Commercial Sellier & Bellot 85gr FMJ averages over fifteen hundred feet-per-second out of this thing, with the traditional fireworks display at the muzzle and brass flung somewhere into the weeds on the berm.
These, along with the Makarov and various Tokarev variants, were among a trio of Cold War commie blasters that were imported in such numbers to actually have a bit of an aftermarket. Hogue does hardwood replacement grip panels, both smooth and textured, and some holster makers have supported it. Prvi Partisan even loads JHP ammunition, if you're so unfortunate* as to have to rely on one for carry.
Also, unless you're absolutely certain that the decocker has been checked out to be safe (or the gun's been modified to make it so) do not trust that thing. In a distressingly large number of them, the decocker essentially functioned as a second trigger. We spent a summer making the decockers safe to use on several thousand of them back in '03.
- Open the crate.
- Pull the slides off all the pistols.
- Put the frames on a cart and wheel it over to Shannon.
- Shannon would huck the frames up in the mill, take a pass across the rear face of the takedown latch so the slide would sit a teeny bit further forward, and then hit the hammer face a lick on the grinder.
- Wheel the cart of finished frames back to me.
- Cold blue all the hammer faces.
- Reassemble the slides onto the frames.
- Pick the pistols up one at a time and hit the hammers a whack with the handle of a screwdriver to make sure they stayed cocked.
- One at a time drop a dowel down the barrels and use the decocker to make sure the dowel didn't budge.
- Put the pistols back in the crate.
- Open the next crate.
My car smelled like cosmoline all summer. (The Zed Drei was still fairly young back then and still whiffed of leather upholstery on warm Knoxville summer days. When it was ninety degrees out, I'd get in the car to drive home from the shop and the combination of the leather smell and the cosmoline that clogged all my pores and coated my jeans made a combination that whiffed of mildewed sweat socks and high school gym locker rooms. I have PTSD.)
*Look, when these were under a hundred bucks, you could argue that it beat a handful of nothing for a broke college student. Nowadays they're a collectible going for damn near new Glock prices and there have to be literally hundreds of better options for self defense in that price range.
