Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Boomsticks: Gratuitous Gun Pr0n No. 15

A special post for the politicians in The Great White North and elsewhere who think they can wave a magic wand and make guns go away.

The two guns in the picture below are interesting: Guess which one was made at Smith & Wesson's Massachussetts factory by skilled craftsmen using advanced machine tools in 1928 and which was made by a village blacksmith using hammers, files, and saws somewhere in SE Asia in the 1930s:


EDIT: For those who want to get in on the detective work:

I purchased the upper firearm from a gentleman whose father had been in the China-Burma-India theater during WWII. He had retrieved it, and its holster, from a Japanese junior officer who, in war story parlance, "didn't need it anymore." The weapon is chambered in .38 S&W and is obviously a copy of the I-frame Regulation Police shown with it. Cost was $125, or, as my gunsmith put it, "five dollars for the holster, twenty dollars for the gun, and a hundred for the story."

Further pictures, including detailed closeups, can be viewed and much head-scratching about the weapon's origins can be read (and participated in) at The High Road.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The hammer is a dead give away. The top gun is the blacksmith copy. A real s&W would have the smoother hammer of the bottom gun. Other than that, they are almost mirror images.

Anonymous said...

I also thing the top is the fake.

The hammer, front sight and grips look weird.

The cylinder release button thingy isn't straight either, and that was my biggest clue.

Not that I really have a clue, just guessing.

Xavier said...

Very nice Tam! You inspired me to post one as well. http://xavierthoughts.blogspot.com/2005/12/colt-copy.html