusted but still functioning pistol. Of course found it only after I was done with this one…

PIC 8B

Maybe I will do something to it some day. Can’t do just-for-the-fun-of-it projects all day long!

The front sight was welded from 3 different parts. My first idea was to drill out the original front sight from the cut off barrel, but it didn’t fit (visually) to the shorter barrel. After searching for a while in the huge stockpile of gun parts here I finally decided to make it from scratch.

PIC 9

If you assemble all the separate parts you were working on all the time there will be some minor adjustments necessary for the gun to work properly. So the magazine needed to sit a trifle lower since the bolt was slightly rubbing against it. The bolt stop pin needed some fitting – it didn’t wanna go all the way in with the recoil spring assembled.

The idea of the grip safety got dropped in the process of building that baby. There was no technical need for it right from the start – just that visual thingy. And there is simply not enough space for adding that feature. The simplified disassembly/assembly method connected with that initial idea survived though.

So after quite a bit of work there you get your piece of gun porn…

PIC 10

PIC 11

PIC 12A

PIC 12B

PIC 13

PIC 14

PIC 15

PIC 16

Here is a video on the pistol.

Axel post on the Lacrimae pistol

Chuck — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 08:00:41 +0000

The trigger (besides the grip panels the only non-steel part) on my sample was not properly fitted to the frame and thus did not reset correctly. That doesn’t seem to be an isolated incident. Way down on the following website a user is describing the same issue.

https://www.nationalgunforum.com/semi-auto-handgun-discussion/53800-can-you-identify-gun.html

There are some excellent german websites regarding blank guns. Some of them referred to in the following.

https://www.tactical-dad.com/waffen/schreckschusswaffen/ass-33-6-lacrimae-gaspistole-ohne-ptb/

Below on this website there are 2 videos showing a post WW2 Wadie blank/tear gas pistol using the same operating system and actully ejecting shells.

https://www.tactical-dad.com/waffen/schreckschusswaffen/wadie-automatik-gaspistole-ohne-ptb/

First video has a misfire first as well and he describes lots of sparks coming off the ejection port and in his face. He fired 3 blank cartridges total and at two of them the primer had set back a little and on the third one it was pushed out completely.

At that gun most of the parts are made of zinc alloy including barrel and frame/bolt face. Only some small parts like firing pin, trigger bar, springs are made of steel.

Sadly I couldn’t find any information on the maximum gas pressure. Can’t be that much considering the zinc alloy design and the shells not being supported in any way and have to hold the gas pressure on their own.

Ammunition was made well into the 60’s. Post WW2 ammo has aluminum shells which seem to be more thick-walled than the older brass shells from the 1930’s/40’s.

The pistol apparently needs very precisely dimensioned ammo. Just 0.1mm below and you are getting ignition problems. Just 0.1mm too long and you have difficulties to fumble them in the ejection port.

On the same website there is an article on another pistol (HS4) using the same ammo/principle and there you can see in one of the pics an enlarged gas channel/groove on the left side partially covering the left barrel entrance and the receiver/frame side wall. Thus giving a little bit more gas pressure for the shell ejection.

https://www.tactical-dad.com/waffen/schreckschusswaffen/gas-alarm-pistole-hs4-ohne-ptb/

Some more interesting links I stumbled across:

http://www.poplasnak.cz/b/august-schuler-suhl/

https://www.gas-waffen.de/srs-waffen/august-sch%C3%BCler/

https://www.gas-waffen.de/srs-waffen/august-sch%C3%BCler/modell-33-6/

https://www.gas-waffen.de/srs-munition/8-mm-lacrimae/

http://www.ammo-one.com/8mmTeargascenterfire.html

a quick video

Testing No 7

Chuck — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 08:00:26 +0000

In the last post the high speed video was of the first generation VG1-5 that was built a number of years ago by John. What we here at Gun Lab did was start and finished the first 5 VG1-5 rifles. The remaining weapons are currently being built but the first 5 are going through very serious testing. The rifle in this video is number 7.

Enjoy the video.

Again my thanks goes out to Axel and Carl and Ian from Forgotten weapons. There help in this phase of testing and the use of Ian’s high speed camera was a great deal of help.

A day testing guns

Chuck — Wed, 01 May 2019 08:00:48 +0000

This Sunday we spent 6 hours testing a variety of weapons. A few more VG1-5 rifles were tested. The MG-34 had all the springs replaced and was tested as well as the mpi-69. This is a quick video of what was 6 hours of actual work and testing.

Shooting the Frankinfal

Chuck — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 08:00:03 +0000

A while back I picked up a FN-FAL heavy barrel Israel contract rifle that would not work. If you inserted a single round in the chamber and let the bolt close on it the rifle would fire but not eject. If you tried to load the rifle from a magazine it would feel but the bolt would not close fully. In the video you will see that the rifle would not eject.

After looking at the rifle it was decided to just rebuild the gun from the front to the rear. Every part was checked and and measured. The head spacing was way off, the gas piston was bent and the gas tube was also bent, there was an issue with the gas block and we checked all the components of the fire control group.

Now it is a nice shooting rifle. Enjoy this short clip of it working.

Another project from Axel, the Pimp pistol

Chuck — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 08:00:54 +0000

CZ82 slim (pimp) grip exercise

While waiting for obtaining an inexpensive used Glock (geez – price tag, my only complaint about Glocks) for my first real gun project here, I was thinking about thinner grigs for the CZ82.

Well, on my last trip to J&G sales (see my previous post) I somehow couldn’t resist and get me one of their CZ82 special offers as well. It was a “multiple handgun sale” anyway (report to ATF), so what.

They are actually very interesting guns . Chuck from gun lab here – initially pointed out to them.

The way they lock down the trigger guard for disassembly is far better than on the Walther PP(K), Makarov etc. guns. The trigger pull on several guns I tried before selecting mine, felt better than on any Walther, Makarov or FEG variant I’ve tried so far.

But somehow they appeared too big and chunky for what they are. And main factor here are the grip panels which are fatter/bulkier than technically necessary. They fit my mid-size hands perfectly but for a concealed carry gun or smaller hands they aren’t the best choice.

So as an intermediate project it started like this.

PIC A + B

Meant to be done “on the quick” with just some left over material that was laying around. But like many side projects it became more time-consumings as initially intended. And getting impatient I just used some JB Weld to fill some gaps here and there…

Well, at least put some masking tape one the frame before. Cause that JB stuff sticks like crazy to the metal and the result looks like this.

PIC C

So I had to pry out the left grip panel (never leave the magazine in) and partially redo it.

For removing the JB weld remains you can best use (aside from heat) vinegar. You have to let it soak in and best remove it with your fingernail (piece of hard wood etc. would work as well), didn’t affect the paint/enamel on the gun. But you gotta pay for your mistakes one way or the other.

PIC D

But the result was worth it IMO. And esp. for a 99 cent paint from Home Depot.

PIC E + F

And isn’t it great if you have a well assorted reference collection within reach to pull some guns for comparison?!

PIC G

The total width (grips) for:

CZ82: 32.7 – 33.3mm

Walther PPK: 24.5mm

Makarov: 27.6mm

RK 59: 29.35mm

P-64: 26.6mm

CZ82 slim grip: 25.4mm / 1in

So only the Walther PPK is 0.9mm / 0.0354in slimmer than those CZ82 white grips.

Which now makes the double-stack (12rd) CZ82 not bigger/bulkier than a single stack (8rd)Makarov.

PIC H

And the white color – considered as “pimp style” by some folks here? Well, there was no inexpensive pearlescent paint available …