AJ Ordnance "Thomas" - A .45 Locked by Grip Alone

hey guys thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm in McCallum and today we're gonna take a look at an aged a Ordinance humus pistol so named because it was designed by a gentleman by the name of Frank Thomas Jr who patented the idea in 1973 or submitted his first patent in 1973 second patent in 1974 got patents approved the gun went into development and actually went into production 1977 now the whole lot of them are made will touch on that later what makes this particularly interesting to me is its locking system or lack thereof this is a delayed blowback pistol that uses basically an angled wedge that the slide has to overcome before it can cycle what makes it unusual is that the motive power behind that locking wedge is specifically from your grip if you don't actually handle hang on to this gun properly the locking system doesn't work properly which may have something to do with why not many of them were made but to start with the basic concept behind this pistol was to develop something that was particularly suitable for concealed carry but in 45 ACP so if you take a look at his patent he talks a lot about how hammer fired guns rely on mechanical safeties and mechanical safeties can sometimes break or be too slow to use or otherwise generally undesirable hammer might catch in your pocket something like that so what he's really specifically wanted to do was develop a hammerless striker fired gun that didn't require a manual safety so this has a very long very heavy trigger pole like a double action revolver and really there weren't a whole lot of options for something like this in the early 70s when it was developed this is the same period when you'll close to the same period when you'll see guns like the summer Ling's people trying to figure out how do we have a large caliber small pocket gun now this is not particularly large it's not tiny it is fairly heavy it weighs in at 32 ounces so a full two pounds it's a it's a chunky all steel sort of gun it's well-made so tell you what let's just take a closer look and I'm excited to show you how this delaying system actually works so this is a chunky heavy pistol but it's not actually all that large perhaps its greatest failing as a concealed carry pistol is the width which is pretty significant now basic drift adjustable sights we have a long double action all right trigger pulled that many refer to like a staple gun and they're not far off I will say it's smooth it's just very heavy and it get like it gets heavier as you get it farther and farther back now here is one immediate failing of the pistol actually I suppose I should show you first the way the grip safety well it's not really a grip safety the way that the locking system works when you push this lever in which certainly looks like a grip safety a pair of little lever arms come up and lock into the slide so there's one on that side and there's one on this side so when you hold the pistol and by the way it does feel quite comfortable in the hand when you hold it here it's difficult not to engage that grip safety and one of the specific elements in the patent is that when you fire the gun the recoil is going to push the gun back into your hand which is going to maximize the force holding this locking block in place and then you can see that the locking block and the slide surface there is slightly angled so eventually the slide will have enough force over enough time to push this locking block down push this back into your hand and allow the slide to cycle one of the really kind of quirky side effects of this system is that if you're holding the pistol in your hand you can track the slide because you're locking the slide forward so in order to cycle it you have to hold the gun in such a way that you're not depressing the grip safety and it's a well enough design calling a grip safety it's it looks like one it functions like one it's well enough designed that it's actually fairly hard to hold it with how depressing this one of the neat side-effects is if your buddies haven't seen this video you can hand them this and tell them it's like it's Thor's pistol and it can only be opened by only the slide can only be opened by those who are worthy because they'll go there and grab the gun and try to open it and they can't and yeah be a fun little trick to play on someone the key is get your hand away from the grip and then you can cycle it now now with that in mind one of the downsides is that there isn't a safety disconnect that forces this to be down before the trigger can be pulled it's a striker-fired system we'll take a look at the inside in a moment but not only will it fire out of without the locking system engaged but because the striker spring is so heavy as you pull the trigger back if you're not locking the slide in place it actually starts to pull the slide slightly out of battery because the striker spring is fighting the mainspring so that's not great I don't know if that's far enough out of battery for a cartridge see there we go I don't know if that's far enough out of battery for a cartridge to actually rupture but I don't really want to find out either fortunately this is kind of like the the potentially hazardous safety on the Nambu pistols the name of 94 where it's not actually that much of a practical deal the idea that you would be able to fire this thing without the block engaged is slim anyway the magazine here is actually a they basically just took 1911 magazines cut them down this holds six cartridges here's a this is actually a balusters Melina mag but if you look at this you can see that we have the same hole pattern on the two magazines that whole pattern is designed for seven cartridges which is a standard 1911 capacity this is one round shorter it'll hold six you cannot get a cartridge in position to actually fill this bottom witness hole and in addition they cut an extra magazine locking catch notch in the magazine you can actually lock a standard 1911 mag into the pistol the problem is it's held down far enough that it doesn't deactivate to the magazine safety that's built into the gun so if I push this up a little bit then there goes then I can actually the gun will function however if you don't then the magazine safety disconnects the trigger you will find some people suggesting that the magazine holds six rounds but it can't actually be inserted with the slide closed unless you've only got five because it can't compress far enough at least on this example that is not true I can load this with six rounds and it's like just you know stuff it into the gun it's a little tight but it does fit and function now let's go ahead and take off the grip panel here so I can show you the locking system such as it is by the way these plastic grips are thin and fairly fragile so if you have one of these be careful with them don't over tighten the grip screws that sort of thing be careful with them or they will crack and break you can see on the underside there that they're not solid there they're really quite thin so that's your locking block and that's all there is to it when you push this in but that goes up to take the slide off the pistol is nice and convenient this is a super easy thing to take down there are two little buttons spring loaded right here and you push those in they basically create the last bit of the slide rails so if I push those in they disengage we go and then you can lift the slide up and off and then come on there we go this disassembles just like a Walther pp or a Makarov or any of the guns along that sort of development there's our striker in there it's hammerless not a whole lot else going on in here we have a fixed barrel which does in fact make this gun potentially very accurate because the barrel is not moving with each shot however the very long double action trigger pole kind of negates any inherent mechanical accuracy advantage that you get from the fixed barrel because it's really hard to shoot this accurately these two disassembly spring sort of buttons are they're just that and they fit in a hollow slot in the slide or in the frame so I can take them out the way the magazine safety works is pretty easy we've got that leg right there when a magazine is in the gun it pushes that leg up which means that the striker the trigger can now engage with the striker so when you pull the trigger it's going to pull the striker back back back back back back back more back more and then at the very end of travel there it drops down releases the striker to go forward so if the magazine is not in the gun you can see that this engagement surface drops just slightly so that can fire that is now low enough that it won't touch with striker and you can see that when I use a standard 1911 magazine it pushes that that arm up just a little bit but not far enough to raise the engagement surface that that's about more like what you would want so in theory if you had one of these pistols and you wanted to use extended magazines you could take any regular 1911 compatible magazine cut that extra notch right there and you'd be able to use it but I don't know why you would bother on a pistol like a Thomas 45 we didn't actually look at the markings before so let's take a quick glance at them now AJ ordnance was in Covina California and they've got their little fancy emblem there they did the actual production the gun is called a Thomas because that's the designers last name caliber 45 and only made in 45 patent marking on the opposite side there are two patents associated with this and then a serial number on the right side behind the trigger guard two leading zeros there so they were ready for this to be a big success and to make a hundred thousand of them it's not entirely clear to me why production ended so quickly on the thomas it might be a matter of well it might very well be a matter of the fact that it will fire unlocked and sort of out of battery if you don't grip it maybe it might have been an issue of price it might have been an issue of simply there wasn't enough profit margin in the pistol and they didn't manage to sell enough quickly enough to recoup expenses and continue manufacturing them unfortunately I haven't been able to find any information on exactly you know which of these possible scenarios was the real one suffice to say they only made a little more than 600 the highest serial number I've seen is 16 22 they started production at a thousand the lowest one I think I've seen referenced is a thousand fourteen with the exception of one that is in the NRA Museum in Virginia which is serial number zero zero zero zero zero two which is one that was specifically given by Frank Thomas to his son there were a couple that were made with like serial numbers one two and three just for the family to keep but then commercial production started at a thousand and ended shortly after 1600 so I think these are pretty cool to get a chance to take a look at I'm really curious how this actually feels to shoot so I'm gonna take it out to the range and do some shooting with it and we'll have that video tomorrow stick around I think you'll enjoy it certainly if you enjoyed this one yeah I think you'll like that one thanks for watching

Channel: undefined

Views: 219,362

Rating: 4.9742475 out of 5

Keywords: history, development, mccollum, forgotten weapons, design, disassembly, kasarda, inrange, inrangetv, aj ordnance, Thomas, 45, 1970s, 70s, double action, striker, delayed blowback, blowback, unlocked, cow, carry, pistol, concealed, handgun, sidearm, 1911, 45 acp, frank Thomas jr, single stack, colt, simmering, asp, grip safety, unique, unusual, rare, collector, collectible

Id: YLbrpkrKNOQ

Length: 12min 54sec (774 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Aethelredditor]

Ah yes, man-delayed blowback.

[u/zmannz1984]

The method of operation seems like the equivalent of a chinese finger trap or some complicated puzzle box but in the form of a handgun.

[u/cmptrnrd]

I think it's actually a pretty good idea

[u/Broken-Butterfly]

What a terrible idea.

[u/thindinkus]

Man I hate grip safety’s.