Dead end handguns designs

[2152hq]

Phillip Sola of Zurich made some radical handgun designs. I don't know of any that got beyond the early stages of a hand made test piece or perhaps pieces.
The side toggle .357Mag semiauto pistol is frequently offered up as one of his designs from the late 60's, early 70's.



I guess we should add the US designed Kimball semiauto pistol from the 1950's.
Chambered in 30 US Carbine.

 

[DWalt]

How about the Liberty 45. Essentially a 45 ACP zip gun that hasn’t been seen since it was parachuted into France during WWII.

Some years back, someone started producing the Liberator pistol again, this time with serial numbers. I once saw one at a gun show, but don’t remember the price. It probably did not sell well, except maybe to a few militaria collectors.

The original manufacturer was the Guide Lamp Division of GM. I think only a few were actually distributed to partisans, etc., and most were melted down after the war. I did see an original example quite a few years ago at another gun show.

 

[BLACKHAWKNJ]

The revolver in the movie "Hannie Caulder" looks like a British made Deane Adams. The S&W M40 has a grip safety/squeeze cocker.
It seems there are 4 broad categories of dead end handgun designs.
1. Those that never made it past the prototype stage.
2. Those that were state of the art in their day but are now seen as archaic, inefficient-too complicated to manufacture and maintain.
3. Those that were innovative but offered no real advantage over existing designs.
4. Those with design flaws that were overlooked or not sufficiently worked on.
What I call Great Ideas That Didn't Work.

 

[Golddollar]

Phillip Sola of Zurich made some radical handgun designs. I don't know of any that got beyond the early stages of a hand made test piece or perhaps pieces.
The side toggle .357Mag semiauto pistol is frequently offered up as one of his designs from the late 60's, early 70's.



I guess we should add the US designed Kimball semiauto pistol from the 1950's.
Chambered in 30 US Carbine.

Remind me to never keep my Luger and my Lahti in the same safe overnight!

 

[DWalt]

Another dead end handgun was the Hi-Standard T3 pistol project in the post-WWII period. The Air Force wanted a lightweight blowback 9mm pistol, and Hi-Standard came up with a design using an aluminum alloy frame and a barrel with circumferential grooves cut into the chamber. The idea was that the pressure of firing would force the cartridge case walls into the chamber grooves, locking it in place. When the pressure dropped, the case would release and the action would function in sort of a delayed blowback mode. That part seemed to work OK, but apparently the aluminum frame did not stand up under the strain and the project was terminated. It seems to me that the grooved chamber idea had some merit, but I don’t remember hearing of anyone else taking up the same design challenge.

 

[metrotps]

I think of the Steyr GB as a friend bought one in 1984 and let me shoot it.
Steyr GB – Forgotten Weapons

 

[Benton Quest]

This is a fascinating thread.

So many misguided souls that thought they had the answer.

I have had days like that....

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[JJEH]

Rast & Gasser M1898?

To my knowledge it had a weird operating mechanism and needed a specific 8mm cartridge made by Gasser as well. That's not a good combo for a military gun.

 

[Protocall_Design]

How about the Colt Double Eagle? That one was pretty bad, at least the couple I saw.

 

[Benton Quest]

How about the Colt Double Eagle? That one was pretty bad, at least the couple I saw.

Yes. Terrible. Just terrible.

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[DWalt]

How about the one Robert Culp had made for Raquel Welch in film "Hannie Calder" the middle finger pulled a ring trigger to cock the single action and the first finger was used to fire. Could that be called a "Squeeze Cock"?

IMFDB says that the movie used both a Tranter (probably the early double trigger percussion Model) and an Adams, which was a DAO percussion revolver with a single trigger. I did not see the movie, so I can’t verify that. The early Tranter revolver had one trigger, which when pulled cocked the hammer and rotated the cylinder, and a second trigger which released the cocked hammer and fired the gun. That was pretty much the same basic double trigger principle also used by the Savage Figure 8 Navy revolver, although the Tranter and the Savage did not visually resemble each other much. Both could be called squeeze cockers. The double trigger Tranter and Savage revolvers shared a dead end design.

 

[4506517]

The current Smith & Wesson M & P series. A large number of agencies have already dumped it and moved over to Glock. As a last gasp it has been "introduced" as a "metal frame" model now. How many successful polymer guns have been redone as a "metal frame" model? I guess you can maybe count the CCF Glock knock offs, but that was aftermarket not done by the manufacturer. I know some love those guns, but I find very few folks that use them professionally like them.

Don't get me started on the Sigma. They couldn't even copy a Glock and make it work right.

 

[Tom K]

When HK P7s first came out I shot one and was immediately impressed and thought that would be the way many pistols would be built in the future. The gun is perfectly safe then you squeeze the grip and have a great trigger pull and with a fixed barrel you have excellent accuracy. It was very simple but I heard that law enforcement had a lot of accidental discharges which seems very odd to me. I wonder if someone made a polymer framed version that was much less expensive, if the design would have success?

Not odd to me! I never owned one but have handled them. To me it seemed all too easy to squeeze the handle to cock the gun, and inadvertently squeeze the trigger at the same time.

To be safe you would have to fire the gun in two steps - cock it with your finger outside the trigger guard, then put your finger on the trigger to shoot. Not at all natural and automatic, like a 1911 grip safety. No doubt with training a person could get used to it but it just seemed very unnatural to me.

 

[dsf]

I think you're correct. I had one of those for a while. It held 20 rounds and had an odd front sight (really wide, with a deep sighting groove down the center). It had the worst trigger pull I've ever encountered and was probably over 20 lbs. Emptying a full magazine was a grueling experience.

I read that they were originally designed to take a shoulder stock with a selector that allowed it to fire 3 round bursts. You could see the phantom outline of the stock attachment holes on the back of the grip, where they altered the mold. I've never regretted trading it off.

20 lbs sounds about right. Although a reduced power FP spring lessens it, but what's the point?

Funny thing is that when I was buying it two guys siddled up to the counter and inquired "are you buying or selling?"

 

[koz5614]

Does anyone here own a Semmerling? That was an awkward design.

Yup, I own a Semmerling. It’s basically a pump-action handgun. Awkward until you shoot about 50 rounds out of it & then you start to think, “hey, this isn’t half bad!” Still, it’s nowhere near as fast as a semi-auto or even a 5-shot J frame. One of the best DA triggers though, and the “cool factor” is off the charts.

 

[Echo40]

Correction: It was the “Liberator” 45.

Correction: Correction: it was the "FP Liberator".

Since it was part of a Top Secret operation, they even internally referred to it as a "Flare Projector" so that any possible spies who might be working for a factories that was producing them would believe that it was just a cheaply made flare gun.

 

[steelslaver]

The Remington XP-100 was odd. I saw quite a few as a teenager, but only knew a few people who bought one. Those guns were cannibalized; the actions used to build varmint rifles.

There are still a lot of bolt action handguns. Savage, Christinson, Cricket, Nosler and the Q LLC .
The XP100 action is actually just a short Remington model 700 with no magazine cutout. In fact I have used model 700 barrels on both a model 600 rifle and to make 1 of my XP100s into a 6mm Remington and I bet it will out shoot about any of the TC Contender types.

 

[bionic218]

If you mean "dead end" as in the design is gone, I nominate the Bren Ten.

If you mean "dead end" as in the design has gone through almost every permutation imaginable and they are at the end of "improvements", I nominate the Beretta 92 series.

I'm not saying either of them are not good quality or widely used, only that both are examples of a "dead end" in one way or another.

(I own and love a 92FS that has been to Wilson in Arkansas. I'm definitely not saying it's a bad design. It is fantastic, but you'd be hard pressed to find a way that design is going to be improved or updated.)

 

[BLACKHAWKNJ]

Few of the Liberator pistols were actually issued and saw action.
The NJ State Police adopted the H&K P7 in the 1980s, the troopers didn't like, found the drawing very awkward and unnatural. No one seems to have copied it.
The Bren Ten was a business failure, I read that even when they made pistols owners couldn't get magazines. The HSc was revived and imported by Interarms in the 1970s, I recall one forum member found it something of a Rube Goldberg design.

 

[Willyboy]

Design failures

How about the Dardick revolvers that used a triangular shaped cartridge,
a tround? I remember reading about them as a kid in a very early
Guns and Ammo magazine. Late 50’s early 60’s? Willyboy