I have one of those pistol, a Pre WWII one, with the Mle 37 holster. My friend Gene Medlin had a bunch of them before he sold his French collection. In the 1980s we wrote the book on these pistols. They're fine little pistols, although somewhat underpowered for service use They were given a coat of baked-on enamel over the Parkerizing, to absolutely prevent rust even in humid climates like Indochina and some of the French colonies in Africa. The enamel chips off and is then somewhat unsightly. They even enameled the inside of the slide around the ejection port as that space comes in contact with the corrosive primer smoke. The sights are a little finer than the 35S and harder to use, Starting with the Nazi production, the trigger pulls get heavier and are sometimes almost unusable. Incidentally, the letter prefix to the serial number is the script letter in front of the number, not the A that follows it.
Charles Petter was a Swiss engineer who worked for the Société Alsacienne de Construction Mécanique (SACM) in Cholet. After the War of 1870, Alsace went to Germany and SACM went to Cholet in the middle of France. Petter designed the 35A. After WW II he returned to Switzerland. SIG bought the French Petter patents and the result was finally the SIG P 210.
The 7.65 Long cartridge is identical to the 30 Pederson; in fact up till the 1930s, French experiments were carried out with 30 Pederson cartriges bought fron Remington. It's a snappy round; it has an 85 gr bullet as opposed to the 32 ACP's 72 gr, and gives a velocity of 1120 fps to the 32ACP's 905 fps. The problem is finding 7.65 Long brass. I tried using 32 ACPs in the 35A; the semi rim is too wide to enter the magazine. I tried grinding off the semi rim and it worked.....sorta. The round is held only by the extractor against the blow of the firing pin. The shorter round didn't feed too well either. Bertram lists the case, but they're expensive, and easily lost in the weeds. cases can be made from 32 S&W Long cases, shortened to 0.78 inch, with the rim turned off and an extraction groove cut. You need a lathe for this. Most commercial 7.65 Long cases are made this way. If you buy commerical cases, watch that the extraction groove isn't too generous; this weakens the case. I had one blow out once; it blew the magazine from the pistol and the top round was facing backwards in the magazine. No harm was done, but I disposed of that bunch of loads. I guess you could use 32 H&R Magnum cases, but the internal dimensions might be different.
Several outfits sell 7.65 Long dies but I loaded over 1000 rounds using 32 ACP dies. You may have problems with 32 ACP case holders, as they're made for the semi-rimmed case and have a tendency to leave the rimless case in the die. However I used a 32 ACP case holder for most of my loading and used plenty of case lube. RCBS sells a 7.65 Long case holder which usually works fine, although it won't fit French military cases for some reason. Jacketed bullets for the 32 ACP, 30 Mauser and 30 Luger work fine. Cast bullets also work well. The 35As seem to have bore diameters right at .311 inch. I think bullets heavier than about 95 grs are too heavy for the case. PM me when you know what bullets you're going to use and I can give you some loading recommendations. They didn't blow up our guns, but no telling about yours.
