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| On top of the Eee PC for scale. |
First impressions; for a gun built in 1976 it's in great shape, just a very little bit of holster wear. The double action trigger pull is actually worse than the Nagant revolvers... so I'll be most likely picking up a Wolff hammer spring a few pounds lighter. The single action pull on the other hand is quite nice, some take up, and a nice light crisp break.
The safety/decocker is the typical European "up for fire/down for decock/safe," and the mag release is the European heal setup, but the mag slides out nice and smooth. I'm not a huge fan of those types of controls, but the double action pull is more than heavy enough for safe hammer-down carry, and should still be plenty after the spring change.
The size is comparable to the current flood of "pocket nines" like the Ruger LC-9, and the 9x18mm cartridge is right between .380acp and 9x19, so I'll be looking for a decent pocket holster that this little guy can ride in.
I should have a longer post in a few days with more photos, and possibly an initial range report. If there's anything in particular you guys want to know about it, just drop a line down in the comments.
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When I was at Randy's Guns & Knives, we had a contract to "fix" several thousand of those things for the importer.
See, when they were re-arsenaled, they basically took them all apart and had a big pile of slides and a big pile of triggers and whatever. Then they just reassembled pistols from the piles.
Thanks to the magic of tolerance stacking, some of those guns as they were imported had triggers I couldn't pull with both fingers. At least one had a trigger Shannon couldn't pull and a lifetime of gunsmithing has left him with a grip that can crack walnuts; I've seen him take the bushing out of my Springer Pro with no tools...
I only had a couple times dry firing it last night that I couldn't get it to break in double-action, but I have been known to go up the side of a clif from time to time and think I've got decent grip strength.
From what I've found online, they put about a 24# hammer spring in to break the hardened primers the Poles used for their sub-gun rounds to prevent slam fires, so you can drop it down to 18 or 19 and not really have an issue with most 9x18 rounds. I'm willing to drop the $5 or so and see if it works out. Probably get a little heavier recoil spring too while I'm at it, I guess these things buck around a bit.
First of all, get some A-zoom snap caps. The firing pins on these are known to break and last I knew, the only replacements available were from parts guns.
My buddy and I both have P64's that we rebuilt with Wolff springs. I actually took mine down to the tiny bits and cleaned it really thoroughly. The sear is kind of hard to get back in so you might want to skip that step if yours looks to be mostly free of cosmo inside. I took the opportunity while mine was out to polish all of the sear surfaces, there is a SA sear surface and a DA sear surface. Polishing the DA sear surface really seemed to help the trigger.
The combination of the 17 pound hammer spring and the 22 pound recoil spring makes for a much better gun. Keep in mind that the heavy hammer helps reduce felt recoil in that it slows down the slide, so putting a lighter hammer spring in there will actually increase the cyclic rate and increase felt recoil. The 22 pound recoil spring seems to compensate for this.
The 22 pound recoil spring can be a pain to fit the first time. You might need to flatten the ends of the spring by grinding them down in order to make it fit. I was pretty frustrated when I tried to get mine fitted, but once I did I put probably 200 rounds through it, and it's been easy to disassemble and reassemble ever since. The spring just needs broken in.
You've probably already noticed the tiny sights. They can actually be used for very accurate shots, but they're hard to pick up quickly. My buddy and I were both able to make really impressive groups with this little gun at 20 yards or so when shooting single action.
Wikipedia says the sights on this gun are zeroed for 25M, but I actually think they're zeroed for 50M or so, like the Tokarev. Even shooting supported in single action, all my shots at 20-25 yards were way high. Just something to think about - I re-profiled my rear sight to bring the shot groups down. A terrible thing to do to a collector's piece, but I think a good thing to do on a cheap carry piece. I wouldn't want to be thinking about holdover under stress, especially when you've only got 7 rounds of what amounts to hot .380.
Another thing that helps with the sights is a little bit of nail polish on the front blade. I put some bright orange on mine.
The holster I have for this gun is a Desantis Tuck This II. It seemed to work well, I cut some of the stitching out where the trigger guard was running into it to make the gun ride a little lower.
This gun has been stupidly reliable. Both mine and my buddies have yet to skip a beat. These guns have absurdly positive and consistent ejection. You can stand about 20 feet to the shooter's 4-5 o'clock and catch all the casings out of the air without even moving around too much.
Just placed an order for an 18# hammer spring and a 22# recoil spring from Wolff.
Thanks for the advice James!
Here's a handy place for information on the P-64:
http://www.p64resource.com/
They have an active forum with some really knowledgable people, manuals, videos, and links.
I've bounced around there a bit the last couple days looking at holster options. It looks to be a good resource.
Note that hammer down, safety off carry is NOT recommended! There have been several reports of dropped P-64s firing with the safety off even when hitting carpeted floors. This the main reason I haven't gotten one as a pocket carry gun since I have a couple of Makarovs. I could deal with the heavy trigger if I didn't have to use the safety. I don't want to deal with the safety since it Walther style up to fire. The Makarov's down to fire is more natural if I'm going to use a safety for me.
The Makarov design has a lot of promise, but the quality can vary considerably, depending on the country of origin.
More here:
http://www.yankeegunnuts.com/2010/10/05/peace-dividend-part-1/
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