Fritz Mann Model 1921: Chamber-Ring-Delayed Blowback

hey guys thanks for tuning in to another video on forgottenweapons.com i'm ian mccallum and i'm here today at morphe's taking a look at an adorable little baby pocket pistol from germany from 1921. specifically this is a fritz mann pistol and it was manufactured by let me see if i can get this right the fritz mann fein machinin waffen and jerk zoid fabric or the machinery tools and weapons factory of fritz mann which was formed in 1896 actually by both fritz and his brother otto and they also employed one of fritz's sons vili the company made all sorts of stuff as their name sort of implies they made tools they made engines they made helmets they made ski bindings and circa 1920 they decided to get into the gun market as well so right after world war one now this thing is absolutely tiny if you squint a lot you can probably see it from back there but let's go ahead and talk about this more when we have the camera up close so you can actually see what we're talking about here first and foremost this thing is tiny uh just to show you how small it really is we can compare it to a nine millimeter kick well okay that's that's not actually a nine millimeter casing that's a a 50 millimeter two inch canon shell uh perhaps a better comparison that might be a box of 556 like it's basically the same size there it is also a very very narrow pistol has basically no controls on the sides which helps it to be narrow a dollar bill that's that gives you a pretty good size uh if we want to compare it to something of reasonably similar purpose how about a remington derringer there it is actually smaller than the derringer in both well in all three dimensions if we look at the width you can see the derringers grips are really quite thick compared to the mon but what makes this particularly interesting to me is that it has a very unusual locking system or delaying system so this is in 25 acp it has a five round magazine which we can pull out presumably there we go so five rounds it's chambered for 25 acp or 6.35 millimeter browning and we have a cocking piece on the back here well that's the whole bolt so you have your bolt right there which is directly connected to this there is a spring in the top we'll take it apart in a moment so the way this works is not just simple blowback there is actually a ring machined into the chamber it's shallow and it's beveled at both ends so that there are no sharp edges on it and the idea is when you fire the case being brass and malleable is going to expand into that ring and then when it tries to push backwards out of the chamber that ring has to kind of get squished back down before the case can get out of the chamber and that functionally acts as a locking well not a locking mechanism it acts as a delaying mechanism that keeps the case from getting too far out of the chamber before pressure has dropped in the barrel what's even cooler is that it's actually really easy for me to show you that because if i open the bolt just a little bit i can rotate the barrel about 90 degrees and pull the barrel right out so if we look in there you can see uh that sharp ring the big ring deeper in that's the the shoulder of the cartridge so that's the end of the chamber and then you can see this other ring that's about halfway in the chamber and that is the delaying ring now in theory it works there is potentially an issue if your brass isn't quite strong enough because cartridge brass really isn't designed with this sort of stress in mind and so there are some stories of brass failing on these and causing the the bolt to open much too quickly and spray out little bits of brass and hot powder possibility probably not exactly super lethal given that this is just a little 25 auto but that's how the gun actually delays a couple other things i can show you here on the outside these were made largely for the international markets they're marked in english made in germany fritz mon grips we have a serial number here on the front of the grip this one is 16529-2 that 2-1 is date of production and all of the known examples are dated either 1920 or 1921. now there are some interesting issues with the serial number the 1920 guns based on on some numbers i got from ed buffalo uh through his website 1920 pattern guns top out at about 3 000 and 1921 guns start at about 16 000 or thereabouts it seems like there's quite a large serial number jump uh and then these seem to jump the 1921 guns seem to go up to at least the 30 thousands it's not clear to me just how many of these were made but i suspect at the minimum there is a gap in serial number range between 1920 and 1921 possibly as much as jumping uh straight to 10 000 when they started in 21 or possibly more if they took the total number of 1920 guns and just added a tens digit to the beginning of it in 1921 you could potentially jump from 3 000 up to 13 000 but i haven't found any documentation or anything that that explains exactly what the serial number range is on this side we have the caliber which is 6.35 millimeter and we have man's patent he had a couple of patents on these the most substantial one was four that chamber ring mechanism there are sites theoretically on top of the gun i mean that's like the world's tiniest itty bittiest front sight and the sight picture is like nothing just there might as well not be sights on these it is meant to be used at very close range i should mention this is of course the magazine release putting it on the front of the gun is a nice way to avoid having any controls on the side other than of course the safety lever here back is safe and forward is the fire position this bump is an interesting piece when i open this up you can see that bump is actually this bar that acts as the ejector and also as a loaded chamber indicator when there is a cartridge in the chamber let's just put the barrel back in for a moment when there's a cartridge in the chamber the rim is going to push on that bar and push that little detent out which will act to tell you that the chamber is loaded and it acts as a detent uh behind the safety so it makes the safety a little stiffer when the gun's not loaded this just kind of swivels back and forth pretty easily but if you actually have a chamber uh cartridge in the chamber it's harder to push like you have to active actually push it from fire into safe which that's actually a nice not too trivial safety mechanism all right now to further disassemble this we can take the recoil plug out recoil spring this is a guide rod that runs down the length of the the frame and threads into this piece so i'm going to hold this in place there's going to be a lot of spring tension released when this is unscrewed so we're going to try and not let it shoot into the wall there we go all right so there's the main spring and the guide rod now we also have a striker in there so we can unscrew this there we go got our striker spring and we can pull out the striker itself this is worth commenting on because it's been made as sort of a large cone instead of a really spindly little firing pin and this is far less likely to break than what you'll see as a firing pin in a lot of guns this small all right so there it is disassembled except for pulling the bolt itself out this is sticking on something and it's not entirely clear to me what and i don't want to force it so so one thing to point out here is this scallop cut right there in the bolt one thing to point out here is this scallop it's small but it's definitely there right there in the bolt that is the out of battery safety so when we have this coming into the gun you can see that our trigger lever which is here sits down in that little scalloped cut so if the bolt's not closed like this it actually pushes the trigger lever down which prevents it from firing so it will only fire right there when that trigger bar is all the way in the upward position the safety is right there you can see that spindle in the center rotating in the rearward position here on safe the body of the safety bar blocks the trigger from moving up and when the safety is in the fire position you can see that flat cut which allows the trigger to move so that's how the safety works you can see that flat metal bar in there a little bit better now so at the front here it acts as a loaded chamber indicator and then there's a ledge on it right there which is going to act as ejector when the bolt gets to this point that little ledge is going to kick the empty cartridge out so that's pretty much it for the fritz man the company would exist until 1938 but i don't believe that they did any other work in handguns these were produced in 1920 and 21 and they were available until it looks like about 1924 or so there's only one other pistol that i'm aware of that used this sort of annular ring in the chamber style of delaying system and that would be the kimball made in the u.s in the 1950s in 30 carbine it was not particularly successful is in fact less successful than the mon here but if you're interested in that i do also have a video on the kimball you can check that out i'll link to it at the end of this video the mound here i think very cool uh funky unusual mechanics unusual look pretty darn cool hopefully you guys enjoyed the video as well thanks for watching

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 151,040

Rating: 4.9870129 out of 5

Keywords: history, development, mccollum, forgotten weapons, design, disassembly, pistol, model 1921, model 1920, 1920, 1921, fritz mann, mann, chamber ring, blowback, delayed blowback, handgun, weimar, versailles, 25 app, 6.35mm, 6.35 browning, pocket pictol, concealed, civilian, semiauto

Id: 83-HBweA378

Length: 11min 6sec (666 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/excelsior2000]

Let's compare size to a 9mm case:

throws down a 50mm case

Ian doesn't screw with us often, but I love it when he does.

[u/Waterstar]

Now that’s a really cool, and really cute little gun

[u/lugersvizzere]

I’ve actually owned a few of these over the years. You’ve got to watch the web of your hand when shooting these, they bite. Also accuracy is truly awful. I don’t think I’ve shot a less accurate handgun in my life.

[u/moviemoocher]

otto mann hail to the bus driver i guess blazer is not recommended ammo?