Any Inglis Hi-Power fans?

[VictorLouis]

Other than the elevated front and rear sight base/s, was there any other structural or feature/s difference on these aside from an otherwise routine FN ?

 

[Absalom]

By the way, if you want to be sure an Inglis High Power still has the original finish, look for the Mutual Aid decal or remnants thereof on the front strap.

In the first photo you can see them already applied during final assembly at the Inglis plant.

The document explains why they are on the guns.

At the bottom a picture of the decal in all its glory.

 

[CZU]

Finish originality can be determined by the serial numbers as they were applied by pantograph after the pistol was finished(phosphate parkerization) . The serial numbers will be in the white.

 

[CZU]

The shoulder stock/holster is later, marked SA Ltd (Small Arms Ltd.) from 1944, the earlier ones were a leather holster attached to a flat board.

In case you might not know, the holster/stock you have attached to the FN HP would be illegal in the eyes of those who regulate such things. It is only legal when attached to a Canadian Inglis HP with a serial number beginning with CH. Also, last I heard, reproductions of said stock are illegal as well when attached to any HP.

The board stock you mention is only legal with Belgian HP's with a serial number less than 74000. There are reproductions of those out there as well and at one time, I think, may have been legal with the FN's. One particular maker of those was ODIN, they also made stocks for Artillery and Navy Lugers.

I'm not a lawyer nor pretend to be one, you must do your due diligence on things like this. I just read a lot.

 

[teletech]

Handsome weapons and they fit my hand great.
An Inglis HP was my first "good" handgun. Mid WWII production gun that I shot and practiced with a fair bit. After a couple years I notices how much wear was occurring so had to put it aside. The lower was fine, but both the barrel and slide were really rather soft and even with normal pressure ammo tended to upset the locking surfaces and slide stop. bought a FN slide and new match barrel so I could shoot it without doing more damage but at about that time I bought a handgun that was so much more accurate, it really showed me what I'd been missing with the HP so sold it to a friend who'd served in the Canadian forces. I've been side-eyeing the SA-35 though and if I could find a HP that would hold under about 3" at 25 yards, I'd very much like one, but my old one sure didn't with either slide or barrel.

 

[Taj]

Did she just have a misfire?

No---but it did!

 

[Dave_n]

I lucked out a few years aog when my LGS owner whom I had known for years, said that I needed an old High Power that he had just had in a part of a trade. When I realized what it was, I almost broke my wrist digging out my wallet. After all was completed, I then "idly pointed out to him" that on the front dust cover of one of the books he was selling was an Inglis with a serial just 150 away from the one he had just thought that "I needed that old gun!!" Needless to say his wife burst out laughing (she is a co-owner) and it took a few months before he stopped "bitching about the one that got away". Dave_n

 

[Darkenfast]

Other than the elevated front and rear sight base/s, was there any other structural or feature/s difference on these aside from an otherwise routine FN ?

According to Vanderlinden's "FN Browning Pistols", when the Inglis pistol was first produced, there were some reliability problems, related to the "reverse-engineering" and metric-standard issues. Most of the Inglis pistols were modified to fix those. After the war, the Belgians got some pistols from Canada, but they were from the earlier batch. They had problems feeding from standard FN magazines, so the Belgian armorers had to select and number two reliable (presumably Inglis) magazines for each pistol.

Considering the speed with which the movements of Saive and others from occupied Belgium to Britain and then to Canada followed by setting up of a completely new pistol line at the factory there all happened, it's amazing that there weren't more problems!

 

[VictorLouis]

Gracias, Senor!

 

[Absalom]

Considering the speed with which the movements of Saive and others from occupied Belgium to Britain and then to Canada followed by setting up of a completely new pistol line at the factory there all happened, it's amazing that there weren't more problems!

The general question of parts interchangeability still leads to debate among High Power aficionadoes. If you look around FN-centric discussion threads, you find everything from “parts don’t” to “Mine is a total mix I built and they all work fine together”.

According to a few accounts some time in the 1960s the British MoD, which switched to the FN in 1957 but still had significant numbers of the Inglis in inventory, requested an official opinion from FN on interchangeability and got a list which parts were supposedly interchangeable and which not.

I haven’t (and at this point won’t anymore) owned an Inglis and a standard military FN at the same time. It would be interesting to just run through a parts swap with two random samples.

 

[Valmet]

I’m a fan of the Hi-Power regardless of “flavor,” it’s astounding how much prices have gone up in the last 2-3 years.