History of WWI Primer 147: US Colt 1900 Documentary

[Music] hi i'm marthias and this is the browning's patent automatic cold pistol later known retroactively by collectors as the model 1900 and it's going to begin a long and interesting story on our channel but for now let's get it into the lightbox being an early automatic it's not surprising that this weighs just shy of 2.2 pounds however that 9 inch length is a little remarkable it has a detachable single stack box magazine it has room for seven rounds of the 38 automatic colt pistol cartridge a new piece of ammunition developed specifically for this gun this episode and the others that will follow along into the history of the colts 1911 are being made possible by a generous loan from our friends at manticore arms thanks to them we now finally have most of what we need so pop by and say thank you also if you happen to have access to say a later prototype like the 1909 or 1910 please let us know now i'm very happy to say that this episode is the first of what is going to be a series that ultimately leads to the development and adoption of the venerated colt 1911 pistol however in order to get there we're going to see in detail that good designs come from repeated trial and error with many failed iterations along the way this incredible gun included but first a little context and we'll generally start things off setting ourselves in the year of 1896. at this time the centerfire double action revolver was standard issue for just about every army on the globe thanks to our efforts in other episodes you may know just how much effort went into even getting this far however revolvers have some inherent disadvantages which were slowly being overcome through the use of several advancing technologies first up was the development of a truly automatic machine gun a firearm that ejected a spent cartridge and fed the next all under its own power these began as massive pieces of equipment more akin to artillery than simple firearms but they soon began to shrink down it actually wasn't long before inventors were attempting their own handheld automatic rifles and pistols but the early designs were generally weak and prone to fouling and jamming the situation had improved however with the introduction of two pieces of ammunition technology first the jacketed bullet which helped keep the soft lead necessary for non-target performance from being shattered when used in small bore high speed rifles jacketing bullets also made them firmer and more consistent and reliable to sort of maneuver and feed through a mechanical system around the same time the french introduced smokeless gunpowder which is number two on our ammo advancement list of two this was first used in their magazine rifle of 1886 which kicked off a worldwide arms race thanks to its fast-moving bullet providing extremely long-range accuracy without throwing up clouds of smoke or fouling the action with unburnt powder now technically any sort of shooting builds up residue but smokeless powder was far far cleaner than the old black powder cartridges and it made the task of miniaturizing something like a machine gun exceptionally easier as you didn't need massive tolerances in order to account for all that fouling or some sort of secondary mechanism to blow it out with all these technologies in place plus some more in the way of steel and spring improvements we see a number of automatic designs start to emerge in the mid 1890s borshart mauser bergman and others would begin piecing together automatic pistols these were just powerful and reliable enough to make military officials curious however adoption and especially perfection were usually still well out of reach presently the revolver was still king and it was in this sort of environment specifically around 1894 to 1896 into which walked one already respectable inventor john moses browning born january 23 of 1855 and then very rural ogden utah he was the son of a pioneer gunsmith and was raised repairing every sort of frontier firearm that anyone managed to drag out into the wilderness and break his experience would drive him to design his own improvements and then his own ground-up single shot rifle the resulting work of art was discovered by and sold to winchester repeating arms and began a very lucrative relationship with the bulk of winchester's line and just about all their most famous guns being invented by john moses browning who is not by the way the only browning not by a long shot because his father had joined the mormon faith john moses and his brother matthew were actually products of their father's second marriage and a third very relevant brother jonathan edmund browning was from the third marriage while there are still plenty of other browning siblings scattered about these are the three we concern ourselves with today john moses conceived of ideas ed as he was called put them into metal and matt ran the business proper taking care of the books and contracts now from here the story actually gets much wider but we only care about a certain sliver of the browning's life so let's skip ahead a little bit during the late 1880s john browning had become interested in using the excess gas expelled from the muzzle of a rifle in order to operate some sort of action automatically this research path led him to develop his own machine gun initially a crude device in appearance it nonetheless ran almost without fault faster and more effective than the gatling gun and far far more portable this type of weapon however was of little interest to winchester and so the brothers took it to colt's patent firearms in 1890. now we've already begun exploring the history of samuel colt's factory with our patterson and walker episodes and we'll continue to go further soon in the meantime however let's fill in some gaps samuel colt the man would pass away in 1862 and just two years later the cult factory would be burned horribly operating at a fraction of their previous capacity the business would be saved by the efforts of widow elizabeth colt and her brother richard jarvis while they took care of running the company as a whole neither was actually an arms maker by previous trade meaning they had to rely on the management below them and superintendents for actual product development and manufacture the result was a sort of oscillating atmosphere when where an invention could either be embraced or shunned depending on the year or the market or the people involved into this sort of phrase stepped john henry hall who had been a bright and ambitious businessman with experience overseeing manufacturing he started as general manager and treasurer in 1888 and would gain more influence from there eventually rising to vp hall would push hard for modernization at colts including an 1898 all-out demand for 75 000 to invest in factory improvements particularly a better power plant and more automated machinery battling the more conservative and oftentimes let's say custodial leadership at colt hall was determined to stay innovative and was likely pleased to have received a letter from matthew browning describing a nearly impossible device without going into too much detail a deal for the resulting patent would be signed in february of 1894 with years of work it would develop into the cult model 1895 machine gun jokingly known as the potato digger while this never proved to be an especially strong financial success it did put the brownings down another lucrative path john moses browning was an ideas man so the contract on his machine gun was signed in february of 1894 and most of the fiddly work fell to the engineers at colt leaving his mind to wander to new topics he became interested in automatic pistol design which also suited the team at colt who were already working at the issue through their own man carl ebbetz formerly of krupp in germany ebbets immigrated to the us working briefly for pratt and whitney and winding up at colt where he would serve as a mechanical engineer eventually becoming the lead man on basically all new projects and eventually took over the duties of being basically the patent attorney evans had filed for his own patent in october of 1894 covering a gas-powered auto loading pistol in february of 1896 he filed for another design this time a blow forward magazine fed model both of these were purchased by colt and eventually saw some experimental development though i'm unsure how far they progressed colt also licensed this early pistol patent from ac wright revealing that they were very much interested in keeping a hand in the auto loading market the first signs of browning's interest in handguns appears in late 1894 with a prototype ready in early 1895. based on his potato digger machine gun this new pistol used an overhead lever blown up by excess gas and snapping down under spring pressure this was likely deeply unsettling to the shooter along with being very likely to disturb your aim with both a flapping metal block inventing gas to deal with i'm sure there's also a lot of perceived recoil with that much mass going off the center of the gun however the ball was now rolling for browning's inventive mind once more colt would license the patent although they never seem to make use of it browning would keep at inventing and instead of designing yet another automatic pistol he cooked up three unfortunately i'm not able to pin down the order in which these guns were conceived or developed out in ogden utah however he apparently brought all of them to hartford connecticut and his friends at colt from there all three were filed for patents in october of 1896 likely after colt's engineers had a tinker at them to expand them as much as possible each represented an entirely unique operating principle in reverse patent order we see a simple blowback pistol using a fixed barrel and small 32 caliber cartridge colt chose to license this design but ultimately didn't use the patent as they wanted a more powerful locked breech design next up was a sleek looking pistol with a short recoil lock centered on a rotating barrel capable of firing a 38 caliber cartridge this could be partially viable however in the end this concept wasn't developed further instead they chose to focus on this a short recoil locked breech pistol using a sort of dropping barrel lock often compared to a parallel ruler twin links allow the barrel to rise and fall which sets logs on its top into recesses in the old boy today any firearms fan understands what a pistol slide is right but at this point this is a brand new concept browning's own invention an extension off the front and sides of the breech block that encloses the action of the pistol and allows the user to manipulate the lock all in one massive and for the time very weirdly shaped piece even before these patents were filed back in july of 1896 john and matt browning signed a royalty agreement with colt's patent firearms for the exclusive right to make or have made and sales of automatic pistols covered by the browning patents in the u.s and its territories they also had sales rights to the british and irish civilian markets but browning reserved the right to sell to the british government although this too was later transferred to cult as we'll see colt also agreed to mark these pistols browning patent which became browning's patent and was also required in all advertising of the handguns colt was responsible for policing those same patents in court and would owe the brownings one dollar in royalty for each pistol sold not just for the life of the patent but until his death the brownings would soon after sign a similar contract with fabrique nationale who wanted the european market so they and colt would kind of actually have to go head to head in certain regions like south america unlike cult fn jumped on the little blowback concept and ultimately made huge profits with the eventual product the fn 1900 which is a handy little pocket pistol we've already covered in some detail before colt kind of missed the bus on this one but they were more military focused they chose to work on the dropping barrel lock system at first developing a top ejecting prototype they soon moved to a side ejector and eventually incorporated a unique combination rear sight and safety feature which we'll explore in a moment this gun was paired with a seven shot single stack detachable box magazine however this tripped over a patent by one louis d dis this was apparently held by remington and so colt would have to pay a royalty on their magazines and mark them with the dis patent until it finally expired colt stuck with a 38-caliber cartridge which made perfect sense when you consider the us army revolver of the time which of course was the cult new army in various minor iterations this double action swing out cylinder loading cult made revolver shot a fairly civilized 38 caliber cartridge smokeless powder repeating rifles had really driven home the concept of a small bore high velocity cartridge and like many european powers the usa decided the benefits of a handier faster shooting revolver in 38 were better than a slow heavy 45. for now don't get ahead of me folks uh since small bore was okay us ordinance was also curious about the benefits of autoloaders and would experiment with them as early as 1894. the navy had seen the bore shark very early and the rme would test it further in 1896 and 1897 while it wasn't acceptable for service it inspired further research by early 1898 u.s ordinance had laid hands on bergman's monlickers and mousers as well but each had its own unique challenges to overcome before they could be ready for adoption in october of 1898 colt's patent firearms would send notice to chief of ordinance daniel webster flagler that their own submission was finally ready an automatic based on browning's dropping barrel design flagler in turn was already organizing a new trials board although it was currently focused on revolvers apparently the u.s cavalry still had doubts about the 38 caliber cartridge and was favoring the old slow and heavy 45. they believed in that single shot stopping power this board may have also been formed because of the looming question of synchronizing the us army navy and marines on a single shared cartridge for rifle pistol etc making for much simpler logistics in wartime starting in november the trials really focused on the questions of revolver caliber single versus double action mechanisms and some questions about swing out cylinder loading so the stars of the show were all wheel guns and the end result was a win for the old new army mostly because colt promised to make some minor improvements and the 38 caliber cartridge was believed to be good enough for short-range work plus they already had a lot of it lying around on shot no need to waste taxpayer money this was a different u.s ordinance department from today revolvers aside this trials board also reviewed a handful of autoloaders however the question wasn't one of general issue but whether or not automatic pistols could be used to displace having to carry both a revolver and a carbine on horseback could the cavalry get away with just an automatic carbine the sort that might have a detachable shoulder stock borshart mauser monlicker and bergman appeared once more and this time colt's prototype as well although it did not have a stock the ultimate result is that all failed the board was of the opinion that automatic pistols had not yet reached a stage to justify their adoption in the place of say a revolver for service use these small low-powered pistol cartridges were also nowhere near enough to replace the service carbine ordnance would then spend the next year chasing colt around about the changes to the new army and internally still debating the caliber question the automatic pistol matter wasn't considered by ordinance again until late 1899 now under the auspices of chief of ordinance brigadier general edelbert ronaldo buffington who ordered a board convened in november to consider the merits of three automatic pistols the mauser the mon licker and of course the colt automatic although those last two were unavailable at first colt felt their pistol needed some additional time and submitted it in january of 1900 with testing started in february from the notes we learn a few details first the pistol was listed as having 47 component parts and it fired a unique 38 caliber rimless cartridge this initial version used a jacketed 357 bullet so nine millimeter weighing in at 105 grains and using 7.8 grains of smokeless powder it produced 1 259 feet per second of velocity measured at 53 feet not necessarily the muzzle the firearm took 5 minutes to disassemble and 12 minutes and 55 seconds to reassemble i've been in that position before many a time in test firing roughly 760 rounds were discharged with just a handful of failures mostly attributed to poor fitting of the trigger and disconnect which was mostly resolved by hand filing and refitting it on site fine sand had no effect on the action however a severe rust test revealed a minor issue the slide was frozen to the frame unable to be moved by hand until someone wisely bashed it on a table racked it a couple times pushed it back into battery and fired the first round from there it ran fine from these tests alone the firearm was already considered by many on the board to be suitable for service but they decided to extend testing in order to determine what weaknesses may appear over continued firing and to determine the potential lifespan of such a pistol over several months 5800 rounds would be fired from the test pistol resulting in only a few minor stoppages plus several majors these were initial problems with the trigger group that were resolved with further hand fitting and a stiffer spring four broken rear link pins showing a need to reinforce that section of the action before adoption one broken barrel but that was due to a previously failed link pin and one cracked slide although this was blamed on a poorly fit replacement barrel for the broken barrel that was broken by the previously failed link pin short story the cult prototype was performing quite admirably except for the link pin before the tests were even completed john t thompson would write to the chief of ordinance and included in his letter was the following quote the results of recent tests of colt's automatic revolver at this armory have been so successful as to lead to the prediction that in a few years all revolvers will be replaced by a suitable automatic pistol a wise prediction from a future inventor actually thompson's advocacy would prove to be a great aid much further along in our story so we will reintroduce him later in the series while an overall success the colt was not perfect most notable uh were concerns about the lightweight bullet ordnance believe that that particular particular projectile could be made heavier and slower supposedly recommending a 130 grain bullet which could be the origin of the standard 38 automatic cult pistol cartridge loading that we see today the result was the same jacketed 357 in case however it now moved at only 1040 feet per second read that chart carefully by the way because this is not the much more common 380 acp this is the 38. from here colts automatic was recommended for field trials on may 10 1900 u.s ordnance ordered 100 automatic pistols at a cost of 25 each a hefty sum 20 000 cartridges were purchased from the union metallic cartridge company at 18.53 cents per thousand i would like that rate 50 pistols shipped may 16th then 25 more may 23rd and the balance on june 1st that's very fast these pistols were marked us at the front of the trigger guard and were inspected by john t thompson featuring his initials marked on the grip panel for a modern viewer this handgun is practically unremarkable except in the features that it lacks however please take note this is now the first unlocked breach slide operated handgun in military trials plus it's using a detachable box magazine and firing a jacketed nine millimeter bullet sounds pretty advanced to me on the orders of chief of ordnance buffington these pistols were to be distributed to commanding officers in several regions very telling regions actually historical point at the time colt was developing this pistol the us had entered and quite effectively won the spanish-american war primarily a naval victory the war still required quite a bit of direct small arms fire by infantry cavalry and the like despite a decisive win the us army learned some valuable lessons about its equipment in the years following we see a lot of decisions about unifying logistics streamlining processes with the national guard and most notably for our show a dissatisfaction with the standard infantry rifle ultimately we see the then fairly new crowd jorgensen being outed in favor of what will become the springfield 1903 although that quickly saw further revisions through 1906. the us also picked up a number of new territories bought off spain as part of settling up the war puerto rico guam and the philippine islands came under u.s control and cuba was liberated into u.s occupation until 1902 and then again briefly in 1906. it should be no surprise that the 100 pistols would be issued abroad 25 to havana 25 to san juan and 50 to manila which again is actually unsurprising most of the new territories had quickly and quietly fallen under u.s influence but the philippines were a strong exception while u.s troops were initially welcomed realization that they wouldn't be leaving anytime soon resulted in a continuation of the philippines war of rebellion and even that is a gross oversimplification as there were far more myriad and diverse regional peoples in the philippines and the situation was a little splintered and complicated between 1899 and 1902 the us would average 40 000 troops in the region in an attempt to maintain control this is where the cult was most likely to get a real shakedown once received the colts were issued to officers of the infantry cavalry and artillery and they were asked to assess the following points the advantages or disadvantages of the automatic pistol compared to the revolver the advantages or disadvantages of this particular pistol compared to the revolver the advantages or disadvantages of this pistol compared to other automatics the suitability of automatics for use by regular enlisted men and if not suitable for the enlisted was it advisable for pistols to be used by officers and ncos and the results well most everyone said the automatic was more accurate shooting than the revolver however the gun was muzzle heavy and the grip was too short there were requests for a lanyard ring the disassembly was too difficult the magazine released too small and the magazine itself being a separate but necessary part upset several people and apparently some experienced poor feeding of cartridges most were worried about using two hands to ready the pistol as they favored carrying it chamber empty and actually this requires some explanation specific to the sight safety on this gun so uh let's take a moment that is awkward let's take a moment and get a closer look now i'm not ready to show you the whole pistol just yet but i do want to show you that site safety so you understand what's going on if i [ __ ] the hammer back we'll see there's some texturing on the back of this rear sight and if you're really observant you'll notice that it has a hinge pin here which means that it's able to move up and down at the moment it's in the down position and here below it is the firing pin which if i press on it has just a little bit of flex but then it stops because uh it's butting up against the rear sight slash safety if we flip it up now it's brought up in a position where it's aligned with the front sight and zeroed for actual pistol shooting and the firing pin is now free to be compressed further in which means it can make contact with the actual primer at the other side of that breech block this is a full length uh firing pin it's going the entire distance now if we were to pull the trigger we're going to drop that hammer onto the firing pin the gun is going to discharge now just to drive something home about the safety of this pistol it uses a half [ __ ] position which means we [ __ ] the hammer back pull the trigger let it down past the first seer stop and then we let it fall into the second seer stop where it cannot reach the firing pin and we cannot pull the trigger that's a traditional half [ __ ] safety the problem with this is you get enough inertia like a dropped pistol and it can slip past it and then get through or it can be hit hard enough to crack the tooth and go through it's not it's traditionally not been a favored safety going into the modern era especially because it is all too common to have someone try to do this maneuver and then it's just a weird spring thing that slips and it goes bang right and then when it goes bang your finger and thumb are back here well the way this site safety is supposed to work is to prevent that exact problem when it goes down it blocks the firing pin and therefore if we pull this trigger it's not able to strike the firing pin into the primer and the gun is therefore safe so it's just a matter of putting the sight down and then pulling the trigger boom the problem with this setup is that unfortunately when you want to ready the gun you ultimately have to re-cock the hammer and then flip up the sight and even if you go around carrying it with the hammer back and the sight down you still have to put the sight up that seems like a very quick motion you know most manual safeties require just one click but the problem is in the shape of this gun because if i let me see if i get the position on this there we go that's a bit better even with the hammer back if i want to have a natural grip on the gun and bring my thumb up it's hard to see but i really do not have torque on this it looks like my thumb can cover it easy on the inside of the hammer but let me see if i can find a better angle there we go if i left hand this i can show it to the camera and honestly we may have revealed that this is a little bit more ambidextrous than you might expect from an old gun but it still is the same problem for lefty or righty which is that if you look this hammer is fighting my ability to rotate my thumb around enough to hit this safety and sure i got a big fat thumb and it looks like i got plenty of room but when i try to actually push with it it's hitting right in the dead zone of my thumb where i don't have the tip to work with or really the heel it's not quite i can't get the heel over because of the knuckle i could get the tip over but it's so far down oh okay this is awful which means that i ultimately have to break my grip and come around to the outside of the gun and when i come around to the outside of the gun you can see i'm barely holding on to the gun in order to open up my midi mit enough to be able to work that sight safety and i'm still having a hard time with it so it's not a comfortable on off button putting it much lower as other guns have done would have been a lot smarter now you say okay well there's all this why don't i just put that down dry fire the gun okay and then go ahead and put it back up so i reach in there and click it okay that's good except for the part that unless you actually end up in the half [ __ ] position if you accidentally end up in the all the way down position like this now you have a situation where if you're bouncing along this thing is riding on the firing pin and it's full length so it is on the primer and any sort of sharp is going to set this gun off it's a little bit of a sticky situation and i'm sure unintended by the way it was designed this mechanical situation created a desire in some for a rebounding hammer and theoretically if that had been done maybe a double action hammer so that it could be brought into action without having to manually [ __ ] it back to be honest these are fairly modern considerations already at play with a very early automatic now along with the critiques came suggestions and two points were repeated often by various officers this copy of a drawing from captain ml buck sums it up nicely they wanted a longer grip with room for another cartridge and felt that it was more natural to work the slide from the front moving the serrations up there would be an advantage buck also had a complaint about the cartridge feed angle although that might have been his particular magazine now this may seem all doom and gloom for our pistol but lieutenant lawson m fuller chief ordinance officer in the philippines accidentally sent along some praise in his otherwise critical report a requisition has this day been made for 200 for sale to officers the demand for any kind of automatic pistol can hardly be understood and for this one in particular it has become annoying a great many orders have been received to be filled the moment any are received from the states for sale so it seems that overall the notion of an automatic pistol was gaining traction although it's mostly from the bottom up well that might work out well for colt because they already had a commercial line spun up and ready remember they had delivered 100 guns inside of a month that's because they had already committed to serial manufacture of their new automatic clearly to colt this was going to be a desirable gun of the future uh the first commercial commercial pistol was apparently sent in february of 1900 to arthur corbin gold avid shooter in 1900 gold was editor of shooting and fishing which would go on to become the american rifleman colt also showed their new automatic at the march 1900 sportsmen show in new york city however it didn't seem to cause much sensation other auto loaders were already known and their use for sporting purposes kind of a hot debate the april 19th issue of shooting and fishing magazine featured a detailed illustrated article dedicated to colt's new pistol and i'm sorry to say that i couldn't find a copy for this episode what you're seeing now is from the iron age a few months later but it probably uses the same prints these initial cult automatics were identical to the us army contract guns they just weren't marked as such slide operated seven shot magazines rear serrations with a very tall external hammer and the sight safety now obviously the commercial 1900 we have here today doesn't quite look like that so let's keep digging for a little bit longer which means returning to the world of military contracts this time to the u.s navy in march of 1898 the naval inspector of ordnance at hartford wrote to admiral charles o'neill chief of the bureau of ordnance about the new cult automatic pistol while he described much of what we already know he did make one comparison that i rather love he compared the browning barrel locking mechanism with its interrupted logs to the drizzy schroeder locking mechanism a contemporary artillery breach system and to be honest yeah i can see it in june of 1900 the naval proving ground indian head maryland tested a single cult automatic this wasn't nearly as severe as army trials but they did do a pine board penetration test 4.4 inches at 50 yards and 3.5 at 100 yards that's not bad in addition accuracy was rated as good though the balance was only fair and recoil was considered somewhat heavy okay curiously they reported that the grip was slightly too large and that the weapon was expected to be slower than the current revolver if shooting a large number of shots i'm not even sure how they got that one unless they were like loading rounds into the magazine and then loading magazine into the gun that's all i can figure still the cult was worth considering further and 250 would be ordered for trials in september of 1900 these were delivered october and november colt set aside a specific cereal block this time 1001-1250 although the navy also had them mark the pistols usn-1 to usn 250. in terms of construction they were just like the army trials pieces and the current commercial pattern although the serial number was moved to the right side of the frame you should also find a trident or star marking on the trigger guard the naval serial was stamped on the left along with a b set in a triangle as an inspection mark unfortunately i have no documentation on the wider naval trials i just know that they did struggle to design a clamping method uh which would allow them to hold the pistol perfectly still in order to test its potential precision at range uh there were two pistols attempted to be used for this process the first failed miserably the second skated by the minimum requirements at 50 yards but exceeded all expectations at 100. however there were no further naval interests in the colt automatic which means our story must return back over to the army working from the field reports colt attempted to integrate the requested improvements so long as they didn't actually cost them any serious money okay to be fair once you have a production underway you're probably sitting on hundreds or thousands of expensive parts so while this drawing seems fairly simple to us that suggested grip extension is a major expense if you're cold you're going to want to avoid integrating such a change if there's no guarantee it's necessary instead colt made what changes they could to the pistol without having to overhaul their castings or major jig work so when the us army came around for more pistols likely driven by pressure from the officers in the philippines who greatly liked the idea of an automatic as we saw colt provided the following lightly modified design the slide serrations were moved to the front cut both longer and deeper and somewhat crude checkering was added to the grips which were also thickened up a bit tada totally fixed it boys in december of 1900 200 pistols were ordered at 20 apiece and already a savings over last time and now they received a spare magazine for each 50 000 cartridges at a cost of 18.52 per 1000 were purchased again from umc colt jumped ahead to serial number 1501 and ran through 1700 for this contract shipped in four lots of 50 pistols each all were shipped by february of 1901 these were now inspected and marked by ronaldo a car so you should have an rac stamp on the right side trigger guard i think one source claims the second batch of 50 shipped and were not marked for unknown reasons i have been unable to confirm this the us stamping can still be found on the left side and the standard serial was used apparently three pistols from this contract were taken for special use and the remaining 197 were all shipped to manila further evidence that the philippine fighting was driving the interest in fast and powerful automatic pistols alright while my example here is not uh from the army contract it is in the same general configuration so let's get a closer look all right we have a fairly long but otherwise very familiar looking handgun to the modern viewer right we know that this is our slide we know this is our hammer our trigger and trigger guard we know where our grip panels are and we understand most likely if you've seen any sort of modern handgun that we have a magazine in here single stack in this case not like our normal double stacks these days but otherwise okay it's a handgun and don't forget it's the first handgun to look like this yes some of these features appeared before this but not like this this is revolutionary so let's talk about what we got number one if these seem a bit shiny and new that's because they are these are reproduction and i put them on there in order to avoid confusion with a point that we'll meet later on in the episode all right number two let's check out the slide because that's sort of the heart of what makes this gun different if i take this guy over here we can better see our long but rather shallow and fairly soft feeling serrations there's a little even my fingernails not really catching right so these are good but they're not what we'd understand as modern and again we'll see some changes later on in the life span of this pistol but uh for now they're looking at the front they had been at the rear nothing there now because of course you can't put them on both that would be silly and confusing and if we just give them a pinch and pull we can work that slide now you may notice that slide does not lock open and the magazine is still in the gun so whenever you run out of your seven rounds the gun looks like this and you're just going to probably if you're not counting go ahead and fire on an empty and then you'll notice so that's another issue that will be addressed in the future turning to the magazine it's a push forward release with a toe on the magazine to help you pull out as they come free this is the original nickel magazine with the dis patent marking so this is not a browning patent this is that patent from d-i-s-s dis as controlled by remington at the time again we already saw this earlier but there is our site safety with the hammer back we put it down to lock the firing pin if we pull the trigger the hammer comes forward and we'll not be able to push the firing pin into the primer if we have this popped up then it can although again we're in the half [ __ ] at the moment while we're back here i'd like you guys to pay attention to just how big that hammer is real high really awkward to use one-handed now let's talk disassembly i'm unsure if there was an original tool included with these for the process but ultimately all you need is either a bit of wire or in this case i've stolen an allen key of appropriate thickness now if you go too thin on this it won't quite work because it doesn't have uh the diameter necessary to keep it from over tipping i'll show you why in a second but as long as you have a little piece of wire that you guys can probably barely see uh you can go ahead and begin the process which first starts with getting that slide slightly to the rear you want to get this block back past a little hole that's under here that i'll show you in a minute so i'll just pull that back and there's no lock open so i have to hold it really awkwardly and there's no grasping grooves at the rear now so i have to hold it really awkwardly now as i squeeze this to death to hold the slide to the rear we can put our pin in here and then as we let the slide forward i'm going to feel some tension see how it wants to tip that's because there's an internal uh plunger pushing on this guy now and if we let her forward past that point and it takes a little wanting to do it and having the pin in it just the right depth give me one second there there we go i have now stopped the plunger and we can start pushing out this block now my middle finger is on the other side of the gun and can raise it quite easily now that there's no tension and i can just pluck it from the action pay attention to the orientation of the block see that half circle cut in it to match the plunger that's inside you're going to want to assemble this the right way there's also it might be hard to make out a little pin on there that lets you know that needs to insert on this little dimple here it goes in exactly one way so right that way for assembly and then pulling it on out for disassembly do not lose this it is critical to the function of the handgun all right with the cross block out we can then retract the slide which will now come all the way off the rear of the pistol you do not want to fire the colt 1900 without the cross block in place or you will get a nasty surprise this to me is not ideal but it'll stick around for quite a while once we're inside we'll see a couple of unique features number one a slide it doesn't seem like much now as a matter of fact this one's pretty dang simple if we look at the front we can see there's really nothing to it i mean it's just wide open milled from front to rear now the rear does have the breech block so it's at least somewhat solid although that's the part that comes back at your face so maybe not ideal inside of here is our full length firing pin so if i release the safety we should be able to poke this at the rear and have it project from the front i don't know see if you guys can oh this is hard to do upside down yeah you can just barely see it there poking out so full-length firing pin inside of a breech block with all this extra stuff attached to it seems normal enough to us but at the time this is really inventive this idea of having an encapsulated breech block with all this extra metal to the front while we're here you may notice there's a couple of lugs set inside of the top of the slide these are for locking the slide to the barrel for a short distance for a short recoil operation we'll see it better in the animation but let me go ahead and show you that barrel there we go in this position let me get her down we can see a little bit more what's happening with the barrel forward it would be engaged into the recesses in the slide with these lugs here locked together as they both travel rearward look at that our barrel is lowering once it gets low enough it's no longer locked to the slide the slide goes back on its own going to be easier to see in our animation but you get the idea that lowering as it goes backwards that swing is caused by two links one link here one link here both in a figure eight configuration that we can't really show easily without taking the gun further apart but check it out there's that parallel ruler and some of you are used to the 1911 in which the back goes down and then the front goes up but no these guys are staying right aligned with each other all the way back this is the first of the swinging link systems well i think we've seen as far as we can without x-ray vision so let's get this over for an animation [Music] first we'll load up our single stack box magazine like so many other automatics we'll be reading the pistol by manually retracting this sliding breech block however because this is the 1900 this is the first time in history that what we know of as the modern slide has been introduced on a pistol so let's appreciate that while we draw it back and release now the slide isn't just for reading the gun or keeping the components protected it also locks the breech to the barrel a set of recesses in the top of the slide match up with lugs on the top of the barrel when it is in the upright and forward position firing the pistol causes the barrel and slide to recoil rearward and for a short while they are locked together until the barrel is swung downwards by a set of two links one at the front and one at the rear see that again and pay attention to those swinging links up and forward is locked down and rearward unlocked which allows the breech block to carry on by itself extracting ejecting and feeding the next round the slide is held to the frame by this cross block and the block rides in a channel which also contains two important springs this is the recoil spring responsible for returning the slide forward and behind it is a buffer spring this is meant to cushion the impact of the slide as it is halted in its rearward travel by the fully compressed springs the trigger uses a unique wrap around transfer bar configuration which encircles the magazine and provides for a very even linear pull pulling the trigger of course tips this sear which in turn releases the hammer unless of course we manually place the hammer in the half cocked position which has a slight overhand to prevent the seer from moving and therefore locks up the trigger this is the disconnector while it seems simple at first it has a somewhat complicated interaction with the trigger and sear it's powered by one of several tines off a combination mainspring this complicated piece saved on having to make and mount several flat springs the outer tines simply push on the sear keeping it tight against the hammer when possible the inner time pushes the trigger forward and the disconnector upwards let's get a better view with the disconnector highlighted watch how it interacts with the center springtime we pull the trigger which tips the seer the gun discharges and the slide pushes downwards on the disconnector this flexes the center tine downwards as well under the sear once the slide returns the tine is still stuck under the sear until we release the trigger this is how fully automatic fire is prevented finally here is our firing pin which on its own is very straightforward a full length firing pin that is pressed on by the hammer in order to strike the cartridge's primer along with a coil spring to make sure it returns rearward however the firing pin has a specific shape so that it can interact with the combination rear sight and safety lever this is a two position switch when lowered a tab turns into the notch at the top of the firing pin preventing it from being driven forward when the hammer drops the user is further warned the gun is unsafe by the fact that the rear sight has effectively disappeared flipping it up releases the firing pin and allows us to discharge the pistol alright that's about it a system both simple and complicated and destined to be incredibly influential let's go shoot it [Music] foreign [Applause] is have heard of him the man behind the gunman to our flagship um [Music] honestly this has got to be one of the coolest episodes we've done to date thanks again sven for making a multi-year dream come true all right so this pistol was in trials in the philippines for a second time how did it do now well on the pro side it was easier to operate and believed to have better endurance than the revolver it was also less likely to get out of order just a reminder by the way at this point the two most likely comparable handguns in the philippines would be the colt new army 38 caliber double action and the colt single action army 45 caliber single action i know i'm kicking an ant's nest by saying this but both these revolvers required a fair bit more field armorer support than you would really think today returning to the automatic it was very fast firing could be loaded with either hand and had a faster flatter shooting cartridge which gave better accuracy this is going better than last time so far but what about the negatives well the ejection port was too small several officers experienced poor feeding again firing pins broke and this kind of starts up the same problems that we saw last time but the firing pin was too long the sight safety annoying without improving those two points the gun therefore requires two hands to ready because you're carrying it chamber empty the length of the grip should be longer and adding one more round of capacity wouldn't go over too poorly either while you're at it the front serrations were still not quite right where's the lanyard ring and perhaps more so than before there was a distrust for the 38 caliber cartridge in terms of overall power they wanted something bigger overall only 29 of the officers were in favor of the pistol as was with 51 against the remainder didn't specify clearly it seems now curiously even as the second army contract was being fulfilled colt was working on uh the more severe changes apparently their stall didn't even hold out long enough to await the results of the second trials piece which is just as well because as we just saw those issues just kept coming back up anyway ultimately these would be resolved in a complete model change however that gun isn't going to be in this episode instead we need to talk about the further development of the commercial pistol the first cult automatic pistol here's the deal colt might have bitten off a bit too much setting up full manufacture of this handgun they expected to make the same gun for both military and civilian contracts and were hoping for an adoption without major modification when that plan failed they already had a lot of forgings and other parts made for this guy right here in big batches so just because the army was going to go in a new direction they couldn't just throw out a bunch of valuable material instead they sought to keep marketing and selling this guy into the civilian realm now i need to clear something up before we proceed the pistol i have today had up until this point only been known as the automatic colt pistol or as it was often called colt's automatic pistol it didn't have a model name or date because it was the only cult semi-automatic handgun with the introduction of that military model of 1902 that we will cover next time by the way our gun today would retroactively be considered the model of 1900 although i don't believe cult ever referred to it as such despite being abandoned by the military this model 1900 still saw a little bit more development and the first and most obvious change would be the deletion of the rear sight safety no one liked that thing the decision to remove it from production was apparently made in april of 1901 and this kind of coincides with the development of the model 1902 however colt couldn't just take a bunch of already produced slides and toss them into the garbage that would be a huge financial loss so they would need to recycle what they had before making a dedicated new slide for their commercial sales the solution was simpleish remove the rear sight remove the old firing pin dovetail cut the slide for a new rear sight and then fill in the gap where the safety was with a properly shaped plug use the old site uh pivot pin in order to lock in that plug this arrangement allowed for the new and better firing pin to be inserted into the gun but did necessitate drilling for and fitting another cross pin through the slide in order to now retain that firing pin and this is where trying to split this story between models gets a little bit weird because the whole point of the new rear sight and firing pin was to standardize this model 1900 with the new features of the 1902 so that they could share parts and i want to explore that in detail but i'm going to do that next time for the moment let's just say that the new firing pin is better and i'll tell you why on our next episode the result of all this was an updated model 1900 with a traditional rear sight and an extra pin and plug these converted 1900s were also fitted with a new lower profile rounded hammer known as the stub hammer at colt you might also notice the molded hard rubber grips these two were added to production in april of 1901. heck my repros weren't even here when we filmed the firing sequence so may got to shoot it with its factory hard rubber grips now for a few months if you ordered a colt automatic you had about a 50 50 chance of getting a sight safety or the modified pistols until december of 1901 which is when production was halted for several days in order to take the time to modify every existing slide on hand however colt still had a lot of high spur hammers so even the modified guns would carry either a stub or high hammer for quite a while supposedly they were fitted on alternating serial number guns slowly the old slides would be used up apparently around let's say serial 3500 this is three thousand four hundred ish and colt would have to produce dedicated news slides without giving too much away this was simple because it was the exact same slide as the new military model that we're discussing next time almost the military model slide had one additional little cut out of it so no big deal and they could use the same foragings and the same milling and cutting minus one little process the result would be this same as the last pistol but without the filler block and extra cross pin at heart a model 1900 but collectors have long begged to differ for colts part they started advertising their military model and needed to distinguish the old model in some clear manner so is billed as the sporting model since the military model was the model of 1902 the fair assumption was that the other modified pistol was the sporting model of 1902 colt did not consider it as such but that's the name that sticks to this day i actually have mixed feelings about what to call a let's say sporting model compared to the original site safety that we have here today the hammer safety and firing pin were all really changed so that's worthy of a new model designation however within the sporting model more changes would follow as colt rolled in parts and processes from their advancing military designs this very late production sporting model has two further modifications it uses the cult military model of 1902 takedown system which we'll again show you in the next episode and it also features triangularly cut rearward slide serrations taken from yet another change in the military trials now these two changes occurred around serial number 4700 and then later the second one around serial number 8000 so even the sporting model had some further evolution in large block segments the original site safeties and the later sporting models were considered one continuous gun by colt serial numbered from 1 to 10 999 colt had reserved the 11 000 block and beyond for their military model and some other guns that we'll mention later right at the end of production the sporting models jumped to the 30 000 serial number range only reaching 30 190. now adding this together we would assume 11 191 pistols but it's more likely that they fell a little short of that count thanks to factory discards special test guns etc it's estimated around 3000 were site safeties ledgers say 1274 were actually made with the modified fixed sites making them rare however an unknown number where factory converted from the first to the second pattern whenever they were sent in for repair from there we know that the sporting model proper is the most numerous to be encountered manufacturers halted around july of 1907 although i'm unsure if that was raw production or included assembly in august of that same year they would send a letter to the various advertisers that the model was being dropped from the catalog apparently the remaining inventory was out of the factory by the end of the year now by this time colt had introduced a fairly wide variety of automatics the 1902 military the 1903 pocket hammer the blowback 32 acp pocket hammerless the 1905 45 caliber military model and they were in the process of releasing their version of browning's 25 acp vest pocket model so yeah it's a pretty crowded market even from its own company still quite the legacy sprouting from the somewhat unloved original automatic cult alright i have way more to cover on this family of handguns but it's gonna have to wait until next time i'm sorry folks this is a very long and winding story but before you go why not stick around and hear mae's opinion on what it's like to shoot the original colt automatic the model 1900. all right once more we've made room for may hello we still have this cult 1900 pistol hand that over to you thank you now uh this is a difficult one because if i hand you that gun as a modern shooter okay the first things you're noticing are what's not on the gun i assume well what do you mean like no manual safety no slide release none of the stuff that we expect on a modern slide operator no i expect to all be right here on the left hand side with my thumb too yeah you're expecting a whole bunch like mag release nothing's there right so this gun looks naked from the modern perspective but very naked let's rewind our minds for a second it's 1900 okay you have seen the c96 yep you have seen the luger 1900 that's this one yes the brand new one uh you may have seen some bergman's or the borah shirt but let's put those aside because those didn't go anywhere in terms of adoption maybe the fn 1900 the fn 1900 which is actually the little brother to this guy right the fn 1900 technically being well the fn 1899 which is the pre being the first slide operated handgun to be released in the market at all but it was blowback and even though it was slide operated the slide was kind of tucked in and it was really weird and that you grabbed it from the rear it wasn't what we think of as a slide this is the first pistol to have a modern slide so with your 1900 eyes what's it like when you see this thing for the first time well i'd probably want some assistance in operation with this guy because it's a little bit confusing where it's just like where like you said where is everything it's so naked how am i supposed to do it the serrations luckily give you a clue where it's like we've almost hit the horseshoe theory of handgun development right right it's gone you as the person in 1900 expect a bunch of external crap on it i'm expecting like external like a barrel to be where's the barrel right i mean i can see a little tip right here but obviously like we're going from like the luger and the c96 everything's gone everything starts as like a barrel and a clockwork system and then they build everything outside of it right right and so you end up with all this stuff hanging off the gun uh-huh now the gun is naked and nowadays it's the same thing where we expect there to be controls of some sort on the left side they're not even in this gun so to us it looks naked everybody thinks the gun looks naked it's very sleek looking i mean it's not what i'm expecting at all but that's it kind of makes me nervous how plain it looks cause i'm just like is this gonna go like if i've got my that mentality of 1900 i'm like how does this how is this thing going to shoot it doesn't look like it looks like a prototype though basically that's what i'm thinking of like if like if it's a three like even now i'm like 3d printed it's like oh this is obviously a blank you know it's it's not real it's blank oh man yeah it really looks like retro futurism to me like it looks like a spaceship from the 1950s but obviously it's from 1900 right so uh once you're shown how to use it what do we start thinking about this thing well we start thinking about actually handling it so first things first i've been giving it right so i've got it in my hand the first feel as i've got with this gun is the grip essentially there's a nice beaver tail back here for the top webbing of my hand and then there's a little bit of contouring going back here down at the base it's not straight up and down no it's not straight up and down it's got a little little angle to it but it's not a great angle it's not luger like um definitely not that and it's definitely not c96s but it does not feel amazing it's just okay because it doesn't feel like it's very polished like the edges are still kind of not curved and then it feels very narrow but it almost feels like there's like a double hump going on here from from the metal to the wood i'm like hump there's like no there's no like graduate gradually getting to there for me i felt like i had a fairly sharp thing in my uh webbing yeah and then it widened up and it was very weird feeling yeah it's not very it's not amazing it's okay like i say what they were going for with it and there's potential here but it definitely could stay any better and then the the base of the of the magazine down here it feels like i want it to be a little longer almost it curves away all of a sudden yeah it's like it's just suddenly gone and i'm left with a little bit extra down here i mean it doesn't look it but it kind of feels it i don't know how to explain that i don't know if it's too short or if it just has because i've got a full finger grip it shouldn't feel like it's almost short but it kind of for your hand it does your hand you mostly fit on that thing yeah my hand i come off the end of it so with my bigger with my bigger hands the so here's the problem the bottom of the gun is coming down past the medius part of my hand shouldn't be a problem right but they've gone ahead and milled it to be a curve and so that curve is hitting right where i normally can balance a revolver thanks to the bell grips do you feel like you could kind of just do this in your hand with your fingers and it would just rock back and forth yeah so the lower the lower vertices of this thing is hitting right in the middle of my hand which means when i flex my hand and everything i get an unusual amount of movement in the gun meanwhile if you do that with a luger it's just stable it's just well the luger doesn't stop at that point no no it goes beyond it which is great i agree with ordnance that it was too short oh yeah they did talk about that and even if it wasn't too short they should have straightened it up i think if they had made it straight they'd have never gotten the complaint about it being too short probably not anyway uh so that's the grip and then for actually okay so i've gripped it and i'm probably gonna point it oh man it is definitely muzzle heavy but i don't know how to explain it the gun for the size that it is i'm expecting more weight to it i know this is just over two pounds but it kind of doesn't feel again if it's got that blank mentality sensation to i'm like is this a real gun that feels lighter than what it should be well if you have the period mindset you're handed a gun like that that looks like a big chunk of metal so you expect a lot of weight at the front right and don't get me wrong the front's heavy but it's not it's not as heavy as i think it should be right okay that's weird so what is the point um don't even worry about the sights don't worry about the sides just pointing okay just pointing is it a natural point or does it feel a little weird no it is kind of there's a naturalness to it i want to say like i think it's just because like it's just so it flat it just kind of feels like it's just laying flat on my hand it's like if i just had like a if i took a thick piece of cardboard and cut it out it feels like if i took that and just went and i'd be like yeah of course it's right where i pointed the cardboard flat edges i find that when i go to point this thing i end up just a little bit low just a little bit and again it's because of that rounding and my hand being larger than yours it wants to roll over so yeah you would dip a little so muzzle heavy round at the heel i end up a little bit low and i have to i have to consciously torque it back up but that's me yeah now using your sights what have we got going on well i was going to give that in a second i didn't want to make sure i mentioned the the magazine release on this guy before we got because i figured we might end up talking about this [Music] you're right so i've never really been a fan of heel releases but this one's actually not too bad because it's not like i'm having to do two opposite motions or i'm having to do some weird fiddly bits i'm not having to push anything out of my way i just do a pinch so you just pinch it and grip and then you got you can go it's pretty simple and this and the release is actually sticking out pretty deep down here this tongue and the tongue sticking out the front of the mag is pretty great easy motion nice and simple i wouldn't call it the most positive thing in the world though no it doesn't it doesn't stick it out like it doesn't pop it out like if i depress this it doesn't do anything i still feel like i'd prefer to have a fingernail while doing that oh yeah if you can't do it without fingernails it's probably getting to be a little too finely dexterous now i will say if i'm going from the luger to this if i'm looking at luke i'm like oh my god they have a button right there there's room they could have done it on this one why not okay so um now i think we should talk about that research yeah so recite first well i have to get it ready okay i'm just telling you let's talk about the site first because there's a lot here okay so my rear sight all right so it's suppres i mean it's surprisingly tall but the the u-notch in there is a bit soft i think you could stand to be a little bit deeper but i don't know if that would because i don't know i know what this part is supposed to be but i don't know if taking out more metal would have weakened it too much and that's why it's as deep as it is a very fine shallow u-notch site which i think it reads a little soft i agree i agree yeah yeah but it is raised up tall so there's no mistaking what the heck i'm looking down um but i also know this is the safety as well so let's talk about how that works okay you have readied the gun so you racked your slide right i'm ready to go yeah yeah see which how's that we haven't even talked about that oh [ __ ] we didn't talk about it okay real quick uh so you expect the slide to actually be hammered down oh i'm sorry okay fine hammer down you gotta you gotta do it in its worst condition it's worse conditions okay pressure and everything yeah okay okay how's the slide [Music] really light is that spring supposed to be that light actually it's a locked breech pistol ran fine well ran fine enough with the spring in mind we have other issues but uh no that seems to be correct although so i know this is supposed to be the safety and everything yeah it would have been really neat oh no don't talk about how it works first because i know where you're going you know exactly okay so it's off it's off in the up position the rear sight is the safety i've already shown it to you when you put it down it blocks the firing pin yep so down safety's on no don't do anything else yet this is where it gets complicated you may now holster your pistol this way okay and it's safe sure okay but then that hammer is sticking way out and this hammer unfortunately is yes it's just weird it sticks out at a bizarre angle that looks like it's going to catch on stuff would you be inclined to carry it with that hammer back like that probably not because i it wouldn't have been i would have had less of a concern about i think back then less of a concern about it being ready more of a concern about snagging on things that's snapping off and blah blah blah right now there is such a thing as cocked and locked later on those hammers aren't nearly as aggressive as this one now uh you could also choose to let the hammer down yeah okay and you have two positions to choose from so this is the first one where it's all the way forward no no there might be a half [ __ ] in there there should be i don't think it was there yet or maybe i was you're in the halftime okay i'm in the house so you go down to the half [ __ ] and you're half cocked and you've got the hammer block so if it slips past the half [ __ ] it hits it or you can oh you'd have to [ __ ] it back i guess and then really let it all the way down or just dry fire it because i can i'm this is just going to be hitting the safety it's not going to be it's hammer blocked okay so you can carry it all the way down by the way kind of terrifying too right um and there's no i don't want to take the safety off in this position i'd want to make sure i pull the hammer back because otherwise if i take the safety off and there's at the round in the chamber then that's just the hammer resting on the firing pin so uh yeah so worst case you have hammer down safety on and this and it goes in your holster right this is the worst case in that you're the least ready in this position right so there's an emergency okay you draw your pistol yeah okay and then you're ready your hammer why already not great that was really weirdly too handy yeah i know can you even do it one hand well i mean to be fair yes but it's really it's really awkward and i have to reach up and i have to grab like right up here with the ejection port you try to do this clearly being female has ruined this for her now i will use my large manly hand to show her exactly how to do this no i still had to hook it with my pinky even with my sort of better mitt for this i can muscularly i don't think i can get the hammer back unless i wrap a pinky this goes back to the old walker and look you're going up to the ejection board i just saw you sneaking up there i'm balancing further down the gun yeah now in their day they probably would have just gone ahead and written safety first mind you but a hundred years ago not really it was third because they would have just left their finger in here and then done this and they'd had the torque inside the trigger guard that i'm using i'm using the trigger guard i mean sure that sounds nice in terms of just the extra uh but it's still position why am i having to do all this this is a really awful hammer position i mean truly awful folks it's just because of how high up that angle is if the angle had even been adjusted 15 degrees lower i think it still would have been way better all right so we get the hammer back yep and then you got to flip safety up oh hold on that's in worst case scenario you had it down or best case scenario you had it let's say cocked and locked oh that's not really what it is right so you didn't have to mess with the hammer at all okay all right so now even in the best scenario in which you just had the manual safety down the hammer back let's get that safety in a hurry so i can't do it so i cannot you might be able to with your hand i can't okay barely i barely just could still keep my thumb on this side i found it easier last time to come around and get it but now now i'm struggling i don't know how i did it on range but somehow on range that day it was easier to bring my thumb around to grab it than it was to reach on the rough side you look like an animal that doesn't have thumbs trying to use a game controller ah i just don't have the the dis the spread on my hand i automatically i'm going to reach around the hammer and hit it but boy look how loose my grip is on this gun right now it's loose and it's you know if i reach the inside of the hammer i can't really heal it with my thumb i can't really and you can do that at least but i think it's awful i can't get up there high enough i am grinding my thumb against the hammer oh yeah i'm hoping the hammer is going to help give me some like leverage abysmal it's not easy to do quickly one-handed put on two hands even if i was using two hands still all right so we've managed to get the gun ready to shoot all right what's it like actually shooting it okay we already talked about the sights we already talked about the weight balance um loading her up was pretty simple racking slide uh pretty much it's just trigger and recoil from that so the trigger on this one is creaky at first it doesn't have a lot of travel until you reach a sudden cliff and it's like maybe the weight increases by like half a pound right and then you think oh boy here it comes right and then you're just like click and i'm like wait that already happened it's already done it is extremely nice trigger oh yeah the creaky part of the very front end is the first part is kind of uh weird and it feels bizarre that it's creaking it definitely makes me think i'm about to have a very bad trigger experience right yeah but then that second part is beautifully crisp like it's very nice so it's like i don't know how to feel about this i guess middle of the road a lovely trigger i would hands down one of the best triggers so far it does feel really good okay and then uh once it goes bang yeah so there is actually a fair bit of recoil with this one well we're using the 38 acp cartridge not to be confused with 380 right that was made with this one vaguely this this is like a nine millimeter i mean the ballpark it's actually fairly in the ballpark of nine millimeter parabellum yeah i guess it didn't feel like it was snapping that bad because the weight up at the front was probably helping to bring it down but there still was a fair bit of power behind it it definitely felt like a powerful cartridge it felt authoritative yeah but not uh abusive no it definitely didn't feel extreme which i guess it felt like it could have been more extreme coming out of the sky so if we talk about this versus the colt new army 38 double action revolver you've shot that yeah would you say that you feel faster on target between that or this this and you get an extra round right and the cartridge is a little more authoritative slightly yes so between the two if your ordinance yeah no this this hands down would have to win between the two plus it's semi-automatic mag concealed that's pretty good everything and this look in terms of just protection against mud and muck compared to a revolver hands down gotta win there well rob rollers are usually pretty good about dealing with that thing but this is a very reliable structure you know compared to especially the new army it feels very solid too the new army was a very fiddly system as a matter of fact ever since i did that episode i might have to revisit it the new army was more fiddly than we think and i'm about to say why soon but uh this gun is more robust than a than that particular revolver yeah definitely this gives me more confidence now i did not shoot with these grips though i will say that no um you had the original hard rubbers that were with it and when we say hard rubber it's plastic right um there was a little more traction with those i'd say um and they didn't stick out quite as as far as these wood ones did so it was a little more a little uh tighter grip nice okay so overall would you rate it a good experience bad experience exciting i actually would rate it as a pretty exciting experience just because i've been looking forward to this this road to the 1911 that we planned on starting that we've been talking about for what four years now yes this is um this has been a four-year plan five-year plan when you see an arsenal and everybody wants you to do the 1911 you can't just go do a regular episode no no no you got to make a statement and this was our original plan which was to try to work our way up to the 1911. yes um the most recent world phenomena has uh kept us from that for quite a while but again thank you sven yes so thank you mentors we don't really have a war for this this is a prototype pistol that saw commercial sales but never was adopted so all we really have for comparison for other semiautomatic pistols at the time like you said with the luger the c96 and maybe the f10 fn 1899. yeah fn 1900 so i said maybe yeah but definitely the f1900 is unfair it's a little 32 blowback right but in terms of lock breach full power pistol cartridges you're right 62 big boys c96 and swiss luger are the most comparable right if we if we let the luger go ahead and advance to the german let's say naval po4 or army po8 and we just get the better version of the luger because they're so close let's let them have it right where does this gun sort of stack with them in the only comparable conflict that we have which is so much later it's world war one it's the way we usually talk about these things if you go into something like world war one with this very early automatic do you feel that you're at a significant disadvantage all right let's start with actually some positive things on this one uh slight operation of this guy to ready this gun everything is all right here that's pretty good that's pretty positive nice and modern um the the trigger feels pretty great um the weight balance is not terrible for me uh it's got a nice uh heel release by comparison to other hero releases well i guess there aren't any for comparing the two but it's not as good as the lugers okay so the luger has a better magazine release right but the c96 is stripper clip fed right of course i'm going to pick this over c96 all day long just for that okay but then the safety hammer combo on this guy got awful like the luger has it beat hands down in that area we're kind of getting that same territory as a c96 where it's like how the heck do we carry this thing because if we want to carry it ready on the c96 you had to let that hammer down which is scary oh wait are we thinking are we getting like the monlick or 1900 um like the 1905 was around i mean the 1901 was right there but we never really that's getting into a whole other territory so i think we're better also it's still technically a blowback by the time it's adopted yeah so let's just talk about and that's still stripper club yeah yeah yeah so let's stay on focus for a second though okay um we beat the c96 in terms of mag loading the c96 is another gun that has a complicated thing where we kind of have to decock the hammer in order to carry a chamber ready right you have to draw it change the safety position and recock the hammer yep so the scene a6 has that same sort of problem although you can do it with a human hand right and i'm it's right here on the left side of the frame right so i'm able to get going with it so would you say this is slightly worse than c96s yeah it technically is okay the question is how much does it break it for you because now you're left carrying it either cocked with the safety down or you're carrying it decocked with the safety down one or two hand motions both of which are very difficult for you i mean that's not great but if you if i were to think of it just in terms of realistically that's not going to be the problem will break it it'll be how it takes the rounds so magazine versus stripper clip magazine's going to win almost every day that's only your follow-up shots your first shot is the most critical that's true because technically this wouldn't be your main arm isn't it it's in your holster yeah there's bad dudes around you draw and then fart around for five minutes and then shoot them that's not good so i think you end up having honestly it is much smarter to carry this gun chamber empty because then you can leave the magazine in there nothing in the chamber and you can leave the safety off and then that way all you have to do is just wrap the slide good to go right but then you have to rock yourself there's still more to it so that's not good i see you putting it below that you now see the logic and why ordinance ended up in this position where they kept saying it takes two hands to ready the gun it doesn't take two hands to ready the gun if you have it chambered right but the way the safety is set up they're like they don't even want to count chambering it as a thing they're just they're saying no i'm going to carry it unchambered because it's ridiculous to try to go through any of this other motion because as much as you might uh be upset about the two-handed chambering it's faster than two or one-handed readying of the safety system oh yeah hands down yeah so that's not great it's kind of making it look not good but it's still passable first shot counts a lot yeah so maybe like the softest yes kind of unfortunately just because of that first round count if we try to think of it from that perspective yeah it's one of those like you have to get it ready right before you go in the fight and then really worry about maybe not tripping that trigger so much potential here that's the thing is that you can see where the improvements are needed oh it is pretty critically tiny changes away from being a fully modern handgun exactly it's it's like right there on the cusp of it yeah and if you look at the contemporaries it's smoking the competition in terms of its core concepts i mean to this day slide operation is standard it's like when we thought of the luger um we just saw where like you start with the 1900 you can see just some base little minor improvements needed to make it into like the p08 right that's pretty rad well where's the where's the luger today though like at this moment in 1900 i think the luger 1900 is a better gun than this one but boy once you put a little extra sauce on there it just completely redefines the hands yeah this needs a little bit of cholula a little bit needs to be a little spicier well of course we see the potential because this is the grand pappy not only to the 1911 but really to all slide operated handguns in the modern context right so this is our starting point yeah this is an origin for many many guns kind of cool yeah thanks again for romantic for to mention arms for loading this yes thank you guys we appreciate it we were able to get this path started because of them so any other final thoughts on the 1900 um overall i'm actually quite excited to be able to try this because i feel like going through the progression of the guns it was critical to be able to try this first i think in order to be able to actually do a really good comparison and growth for later on what's going to come yeah it's also a really clear sign that things come in stages that really good invention is not just a ah and just everything's perfect and even though browning designed this system so well and picked the right thing obviously because it goes forward this is still a twinlink gun it's still even its current form it's got a lot of little engineering tweaks from uh colt themselves and their engineers it's not browning alone so it's important to remember these guns are not just sort of manifested from thoughts from genius people no these come from a culmination well they come from curiosity investigation and then a lot of hard work and trial and error trial and error so many metal shavings yep uh and it's a really good life lesson i think in a lot of ways and we really tend to just be like oh so so made it at this date no there's a lot of work and actually we're going to talk about how much work it takes to make one of these in a little special feature sometime in the future all right well with that wrapped up stay tuned after the credits for any updates and otherwise you guys have a good one bye everybody [Music] update time for those of you who participated in this year's indiegogo campaign shirts are making their way out the door some have already been received so keep your eyes up we appreciate your support in the campaign without this and our consistent patrons this in-depth history show would not be possible so thank you all for those of you who can't donate sharing the show and spreading our love for history is also important the more people we reach the more opportunities and growth we gain we have been told we've been made a part of some family tuesday movie nights thank you again everyone for the support and we hope you all enjoyed what is the beginning to our occult 1911 series

Channel: C&Rsenal

Views: 185,001

Keywords: firearms, guns, WWI, History, greatwar, worldwar1, documentary, colt, pistols, 1900, 1911, handgun, 38 acp

Id: bK2YpKuSiC8

Length: 83min 22sec (5002 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 30 2021