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C HAPTER T WO Enduring Classics

The Single-Action Autos

The Model 1911

Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole behind a team of 17 Huskies. The most popular song of the year was “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” by Irving Berlin. Ty Cobb was the dominant baseball star. Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize for chemistry. Milk was 17 cents a gallon, two bits would get you 10 pounds of potatoes and three pennies change, and 18 cents bought a pound of round steak. Louis Chevrolet and W.C. Durant introduced the former’s automobile. Born in that year were Lucille Ball, Mahalia Jackson, Vincent Price, Ronald Reagan, Tennessee Williams, and the Colt Government Model .45 caliber “automatic pistol.”

The year, of course, was 1911. The prices (including that of the Colt) have multiplied. The Chevrolet is vastly changed. The people, for the most part, have passed into history. Only the 1911 pistol remains with us largely unchanged, and still going strong.

The 1911 is a classic that remains in service. This officer wears his Kimber stainless .45 to work today.

Gen. William Keys, USMC (ret.) has revitalized Colt’s commitment to the 1911 since he became CEO of the company.

Today, if the covers of gun magazines are any indication, the 1911 is the most popular handgun design of its time. A scan through the catalogue pages of Gun Digest shows it is also the most influential. It seems that every year brings at least another 1911 “clone” to the marketplace.

Little has changed in the pistol’s core design, but many subtle evolutions have taken place. The first wave came after WWI, when the American military began a study of how small arms had performed in the most recent conflict. The study was rather leisurely, it appears, as the list of complaints wasn’t announced until about 1923. About half of the doughboys thought the trigger of the 1911 was too long. Many said the grip tang bit their hands. Most found the front sight post and rear notch so tiny as to be useless. It was also noted that when soldiers missed with it, they generally hit low.

About 1927, answers to these concerns were implemented, creating the 1911-A1 model. The grip tang was lengthened to prevent bite to the web of the hand. The trigger was shortened dramatically, and the frame at the rear of the trigger guard was niched out on both sides to further enhance finger reach. Believing that the low hits were a function of the pistol “pointing low” as opposed to the operators jerking their triggers, the designers gave the A1 an arched mainspring housing that sort of levered the muzzle upward and made the gun “point higher.” Finally, a slightly better and more visible set of fixed sights was mounted to the pistol.

The 1911’s ergonomics are timeless. The author used this 1991-A1 Colt tuned by Mark Morris to place 2nd Master in the 2001 New England Regional IDPA Championships.

Gun companies and steel foundries were also making advances in metallurgy. It is generally accepted today that early 1911s are made of much softer steel than the 1911-A1 and later commercial Colts. This is why pistolsmiths have historically recommended against tuning early guns for accuracy. They felt the soft steel would not “hold” the fine tolerances required in precision accurizing, a process that became popular among target shooters in the 1930s and has remained a cottage industry within the gunsmithing business ever since.

The 1950s brought the epoch of Jeff Cooper who, writing in Guns & Ammo magazine, almost single-handedly re-popularized the 1911. Its one-third firepower advantage over the revolver, eight shots to six, plus its rapid reloading was but one advantage. The short, easy trigger pull – particularly when the gun had been worked on – delivered better hit potential under stress than the long, heavy pull of a double-action revolver. Though it appeared large, the Colt auto was flat in profile and easy to conceal, particularly inside the waistband.

The resurgence of the 1911’s popularity had begun. By the 1970s, copycat makers were coming out of the woodwork. Through the 1980s, it at last occurred to makers to furnish the guns at the factory with the accoutrements that were keeping a host of custom pistolsmiths in business. These included wide grip safeties to cushion recoil, with a recurve to guide the hand into position and speed the draw, and a “speed bump” at the bottom edge to guarantee depression of the grip safety even with a sloppy hold. This part was also available “cut high” to allow the hand to get even higher on the grip. A low bore axis had always been one reason the pistol felt so good in the hand and was easily controlled in rapid fire by someone who knew the right techniques. Now, even the folks at the Colt factory began relieving the lower rear of the trigger guard, in hopes that the hand could ride still higher for even better performance. Now too, at last, 1911s were coming out of the factories with heavy-duty fixed sights that offered big, highly visible sight pictures.

There were also high-capacity versions, first with metal frames and then with polymer. Once, it had been standard procedure to send your Colt to a gunsmith to have it “throated” to feed hollowpoints and semi-wadcutters; now, Colt and Springfield Armory and Kimber and many more were producing the guns “factory throated.”

Para-Ordnance pioneered the high capacity 1911. The author used this one frequently at the National Tactical Invitational, where its extra firepower (14 rounds total) came in handy.

1911s are capable of awesome accuracy. Springfield Armory TRP Tactical Operator pistol, mounting M3 Illuminator flashlight, put five rounds of Winchester .45 Match into this 1-inch group, hand held with bench rest at 25 yards.

By the dawn of the 21st century, the 1911 still ruled, though Colt did not. Kimber had become the single largest producers of 1911 pistols, offering a variety of sizes and formats. Springfield Armory was close behind in sales and equal in quality. Customized target pistols still ruled the bull’s-eye firing lines, as they had for decades, but now competitors were showing up and winning with factory match 1911s from Les Baer and Rock River. Since the International Practical Shooting Confederation was founded at the Columbia Conference in 1976, the 1911 had ruled that arena, but now the winning gun in IPSC was less often the old Colt than a high-capacity variant like the STI or the Para-Ordnance.

Four top-quality manufacturers and styles of modern 1911s, all .45s. From top: Compact Colt Lightweight CCO. Service Kimber Custom II. Hi-Cap Para-Ordnance P14.45. Tactical Springfield TRP with extended dust cover and M3 light.

Over the years, the 1911 has been produced in a myriad of calibers. The .38 Super 1911s and hot 9mm variants win open class IPSC matches in the third millennium, and fancy inside, ordinary outside 1911s in caliber .40 S&W rule Limited class in that game. The 9mm 1911 is seen as the winning gun in the Enhanced Service Pistol class of the relatively new International Defensive Pistol Association contests, but the .45 caliber 1911 is much more popular, known in IDPA circles as a Custom Defense Pistol. However, in IDPA, even more shooters use Glocks or double-action autos, making the Stock Service Pistol category even more populous than the 1911 categories. The overwhelming majority of 1911s in serious use today are .45 caliber. No one has yet made a more “shootable” pistol in that power range.

Thus, with timeless continuity, the 1911 has outgrown the Colt brand with which it was once synonymous.

The P-35

“Porgy & Bess” opens in New York, and Steinbeck’s “Tortilla Flat” is published. The hot dance is the Rhumba. Milk is up to 23 cents for half a gallon (delivered, of course). Boulder Dam, Alcoholics Anonymous, and the Social Security Act all come into being. It is the birth year for Woody Allen, Elvis Presley, Sandy Coufax, and the Browning Hi-Power pistol. It is 1935.

Colt collectors will spot the WWII-vintage ejection port and sights on “retro” Colt 1911A1, reintroduced in 2001.

The P-35 was the last design of John Browning, who also created the Colt 1911. Many would also consider the Hi-Power his best. Known in some quarters as the GP or grand puissance, the pistol may owe more of its ingenuity to Didionne Souave than to Browning. In any case, it was the first successful high-capacity 9mm semiautomatic, and for more than a quarter of a century was the definitive one. It remains today the standard-issue service pistol of Great Britain and numerous other countries.

For most of its epoch, the P-35 was distinguished by a tiny, mushy-feeling thumb safety and by sights that were not the right size or shape for fast acquisition. In the 1980s Browning fixed that at last with its Mark II and later Mark III series pistols, which reached their high point in the Practical model. Good, big sights…a gun at last throated at the Browning factory to feed hollowpoints…big, positively operating ambidextrous thumb safety…legions of Browning fans were in heaven. That the guns by now were being manufactured for Browning in Portugal instead of at the Fabrique Nationale plant in Belgium mattered only to the most rigid purists.

Like the Colt 1911, the P-35 is slim, easy to conceal, and comfortable to carry. The 13+1 magazine capacity seemed to be its big selling point. But if people bought it for firepower, they kept it because it had a more endearing quality: It simply felt exquisitely natural in the human hand.

Before people used the word “ergonomics,” John Browning clearly understood the concept. No pistol is as user-friendly. Col. Cooper, who has been called “The High Priest of the 1911,” once wrote that no pistol had ever fit his hand better than the Browning. What a shame, he added, that it was not offered in a caliber of consequence.

Produced for the most part in 9mm Parabellum and occasionally in caliber .30 Luger, the Browning got a boost in popularity stateside during the 1990s when it was introduced in .40 S&W. The bigger caliber feels rather like a 1911 slide on a P-35 frame, but it shoots well. There were early reports of problems, but the factory quickly squared these away. The 9mm Browning has always been a rather fragile gun when shot with heavy loads. I’ve seen baskets of broken Browning frames in English military stockpiles and in Venezuelan armories. The hammering of NATO ammo, hotter than +P+ as produced by England’s Radway Green and Venezuela’s CAVIM arsenals, was the culprit. Fed the hot loads only sparingly, and kept on a practice diet of low-pressure standard American ball ammo, the 9mm Browning will last and last. The massive slide of the .40 caliber version, along with its strong recoil spring, is apparently enough to keep the guns in that caliber from breaking epidemically.

The Browning’s mechanism does not lend itself to trigger tuning in the manner of the 1911, that is one reason it has never been popular with target shooters. For most of its history, its magazines would not fall free unless the pistol was deprived of one of its trademark features, the magazine disconnector safety. The latter, when in place, renders a chambered round unshootable if the magazine has been removed. In the 1990s, Browning came up with a magazine with a spring on the back that positively ejected it from the pistol.

The timeless styling of the Browning made it a classic, but make no mistake: Its easy “carryability,” and especially its feel in the hand, have made it an enduringly popular defense gun. From petite female to large male, every hand that closes over a Browning Hi-Power seems to feel a perfect fit. One caveat: Though it will hold 13+1, serious users like the SAS discovered that it wasn’t very reliable unless the magazine was loaded one round down from full capacity. Just something to think about.

Classic Double-action Autos

Some gun enthusiasts would argue whether the words “classic” and “DA auto” belong in the same sentence. Can there be such a thing as a “classic” Mustang? Only to the young, and to fans of the genre. Ditto the DA auto.

Surely, in terms of firearms design history, there were at least a couple of classics. The Walther designs of the 1920s and 1930s are a case in point. There is no question that the P-38 dramatically influenced duty auto designs of the future, though no serious gun professional ever made that pistol his trademark if he could get something else.

European soldiers and police dumped them at the first opportunity for improved designs by HK, SIG-Sauer, and latter-day Walther engineers. South African police, who stuck with the P-38 for decades, told the author they hated them and couldn’t wait to swap up to the Z88, the licensed clone of the Beretta 92 made in that country.

The Walther PP and PPK have timeless popularity that comes from small size and ease of concealed carry, splendid workmanship in the mechanical sense, and a cachet more attributable to the fictional James Bond than to genuine gun experts who shot a lot, though the great Charles “Skeeter” Skelton was a notable exception who actually carried the PP and PPK in .380. By today’s standards, the ancient Walther pocket gun is a poor choice. If it is not carried on safe, a round in the chamber can discharge if the gun is dropped. If it is carried on safe, the release lever is extremely awkward and difficult to disengage. The slide tends to slice the hand of most shooters in firing. Walther .380s often won’t work with hollow-points, and though inherently accurate thanks to their fixed-barrel design, often require a gunsmith’s attention to the sights to make the guns shoot where they are aimed. There are not only better .380s now, but smaller and lighter 9mm Parabellums!

Here is a circa 1930s production 6-inch S&W M&P with factory lanyard loop and instruction guide.

In the historical design and “influence on gun history” sense, one could call the Smith & Wesson Model 39 a classic. But it, too, was a flawed design, and it would take Smith & Wesson almost three decades to really make it work. The S&W autoloader was, by then, a redesigned entity and a part of the new wave, rather than a true classic like the 1911 or the Hi-Power.

S&W Service Revolvers

In 1899, President William McKinley signed the treaty that ended the Spanish-American War, the first of the Hague Accords were drafted, and Jim Jeffries was the heavyweight-boxing champion of the world. Born in that year were Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Swanson, James Cagney, Fred Astaire, and the Smith & Wesson Hand Ejector .38 revolver that would become known as the Military & Police model.

The Smith & Wesson double-action was the “Peacemaker” of the 20th century. As the M&P’s name implied, it was the defining police service revolver for most of that century, with many thousands of them still carried on the streets today. S&W revolvers fought with American troops in both world wars, Korea, and Vietnam.

There are doubtless still some in armed services inventories to this day.

One of the first of many small modifications to the design was a front locking lug that, many believed, made the Smith & Wesson a stronger double-action revolver than its archrival, the Colt. While the Colt had a better single-action cocking stroke and trigger pull for bull’s-eye target shooting, the S&W had a smoother, cleaner double-action trigger stroke for serious fast shooting. It was largely because of this that, by the end of WWII, S&W was the market leader in the revolver field. It remains there to this day, though at this writing Ruger exceeds S&W in total firearms production.

Markings show that this pre-WWII S&W M&P was worked over by Cogswell & Harrison of England.

S&W’s Military & Police Target model .38 Special predated the K-38 Masterpiece series.

The most popular by far was the .38 frame, now known as the K-frame. One thing that makes a classic handgun is perfect feel. The average adult male hand fits the K-frame perfectly. Larger hands can easily adapt. Smaller hands adapt less easily. In 1954, Border Patrol weapons master Bill Jordan convinced Smith & Wesson to beef up the Military & Police .38 and produce a gun of that size in .357 Magnum. This was done, and another classic was born: S&W’s .357 Combat Magnum, a staple of the company’s product line to this day.

The same mechanism was adapted to a .44/.45 frame gun, known today as the N-frame. In 1917, S&W engineers created half-moon clips to adapt rimless .45 auto cartridges to revolver cylinders, to fill the Army’s need for more handguns during WWI. This concept lives today in S&W’s Model 625 .45 ACP revolver, a gun all the more practical since more recent full-moon clips allow the fastest possible six-shot reload. The first of the classic N-frames was the exquisitely crafted .44 Special Triple Lock. 1935 saw the next giant step, the first .357 Magnum revolver. That gun lives today as the practical, eight-shot Model 627 from the Smith & Wesson performance center. The N-frame was also the original home of the mighty .44 Magnum cartridge in the legendary “Dirty Harry” gun, the Model 29.

S&W created clips for .45 ACP cartridge, and the 1917 revolver was born. The series reaches its zenith in the Model 625 revolver, this one was tuned by Al Greco and is wearing Hogue grips.

The author at 25 with Bill Jordan. Bill is demonstrating the S&W .41 Magnum he helped bring into existence.

In the 1970s, the S&W Model 66 became a modern classic.

Tapered barrel (upper right) was standard configuration of S&W M&P until the late 1950s. Never discontinued, it was overshadowed by the more popular heavy barrel configuration, below.

America’s most popular service revolver before WWII, the Colt Official Police .38 Special was subsequently pushed into second place by the S&W. This Colt wears a Pachmayr grip adapter, a common accessory.

In the 1970s, it became the habit of police to train extensively with the hot .357 Magnum ammunition they were carrying on duty, with the particularly high-pressure 125-grain/1,450 fps load being their duty cartridge of choice. This was too much for the .38 frame guns, which began exhibiting a variety of jamming and breakdown problems. S&W upscaled to a .41 frame gun, which they dubbed the L-frame. This turned out to be a much sturdier .357 Magnum, the most practical version of which is probably the seven-shot Model 686-Plus.

There were some growing pains, including L-frames that broke or choked. S&W got that fixed. By the time they were done with it, the L-frame was utterly reliable and deadly accurate…but by that time, police departments were trading to auto pistols en masse, sounding the death knell for what many believed was the best police service revolver ever made.

Here are two classic .357 Magnum service revolvers. Left, S&W 686; right, Colt Python. Both of these wear Hogue grips.

State-of-the-art equipment at the end of the police revolver era: A Colt Python with Hogue grips in Bianchi B-27 holster, with speedloaders in a Safariland quick-release carrier.

Colt Service Revolvers

Colt’s service revolvers, like S&W’s, trace their lineage to the 1890s. The Colt was the dominant police gun until the beginning of WWII, with S&W pulling ahead of their archrival in the post-war years and achieving near-total dominance in that market by 1970. Thereafter, Smith service revolvers were challenged more by Ruger than Colt.

The early Army Special and its heirs, the fixed-sight Official Police and the Trooper, were slightly larger and heavier than their K-frame counterparts. While the medium-build S&W was constructed on a true .38 frame, the Colts were actually built on .41 frames. Tests in the 1950s indicated that the Colts were stronger and better suited for hot loads like the .38-44, which S&W only recommended in their .45-frame guns.

Some gunsmiths felt the Colt would stay accurate longer, because its design included a second hand (cylinder hand, that is), which snapped up to lock the cylinder in place as the hammer began to fall. Others said it was less sturdy, because the primary hand seemed to wear sooner than the S&W’s. Certainly, there was little argument on trigger pull. Virtually all authorities agreed that the Colt had the crisper trigger pull in single-action and the S&W, the smoother stroke in double-action.

In 1955, Colt introduced what would be their ultimate classic in this vein, the Python. Originally intended to be a heavy barrel .38 Special target revolver, it was chambered for .357 Magnum almost as an afterthought, and that changed everything. The full-length underlug and ventilated rib gave not only a distinctive look, but a solid up-front hang that made the gun seem to kick less with Magnum loads. At the time, the best factory craftsmen assembled the premium-price Python with extra attention lovingly added to the action work. Though he chose to carry a Smith & Wesson as a duty gun, NYPD Inspector Paul B. Weston, an authority of the period, dubbed the Python’s action “a friction free environment.” Few challenged the Python’s claim as “the Rolls-Royce of revolvers.”

S&W’s Centennial Airweight is a classic snub. This original sample from the 1950s has a grip safety, a feature absent on the modern incarnation.

The underpaid cop of the time carried one as a status symbol if he could afford it. Three state police agencies issued them. A few went out to selected members of the Georgia State Patrol, and more than that were issued to the Florida Highway Patrol, while the Colorado State Patrol issued a 4-inch Python to every trooper. Today, no department issues this fine old double-action revolver. All three of the above named SP’s have gone to .40 caliber autos: Glocks in Georgia, Berettas in Florida, and S&Ws in Colorado.

The Classic Snubbies

Up through the middle of the Roaring Twenties, if you wanted a snub-nose .38 you were stuck with a short .38 caliber cartridge, too, the anemic little round that one company called .38 Smith & Wesson and the other called .38 Colt New Police, in their Terrier and Banker’s Special revolvers, respectively. (As late as the early 1970s, the Boston Police Department still had a few Banker’s Specials issued to detectives. By then, the gun was a true collector’s item.)

The shrouded hammer makes S&W Bodyguard snag-free while retaining single-action capability. This is the stainless version in .357 Magnum.

S&W Model 640-1 is the J-frame Centennial rendered in .357 Magnum. These Pachmayr Compac grips help to cushion the substantial recoil.

Then, in 1927, Colt took 2 inches off the barrel of their smaller frame Police Positive Special revolver and called the result the Detective Special. The rest, as they say, is history. A six-shot .38 Special small enough for the trouser or coat pocket, and easy to carry in a shoulder holster, was an instant success. “Detective Special” became a generic term, like “kleenex” or “frigidaire,” for any snub-nose .38.

Late in 1949, Smith & Wesson entered the small frame .38 Special market with their Chief Special, so called because it was introduced at an annual conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. It only held five shots, but was distinctly smaller than the Colt. Immediately, it became a best seller among both cops and armed citizens.

After that little ace trumping, Colt was quick to respond. Both firms had built ultra-light revolvers for the USAF’s Aircrewman project, and Colt was first to market with the Cobra, a Detective Special with a lightweight alloy frame. The alloy in question was Duralumin, aluminum laced with titanium, Alcoa #6 or equivalent. The company also came up with a bolt-on device aptly called a “hammer shroud.” It covered the hammer on both sides to keep it from snagging in a pocket or coat lining. Paul Weston had correctly described the Colt hammer spur as being shaped like a fishhook. The Shroud covered the hammer, left the tip exposed to allow single-action thumb-cocking if necessary.

Colt’s .38 Detective Special is absolutely a modern classic. This sample is the popular 1972 style.

Taurus CIA (Carry It Anywhere) effectively copies the established styling of the S&W Centennial series. It’s available in .38 Special and .357 Magnum.

S&W threw a two-fisted riposte. Their aluminum-frame snubby, being smaller, was also a tad lighter. A Detective Special weighed 21 ounces, and a Cobra, 15.5 ounces. S&W’s Airweight revolver in the Chief Special was listed as a feathery 12.5 ounces compared to 19 ounces in all-steel configuration. Also introduced (first in Airweight, in fact) was their Bodyguard model with built-in hammer shroud. Sleeker than the shrouded Colt, it was also more pleasant to shoot; the rear flange of the screw-on Colt shroud had a tendency to bite the web of the hand. However, the S&W was more difficult to clean in the area of the shrouded hammer, which proved to be a dust-collector with both brands.

Colt hammer shrouds for D-frame guns (left) and a new variation for J-frame S&W’s (right) are available through W.W. Waller & Son.

Shown with his firm’s CIA, Taurus CEO Bob Morrison is proud that his firm’s snub-nose .38s are among the most popular.

Bob Schwartz at Waller offers a hammer shroud for the S&W Chief Special that turns it into the Bodyguard configuration.

Next came a true “once and future” classic, the Centennial. Smith & Wesson took the configuration of the old New Departure Safety Hammerless top-break and grafted it onto the .38 Special Chief, creating what had to be the sleekest revolver of the genre. It even had the antique gun’s signature “lemon squeezer” grip safety, the only solid-frame S&W ever so equipped. Ironically, because few shooters had yet mastered the double-action shooting concept and most felt they needed the crutch of cocking the hammer to hit anything, sales of the Centennial were mediocre and the gun was discontinued. As soon as it became unavailable, the Centennial became a much sought after “in-gun” among the cognoscenti. It was reintroduced, sans grip safety, and has been a best-seller ever since.

Classic combat revolvers are far from obsolete. These StressFire Instructor candidates at Lethal Force Institute learn to shoot and teach the wheelgun.

By the end of the 20th Century, the classic .38 snub had evolved further. The Colt had been given a heavy barrel treatment in 1972. Even before then, serious shooters tended to prefer the Colt over the Smith in a small snubby. The sixth shot had been the least of its advantages. Most found that with its bigger sights and longer action throw – the one comparison between Colt and Smith in which the Colt would likely be voted to have the better DA pull – the littlest Colt would outshoot the littlest Smith. Now an ounce and a half heavier, with a lot more weight up front, it kicked even less than the S&W and tended to shoot like a 4-inch service revolver. In the latter 1990s, the action was updated and stainless versions were produced, including a splendid .357 Magnum version called the Magnum Carry. The gun then went out of production, though at this writing, was high on the list of “old favorites” to be reintroduced by Colt under the new management regime of retired Marine Corps General Bill Keys.

The baby S&W, meanwhile, had been in stainless and Airweight, and even lighter AirLite Ti (titanium) and SC (scandium) models. Calibers included .22, .32 Magnum, .38 Special, 9mm, and .357 Magnum. A “LadySmith” version had also been marketed successfully. The firm had made larger versions in .44 Special.

During that period Taurus had come up from a cheap alternative to a genuinely respected player in the quality handgun market. Their Model 85, resembling a Chief Special, was particularly accurate and smooth, dramatically underselling the S&W and becoming the firm’s best seller. The new millennium saw the CIA (Carry It Anywhere) hammerless clone of the S&W Centennial. The first to produce a “Total Titanium” snubby, Taurus made their small revolvers primarily in .38 Special and .357, with larger snubbies available in .44 Special, .45 Colt, and even .41 Magnum.

Rossi also sold a lot of snub-nose revolvers. So did Charter Arms in its various incarnations from the 1960s to the 21st Century. Charter’s most memorable revolver was the Bulldog, a five-shot .44 Special comparable in frame size to a Detective Special.

Beyond Classic

Each of the combat handguns described above remains in wide use today in many sectors of armed citizenry, and/or security professionals, and/or police and military circles. Some consider them still the best that ever existed; others put them in second rank to the guns of today. Certainly, those classic revolvers remain in the front rank for those who prefer that style, but in autoloaders, there are many more modern choices. Who is right about what’s best today? Let’s examine “the new wave” of combat autoloaders, and see for ourselves.

Purchasing Used Handguns

Buying a used handgun isn’t as fraught with peril as buying a used car. It’s a smaller, simpler mechanism. If it has been well cared for, you’ll be able to tell.

Buy from people you can trust. It’s a sad commentary on human nature that so many people will deal with a lemon product by simply selling it to someone else. Most reputable gun dealers will stand behind the guns in their second-hand showcases. They may not be able to give you free repairs, but if something goes drastically wrong with it, someone who makes his living from the goodwill of the gun-buying community will take it back in trade and apply what you paid for it to something else you like better.

Though pitted and ugly with its badly worn finish, this S&W Model 15 was clean inside and tight. It would shoot 1-inch groups at 25 yards with match ammo.

Some gun shops have a shooting range attached. With a used gun, you can normally pay a reasonable rental fee, take the gun right out to the range, and give it a try. If you don’t like it, you paid a fair price to try a gun. If you do buy it, most such dealers will knock the gun rental off the price, though it’s not fair to ask them to knock the range fee off, too.

The thumb rotates against the muzzle of an empty 1911 with the slide closed to check for sloppy fit.

Checking the bore without bore light. A white card or paper is held at the breechface and a flashlight is shined on the white surface, lighting up the bore so the interior can be easily seen from the muzzle end.

Universal Examination Points

As a general rule, a gun in pristine condition outside has probably been well cared for internally. This is not written in stone, however. Accompanying this segment are photos of a vintage Smith & Wesson Model 15 Combat Masterpiece .38 Special. It was found for sale among several others in a North Dakota gun shop in 1998, bearing a price tag of $130. Externally, what blue hadn’t been worn off had been pitted. It looked as if someone had left it out in a field for the last couple of years. However, when the buyer examined it, he found the bore to be perfect, and the action so smooth and in such perfect tune it felt as if it had just left Smith & Wesson’s Performance Center. He cheerfully paid the asking price, took it home, and discovered that it would group a cylinder of Federal Match .38 wadcutters into an inch at 25 yards.

It can go the other way, too. One fellow left the gun shop chuckling that he’d bought a fancy, premium brand .30/06 rifle, without a scratch on it, for at least $300 less than what it was worth. Then he got it to the range, and discovered it was less accurate than a Super-Squirter. Only then did he check the bore, to discover it rusted to destruction. The previous owner had apparently burned up some old, corrosive WWII surplus ammo in the expensive rifle and neglected the necessary immediate cleaning chores. The gun needed an expensive re-barreling job.

Testing a revolver’s timing. With the free hand thumb applying some pressure to cylinder as taking a radial pulse, the trigger finger starts a double-action stroke…

Before you do anything else, triple check to make sure the handgun is unloaded. I have seen people work a firearm’s action at a gun show and freeze in horror as a live round ejected from the chamber. Don’t let your natural firearms safety habits grow lax because the environment is a shop or show instead of a range.

Have a small flashlight with you, and perhaps a white business card or 3x5 card. (The Bore-Lite made for the purpose is, of course, ideal.) With the action open, get the card down by the breech and shine the flashlight on it, then look down the barrel; this should give optimum illumination.

Testing for “push-off” with cocked Colt Official Police. Hammer stayed back, passing test.

…and the cylinder has locked up tight even before the hammer falls, showing that this Ruger Service-Six is perfectly timed, at least for this particular chamber.

If the bore is dirty, see about cleaning it then and there. The carbon could be masking rust or pitting. What you want to see is mirror brightness on the lands, and clean, even grooves in the rifling.

Watch for a dark shadow, particularly one that is doughnut shaped, encircling the entire bore. This tells you there has been a bulge in the barrel. Typical cause: someone fired a bad load that had insufficient powder, and the bullet lodged in the barrel, and the next shot blew it out. The bulge created by that dangerous over-pressure experience will almost certainly ruin the gun’s accuracy. Pass on it.

Try the action. If everything doesn’t feel reasonably smooth and work properly, something is very wrong with the action, and unless home gunsmithing is your hobby, you probably want to pass on it.

Now, let’s branch into what you need to know about function and safety checks for revolver versus auto.

Drawing the trigger or hammer back slightly to release the cylinder locking bolt, slowly rotate the cylinder to analyze barrel/cylinder clearance.

Checking the Used Revolver

Double check that the gun is unloaded, and keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction. Check the bore and action as described above.

If it has both double- and single-action functions, cock the hammer. Keeping fingers away from the trigger, push forward on the cocked hammer with your thumb. If it snaps forward, you’ve experienced “push-off.” This means either that the gun has had a sloppy “action job” done on it, or was poorly assembled at the factory, or has experienced a lot of wear. Since most experts believe a combat revolver should be double-action only anyway, and a good plan is to have the single-action cocking notch removed after you’ve bought it, this may not matter to you. Keep in mind, however, that it’s an early warning sign that something else might be wrong with the gun.

With the cylinder out of the frame, spin it. Watch the ejector rod. If it remains straight, it’s in alignment. If it wobbles like the wheels of the Toonerville Trolley, it’s not, and there’s a fairly expensive repair job in its immediate future.

Close the cylinder. Looking at the gun from the front, push leftward on the cylinder as if you were opening it, but without releasing the cylinder latch. Watch the interface between the crane or yoke, the part on which the cylinder swings out, with the rest of the frame. If it stays tight, the gun is in good shape. If there’s a big gap, it tells you that some bozo has been abusing the gun by whipping the cylinder out of the frame like Humphrey Bogart. This will have a negative effect on cylinder alignment and will mean another pricey repair job. A big gap in this spot always means, “don’t buy it.”

The cylinder of S&W 686 is opened, then spun. Watch the ejector rod. If it wobbles, it’s out of line and may need replacement.

The author drops a pencil, eraser-end first, down barrel of cocked and empty S&W 4506. Note hammer is back, and decocking lever up…

…when the decocking lever on the left side is depressed the pencil stays in place. This shows that the decocking mechanism is working properly.

With the cylinder still closed and the muzzle still in a safe direction, take a firing grasp with your dominant hand. Cup the gun under the trigger guard with your support hand, and with the thumb of that hand, apply light pressure to the cylinder. Use about the same pressure you’d use to take your pulse at the wrist. This will effectively duplicate the cylinder drag of cartridge case heads against the frame at the rear of the cylinder window if the gun was loaded.

Now, slowly, roll the trigger back until the hammer falls. Hold the trigger back. With the thumb, wiggle the cylinder. If it is locked in place, then at least on that chamber, you have the solid lockup you want. If, however, this movement causes the cylinder to only now “tick” into place, it means that particular chamber would not have been in alignment with the bore when an actual shot was fired. Armorers call this effect a DCU, which stands for “doesn’t carry up.” You want to repeat this check for every chamber in the gun.

When the revolver’s chambers don’t lock into line with the bore, the gun is said to be “out of time.” The bullets will go into the forcing cone at an angle. This degrades accuracy, and causes lead shavings to spit out to the sides, endangering adjacent shooters on the firing line. As it gets worse, the firing pin will hit the primer so far off center the gun may misfire. With powerful loads, it will quickly lead to a split forcing cone. It definitely needs to be fixed. (When you get an estimate, if the armorer or gunsmith says you need a new ratchet, get a second opinion. Maybe five out of six times, all the gun needs is to have a new cylinder hand stoned to fit. Replacing an extractor is at least four times as expensive.)

Do all that again, and this time, once each chamber locks into place, wiggle the cylinder. If there’s a lot of slop and play, there’s a good chance that perfect chamber/bore alignment will be a chancy thing, and accuracy will suffer. This is generally a sign of bad workmanship in a cheaply made gun, and excessive wear in one of the big-name brands.

With magazine removed, hammer cocked, and safety off, the trigger is pulled on an empty Browning Hi-Power. Hammer does not move, demonstrating that magazine disconnector safety is functioning as designed.

In a test that will make you cringe, unloaded pistol begins at slidelock with finger on slide release lever…

…and the hammer remains cocked as the slide slams forward. This shows Kimber Custom .45’s sear mechanism to be in good working order. However…

…if the hammer had “followed” slide to the half-cock position as replicated here, gun would need repairs before being worthy of purchase.

A less abusive test for hammer-follow on an auto is to hold it as shown and repeatedly flick the hammer back with the free hand thumb.

Push the cylinder back and forth; front to back and vice versa. A lot of slop means excessive headspace. Particularly with a big-bore or a Magnum, it may be a sign that the gun has been shot so much it’s approaching the end of its useful life. A good gunsmith can fix this with some cylinder shims, however.

Check to see if magazines insert and drop out cleanly. This HK USP40 Compact passes the test.

Get some light on the other side of the gun, so you can look through the gap between barrel and cylinder. Hold the hammer back with your thumb until the bolt drops, and then rotate the cylinder, watching the gap. If you examine enough guns, you will find some that actually touch the forcing cone of the barrel. This is unacceptable; the cylinder will bind, the trigger pull will become uneven, hard, and “grating” as your finger works to force the cylinder past the bind point, and eventually the gun will lock up and stop working. On the other end of the spectrum, you may see a barrel/cylinder gap so wide that you could probably spit through it without touching metal. You can expect poor accuracy and nasty side-spit from such a gun. Reject it unless the seller is willing to pay for the repairs to bring it up to spec.

If the cylinder comes closer to the barrel on some chambers than others, the front of the cylinder is probably not machined true. Most experts would pass by such a revolver.

Autoloaders

With any autoloader, double check that it is empty and keep the muzzle in a safe direction. Try the action a few times. When you rack the slide, everything should feel smooth. The slide should go all the way into battery – that is, all the way forward – without any sticking points that require an extra nudge. If the gun binds when it’s empty, you know it’s going to bind when the mechanism has to do the extra work of picking up and chambering cartridges. If the gun is clean and is binding, pass it by.

Make sure magazines go in and out cleanly. Some guns (1911, for example) are designed for the magazines to fall completely away when the release button is pressed. If the test gun won’t do this with new magazines that you know are in good shape, there could be some serious warpage in the grip-frame or, more probably, something wrong with the magazine release mechanism.

Some guns (early Glocks, most Browning Hi-Powers, any pistol with a butt-heel magazine release) can’t be expected to drop their magazines free. However, the magazine should still run cleanly in and out of the passageway in the grip frame.

You want to check the sear mechanism with a hammer-fired pistol to make sure there won’t be “hammer follow.” The test itself is abusive, and you want to make sure it’s OK with the current owner before you do it. Insert the empty magazine and lock the slide back. Making sure nothing is contacting the trigger, press the slide release lever and let the gun slam closed. Watch the hammer. If the hammer follows to the half-cock position or the at-rest position, the sear isn’t working right. Either it has been dropped and knocked out of alignment, or more probably, someone did a kitchen table trigger job on it, and the sear is down to a perilously weak razor’s edge. Soon, it will start doing the same with live rounds, which will keep you from firing subsequent shots until you’ve manually cocked the hammer. Soon after that, if the malady goes untreated, you will attempt to fire one shot and this pistol will go “full automatic.”

Because the mechanism was designed to be cushioned by the cartridge that the slide strips off the magazine during the firing cycle, it batters the extractor (and, on 1911-type guns, the sear) to perform this test. However, it’s the best way to see if the sear is working on a duty type gun. (Most target pistols have finely ground sears and won’t pass this test, which is yet another reason you don’t want a light-triggered target pistol for combat shooting.) If this test is unacceptable to the gun’s owner, try the following. Hold the gun in the firing hand, cock it, and with the thumb of the support hand push the hammer all the way back past full cock and then release. If when it comes forward it slips by the full cock position and keeps going, the gun is going to need some serious repair.

Checking the manual safety/sear engagement on a 1911. First, cock the empty gun, put the manual safety in the “on safe” position, and pull the trigger firmly as shown…

If the pistol has a grip safety, cock the hammer of the empty gun, hold it in such a way that there is no pressure on the grip safety, and press the trigger back. If the hammer falls, the grip safety is not working.

If the gun has a hammer-drop feature (i.e., decocking lever), cock the hammer and drop a #2 pencil or a flathead Bic Stik pen down the bore, with the tip of the writing instrument pointing toward the muzzle. With the fingers clear of the trigger, activate the decocking lever. If the pencil or pen just quivers when the hammer falls, the decocking mechanism is in good working order. However, if the pen or pencil flies from the barrel, that means it was hit by the firing pin. You’re holding a dangerously broken gun, one that would have fired the round in the chamber if you had tried to decock it while loaded.

…now, remove finger from trigger guard…

Now, to test the firing pin, we’ll use the Bic Stik or the #2 pencil again. This time, we’ll pull the trigger. If the writing implement is launched clear of the barrel, you have a healthy firing pin strike. If it isn’t, either the firing pin is broken or the firing pin spring is worn out.

Caution: In both of the last two tests, wear safety glasses and have a clear “line of fire” with no one in the way! That sharp-tipped pen or pencil will come flying out of the barrel with enough force to cause a cut or nasty eye damage! Also in both of these tests, you’ll need an empty magazine in place if the pistol has a magazine disconnector safety.

To make sure that the magazine disconnector safety is operating, remove the magazine from the empty pistol, point it in a safe direction, and pull the trigger. If the hammer falls, the disconnector device either is not working or has been disconnected.

A sloppily fitted auto pistol is not likely to deliver much in the way of accuracy. Bring the slide forward on the empty gun, put the tip of a finger in the muzzle, and wiggle it around. If it’s tight, it bodes well for accuracy. If it slops around a lot, the opposite can be expected. With the slide still forward, bring a thumb to the back of the barrel where it is exposed at the ejection port, and press downward. If it gives a lot, that tells you that the rear lockup isn’t as solid as you’ll need for really good accuracy. In either of these measurements, it’s hard to explain how much play is too much. Try this test with some guns of known accuracy, and you’ll quickly develop a “feel” for what is and is not what you’re looking for with that particular make and model.

Summary

Well-selected “pre-owned” handguns are an excellent value. Firearms are the ultimate “durable goods.” How many people do you know who drive their grandfather’s car or keep the family food supply in their grandmother’s ice box? Probably not too many. But if you start asking, you’ll be amazed how many people you know still cherish their grandparents’ firearms.

It’s no trick at all to find a perfectly functional combat handgun, revolver or auto, on the second-hand shelf at half the price of a new one. That leaves you more money for ammo, training, skill-building…and enjoying the life and the people you bought that gun to protect.

…and release the thumb safety. If hammer stays motionless as shown, that portion of the mechanism is in good working order. If hammer falls at this point, gun is DANGEROUSLY damaged!