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Old 05-11-2017, 01:31 AM
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Absalom Absalom is offline
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Originally Posted by Cyrano View Post
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Then came the deluge. France conracted with Gabilondo y Urresti for their 'Ruby' pistol. This was a much simplified copy of the Browning 1903. It was chambered for the 32 ACP and held 9 rounds. France put increasing demands on Gabilondo y Urresti for more and more pistols, forcing them to sub-contract with other makers. Finally France also contracted with Spanish makers for Ruby-type pistols. Around 900,000 were made, by possibly 40 different makers. Quality varied from barely acceptable to dangerous. Parts were not interchangable, including the magazines. Later, pistols were coded with two letters in a circle and magazines were similiarly marked. This was not sufficient as some makers used several varieties of magazine. Finally many of the magazines were marked with the serial number of their pistol. If parts broke, spare parts could be fitted with some filing if one were lucky. As time progrssed, the worse examples either blew up or broke down and were discarded. They were a curse on the French armed forces and the last ones were finally dropped from some obscure French agency in 1973......
To add just a few tidbits to Cyrano's excellent dissertation, most of the Spanish gunmakers were actually more specifically Basque, concentrated in and around the Northern city of Eibar. I found a list of the dozens of manufacturers as of 1914 in a Spanish document that had been culled from the city archives and that listed them by size/number of employees: they ranged from 2 to 200.

Generally, the larger the company, the better the quality. My Ruby pictured below was made by Arizmendi y Goenaga, who produced about 80,000 for the French. They had around 125 employees, and this gun not only functions with another maker's magazine that I got it with, but will flawlessly feed hollowpoints.

After WW I, the Rubys kept spreading joy among other users. Newly independent Finland got a large batch from France for its new army, and came to hate them just as much, although they survived long enough to see action in the Russo-Finnish winter war of 1939/40. The new Polish army got them from the French and they saw use against the Red Army 1919/20.

And after the fall of France in 1940, quite a few landed in the holsters of German occupation troops in France, ending up in the US after being taken by GI's off the proverbial "dead SS officers" (in reality usually some frightened reservist) as a war trophy. And I've seen at least one Basque Ruby on Gunbroker that had bring-back papers of a US veteran from Vietnam, where it likely ended up with French colonial troops and then the VC before being captured by the American.
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