Brand name firearms, do you play around with them? Options

[otomik]

[Raygun]

[Arethusa]

[Snow_Fox]

[Snow_Fox]

[Raygun]

[BitBasher]

Just for the record, I own a USP-40 and I can (and have) put 300 rounds through it in one sitting and experienced no discomfort whatsoever. I was not shooting low velocity rounds, I was using a bunch of boxes of Speer Gold Dot I had given to me by buddies at work. Those put out 165 grains @1150fps, which isn't really heavy recoil but it's certainly not incredibly light.

My only point here that experiences like that are always relative. I find that grip very confortable.

[Raygun]

Okay, the CZ52...

First off, let me preface this by saying that we've had some rather sloppy weather here the last week or so (as tends to happen around this time of year in Montana), so that has precluded me from doing any shooting yet. It rained pretty good yesterday and the places I tend to go shooting are far off from the city, on lonely gravel and dirt roads that don't tend to handle rain all that well. While I do have a 4x4 truck, it's really not worth getting stuck in the middle of nowhere to shoot a few boxes of ammo. Bummer, but hopefully I'll be able get some trigger time soon, probably next week. This weekend's forecast isn't looking too good. Anyway...

The gun arrived from J&G well oiled and cosmolened, in a simple cardboard box, with a tan leather flap holster and one magazine. I've heard some horror stories about firing pins breaking, so I ordered a spare, just in case. The ammunition was sent separately, consisting of five fifty-round boxes of Sellier & Bellot 85 grain FMJ.

As for the gun, "very good plus" condition would be a pretty fair assessment, in my mind. The gun is blued with very slight wear evident on the left side of the slide, near the muzzle (where the round top meets the flat side), and on the safety lever. Those are the only places that show any finish wear. There are some peen marks around the extractor pin hole on top of the slide where it looks as if a frustrated armorer went to town after replacing an extractor spring. There are also peen marks on the takedown latch/hold open pin where the pin was pounded through the frame for full dissassembly.

Barrel, slide and frame serial numbers match. This one has the "crossed swords 54" mark on the right side of the frame, presumably meaning that the pistol was manufactured in 1954. It also has the "VOZ" marking, meaning that the pistol has been refurbished. Next to it are two more marks, "78" and below that "85", meaning that the pistol was serviced twice, in 1978 and again in 1985. The left side of the frame has the "rid" mark behind the serial number, meaning that the pistol was in fact manufactured for a military contract rather than for commercial sale. There is also a "Z" mark on the trigger guard where it meets the frame, apparently meaning that a new safety has been installed which prevents a "decocking discharge". More on that in a minute. The barrel has the "circle T" test marking, indicating that the barrel was tested for accuracy. The sight rib of the slide has the serial number markings just ahead of the rear sight. There are no evident peen marks on the sight rib. Some say this was done after the rebuild process to represent accuracy testing, others say it was done for metal hardness testing. Regardless, this one doesn't have any. The right side flat of the slide is laser-engraved "CZ52 7.62 TOK CZECH, C.A.I. Georgia VT" meaning that the pistol was imported into the US by Century Arms International. There is only one marking I have yet to find a meaning for. It is on the right side of the frame, a circle enclosing "C3", just behind the takedown latch/hold open pin. In short, it looks almost exactly like the pistol in the fifth picture down on this page, though none of the pistols pictured there show my mysterious mark.

The grips are of some "fiberlite" type material, and have seen better days. They are marred and beaten, but serviceable. However, I think I will be buying a new set of grips from Hogue ASAP. Either that, or I'll make some myself. After a serious cleaning, the barrel looks pretty good. Absolutely no pitting or throat erosion, though the edges of the lands are rounded off, showing that the pistol has seen a bit of use. Still, better than expected. Aside from a small drop ding on the left side of the rear sight, the slide is in perfect condition. The sights are sharp, and not as bad as I'd expected. Better than the sights on my vintage 1945 GI 1911A1, but that's not saying much. I believe I will be looking into having the slide milled for a set of Novak or MMC sights. The frame also looks good, though the frame-to-slide fit is a little sloppy. Not that it matters much, because the slide and barrel lock together absolutely rock solid. Interestingly, the entire pistol is finished in blue, but the hold open lever is gray parkerized. The magazine is also in decent shape. It is also gray parkerized. The base plate has obviously seen some use, as it is necessary to use as a tool to remove the barrel from the slide. Overall, I'd say the pistol looks to be in very good condition for something that cost me only $99.95.

Functionality. The first thing I did, even before I cleaned the pistol, was to do the "pencil test". The idea here is to check the decocking function to make sure the gun doesn't fire when the decocker is used. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a pen or pencil that would fit down the barrel, so I used a spare piece of 3/16" steel rod I bought to replace a drum pedal hinge. Cocked the hammer, slid the rod down the barrel, pointed skyward and decocked. Nothing. Tried it again. Nothing. Good. Cocked the hammer again, pulled the trigger and the rod went flying about five feet in the air. Good! Tried the decocker one more time for good measure, nothing. The decocker works as it should.

I then grabbed my tool kit and geared up for a severe deep clean. The gun was literally wet to the touch, being stored in oil and cosmolene for God-knows-how-long. Field stripping is pretty easy. You pull the take down latch down and the slide creeps forward about 1/16 inch. Then you simply pull the slide up away from the frame. The tricky part is getting the barrel out. There's a notch cut into the bottom of the roller cam into which you place the magazine's baseplate. You the push toward the muzzle, which pushes the roller cam forward so that the rollers disengage the slots in the slide. you keep pushing the barrel forward about an inch, then lift the barrel out of the slide. At this point, the barrel is under pressure from the recoil spring, so you have to gently ease the barrel back out of the slide, making sure not to lose your grip or the barrel will take flight. I got the barrel out and looked down the bore, which was filled with grease a gunk. I then examined the rollers, each of which appeared to be of different make as the center holes were of different diameters. They were both perfectly concentric, however. After cleaning up the barrel, it looked pretty good. I used the magazine to take the grip retainer clip off, the took the grips off and cleaned away. At this point I decided to check the firing pin to see what kind of shape it was in. I pressed the firing pin safety in with my thumb, then with the other hand, used the new firing pin to push the old one back out. I then had to use a pair of needle nose pliers to pull the firing pin out, all the while pressing the firing pin safety in. The pin came out without any problems. I cleaned it up and examined it, and it looked exactly like the new "steel" firing pin I ordered. No damage at all, perfectly fine. I decided to replace it with the new pin in order to make sure that the new pin worked. I pressed the safety in again, then slid the new pin in. Like a glove. I reassembled the pistol, then did the decocker test again. Aces. I then weighed the trigger pull, which seemed very heavy and stiff. The trigger breaks at 8 pounds (ack!), with about 1/8" of take up, a small amount of creep (less than 1/16"), and zero overtravel. Might have to get one of those competition firing pin kits from makarov.com to drop that horrendous pull weight, though.

Upon testing, I found that the slide does lock open on an empty magazine. However, there is no thumb lever on the hold open to release the slide back into battery. You have to do the old "pull and release". I had to wonder why they didn't make the hold open catch thumb-operable. It would be very easy to do so. In fact, I found that there's an aftermarket part made for this, which I will probably have to get. The magazine catch is the European heel release type, which is IMHO, extremely stupid, but it works. The geometry of the gun makes the hammer very, very difficult to cock one-handed. There's also no way to rack the slide one-handed, either (as there is with the 1911 and many other guns). So if one of your hands were to somehow be disabled, the pistol would be nigh impossible to reload. Last but not least, ergonomics were the last thing on anyone's mind when designing this gun. The grip frame is pretty deep in order to accomodate the 7.62x25mm cartridge. The part of backstrap that meets the web of your hand is very low in relation to the trigger, which seems very awkward, and I wonder what effect this will have when I start shooting. The front strap is also very short and I am barely able to get all three fingers onto the frame.

Even so, I'm not planning on getting shot at any time soon, so the gun should suffice for the purposes of fun.

In our next article, shooting!

[Raygun]

[BitBasher]

Yes, I have had a female friend that tried to shoot it and she said the grip was too wide. She ended up controlling recoil very poorly. I like it, although I woudl admint i would like a nice grip or sleeve for it formed to my hand, just for ergonomics.

I'm planning on buying the USP-40 compact soon, as I love the gun but for the purposes of my CCW it's about as concealable as a small bus.

[Entropy Kid]

The Conceal of 4 for the Beretta 200ST is most likely because it specifies an "extended clip" and a detachable stock, otherwise it'd probably have the same Conceal as the others.

About their strange numbers- My take on it is that things are balanced numerically, but not logically. A tripod has a higher Availablility than an ultrasound sight since it's a dreaded "recoil compensator." The Taurus Multi-6 becomes a single shot revolver just for putting "heavy pistol" bullets into it (what if you load alternating LP/HP bullets?). Then there's the Damage Code of SMGs and assault rifles.

The numbers work fine in their own universe (most people use them), but don't make sense for those who know better. People have posted about SR computers and encryption, but I don't know enough about how computers really work and I know nothing about crypto, so those rules don't stand out as stupid- they don't operate counter to what I know (or don't know in this case).
###

If someone went through the trouble of making a smartlink able to eject the magazine, then I don't see why someone wouldn't allow it to fire the weapon. They're both mechanical operations. Trigger pull is one of the potential sources of inaccuracy when shooting. It also allows a semi-automatic weapon to fire at its physical limit rather than having to worry about how fast someone can move their finger and not jerk the gun off target (ignoring recoil here).
###

All models of Ares Predator should have a Conceal of 5. I used to think it was the ammo capacity, but then I saw the Colt Manhunter (an error?). I thought it was the smartlink, but the Savalette Guardian has one too and there's no reference to an internal smartlink reducing Conceal.

[Snow_Fox]

Raygun, that run down on the gun shows why you're our resident expert, but all i could think is it was like a homicidal version of "antiques road show."

[Crusher Bob]

[Phaeton]

[mcb]

http://www.army.lt/guns/gallery/G08.jpg

There was some mention above about 30 round mags in a handguns and conceivability. The Grendel P30 in the above picture has and 30 rd magazine that fits flush with the bottom of the grip. The pistol is only chambered in 22WMR but if made into a machine pistol you could certainly lay down some decent cover fire. The 22 WMR in a pistol barks pretty loud as it is really loaded for longer barreled rifles but it still generate almost 38 special muzzle energies and would be a very concealable pistol.

mcb

[Raygun]

Well, it certainly qualifies for the list of top five ugliest guns in existence. :)

A pistol chambered for a slightly more effective caliber (no joke), such as the 5.7x28mm or 4.6x30mm should also be able to meet a very high capacity without a large extension past the grip. Otomik mentioned that at the top of the page. For example, the FN Five-seveN has a 20 round capacity with a flush magazine.

[Siege]

Ent

I always figured the Ares Predator was designed to be bigger than average and thus, marginally scarier looking than the more practical Colt Manhunter.

Although it's safe to assume there isn't a uniform standard applied to all weapons in SR. :grinbig:

-Siege

[Raygun]

Shooting the CZ52

Well, the weather cleared up long enough for me to get out and shoot the CZ52 today. I didn't really do any accuracy testing, just wanted to get a feel for the thing, pitting it up against my trusty 1911 to see how they compare.

I took two boxes (100 rounds) of the Sellier & Bellot 85 grain FMJ (advertised at 1647 fps) for the CZ52. I took 50 rounds of Magtech 230 grain FMJ for the 1911. Last Friday I bought a Gun Mate ambidextrous hip holster for the CZ52, as the flap holster shipped with it is pretty much useless. The CZ52 fits this holster just about perfectly, and its magazine fits in the spare pocket just as well. Ten bucks well spent, I say.

I guess I'll get the obvious out of the way. The two guns might as well come from two different planets. Opposite sides of the ballistic spectrum, different types of operation, different manual of arms, different ergonomics... I don't know if it would be possible to make two more different guns, at least, two that were designed for the same purpose.

I started out by searching for a place to shoot that wasn't going to be A) too muddy to get to, and B) too far from town I case I did get stuck. Fortunately, the Missouri River Shooter's Association is setting up a new sports shooting complex about five miles north of Great Falls, so I decided to go check it out. Unfortunately, they've only gotten to the "digging pits" stage, which means that there was not any formal place to shoot, nor was anyone out there actually working on it. I decided to drive out past the place and look for a promising, secluded site behind a butte. Didn't take too long to find one, though I did have to put the truck in 4WD and scale a pretty decent grade to get to it. No prob, really.

Being as this was entirely informal, I decided to start by setting up a piece of cardboard against a fence post and shoot at it until I got bored. I loaded up the CZ52 and just started hammering away.

First impressions: The sights are okay, not the best I've used, but they are easier to pick up than those on my GI M1911A1. The 1911 feels much better in my hand. I suppose I'm biased, but I honestly can't think of why anyone would argue otherwise. After firing the CZ52 I did find myself pointing the 1911 high, as its bore-to-grip angle is more obtuse than that of the CZ52.

It's loud.

The trigger is, as expected, a liability in terms of speed and accuracy. 8 pounds is just way too much, pulling groups way apart in rapid fire. Where I can generally keep double taps within about 8 inches of each other at 7 yards with the 1911, I'd be really hard-pressed pull that off with the CZ52 the way it is. Still, slow fire is accurate enough for union work, especially at long range. More on that in a minute.

Recoil feels comparable to a 125 grain .357 Magnum load from a 4" revolver, maybe a little less. In other words, while it doesn't recoil with a lot of energy, it does do it pretty fast, which makes it feel like it's recoiling with more energy because you have less time to soak it in. Also, recoil seems to come straight back into your hand, with relatively little muzzle flip, I'm guessing because the barrel does not have to swivel down to unlock. Berettas tend to do this as well. If the trigger wasn't so friggin' heavy, this pistol would kick ass in rapid fire. The low arch of the backstap against the web of my hand did not cause the problems I thought it might, but it definitely feels weird being there.

It's loud.

I can't fucking stand the heel magazine catch on this gun. It is held closed by pressure from the mainspring (the spring that pushes the hammer forward when you pull the trigger) and it doesn't cam to an "open" position like other pistols with this type of mag release. Its rest position is "locked", which makes mag changes really difficult to do in any timely fashion. As if that didn't suck enough, when the slide locks back, there's almost no pressure against the magazine spring, meaning that when you hold the stupid little mag catch open, the mag will not eject itself (drop free). You have to yank it out of the gun while holding the catch open. Stupid. Not a lot of engineering brainpower put into that little function. This, to me, was the worst thing about the gun.

Being left-handed, the safety is difficult to operate, but that's just the way it is with any gun that doesn't have an ambidextrous safety lever. I'll just have to take my southpaw and *sniffle* cope. Speaking of the safety lever, the decocker works as it should. Tried it several times, nary a discharge. I still don't like the idea of using it, as a lot of articles I've read suggest that it's possible that the thing could fail.

Have I mentioned that it's loud? Not a .44 Mag by any means, but a bit more than I was expecting. About like a 4" .357 Mag, again. Definitely no question that you're shooting it. You do get a nice, solid air pressure thwack to the face and chest. I'm sure it throws off a decent fireball at night. Sure to scare off the hardest of hard gangstas. Fun fun.

After I got bored shooting at cardboard, I decided to go for some longer range targets, namely a good-sized dirt clod at about 25m (which was divided into small, unworthy chunks in three shots), a big rock at about 50m, and a much bigger rock up the hill at I would guess somewhere between 80 and 100m. Shooting the CZ52 at long range is pretty fun. As you might guess, having a fast muzzle velocity for a handgun, it shoots really flat, and I found it to be dead-on at about 50m, smacking that rock without much effort, hitting 14 of 16. Using the hood of my truck as a rest, I decided to take on a bigger rock about four times as big and twice as far away and about 100 feet up the butte. After spending about four rounds to adjust for elevation, I repeatedly smacked the rock over and over. I'm not sure how many times I reloaded (I would guess four times), nor am I sure of my success rate. It was so fun to be able to do it that easily with a pistol that I didn't keep track, but I'm sure I hit at 75% or better. This is something that would be very difficult to do with a 1911, as the slow, fat .45 bullet drops so quickly.

The CZ52 did not malfunction once. It ate all 100 rounds without so much as a hiccup. Of course, it is a well-used pistol, so that shouldn't be too suprising, but you never quite know what to expect with these surplus deals. It's better than I could expect from my 1911, which tends to three-point jam on a semi-regular basis when I use one Colt magazine I have. No problems with my modified Colt mag or the Kimber mags.

After about an hour of shooting, I packed up and went home, satisfied that this CZ52 was a good buy. About the only things that bother me are the mag catch, the lack of ammuniton availability (which isn't a big problem if you don't mind mail-ordering), and the too-low grip (which is easy to forget about). New grips would be nice, but that's just an aesthetic thing. A set of Novak sights would also be nice, but the stock sights work well enough for me to put that off for a while.

I found the gun very easy to clean. Either the S&B ammo shoots pretty clean, or the gun just doesn't get that dirty. I did, however, find some brass shavings on the bottom of the slide that had me concerned. I couldn't figure out how they got there. The breech face looked good, the extractor looked good, the barrel looked good, the magazine looked good... The only thing I could figure was that it came from the bullets, which have brass-coated jackets. We'll have to see.

That's my story. Generally, I think the CZ52 was worth every penny. Let's hope it lasts.

[Dash Panther]

Raygun, your website was cited...
Soldiers for the Truth

[Snow_Fox]

[otomik]

i'm a lefty too, which kind of leads me to prefer double action pistols. surprises me that raygun as a lefty would prefer cocked and locked (not many pistols have ambi C&L safeties).

on another note:
went to a gunshow today and was fascinated by the TZ-99/CZ-99 9mm, a wonderful copy/refinement of the SIG-226, can't wait till Charles Daly imports them (Daly ZDA). Saw plenty of CZ-52s around $150 but I'm holding out for a unissued Helwan 9mm now (i'm a beretta fan and it will probably make a better carry gun).

[Raygun]

[Entropy Kid]

As far as I know, Česká zbrojovka only makes two non-competition pistols that allow magazines to fall, the CZ 75B SA and CZ 85 Combat. There's instructions here on bending the magazine brake so it doesn't keep it in. I don't know how the innards of the CZ 52 differ from the modern CZs, so this might not apply. There's a CZ 52 section on the same forum. I know there were threads on the trigger pull, but can't comment on how useful they are.

I haven't been shooting in over a year and all this gun talk is making me crazy. That's what I get for living in an area with no place to shoot and no car to get anywhere. I'll be out of here in a week, and hopefully I can put some rounds down range.

I know I have an SR comment somewhere...oh yeah. At the risk of sounding Arethusian (@A :P ) the Ares Predator having a 4 Conceal because it looks scarier is stupid, dumb, and a bit idiotic. I can see that it's balanced by cost (costs 900 :nuyen: for a smartlinked Manhunter), but it's still stupid considering that Ares is supposed to be some great arms manufacturer. I didn't think shitting out Saturday night specials was something they did. A Pred-2 is basically that (glorified), with a cost of 275 :nuyen: after St. Index. Of course, my perception about Ares could be wrong, in which case, nevermind.

[Siege]

That's ok Entropy -- I don't take it personally. :grinbig:

-Siege

[mcb]