VERY STRANGE LOOKING PISTOLS

[english]

Two very odd pistol. A German Lignose 25 cal. The slide "is" the trigger guard (leave it to the Germans).The other is a Hungarian Baby Frommer 32 cal. (Very strange looking).You don't often see these pistols and not in this condition.Both were made in the 20s.
Thanks for looking,
Joe

 

[BE Mike]

My wife's cousin showed me a German pistol from WWI. The craftsmanship on these little pistols is remarkable. They were definitely over-engineered by today's standards as just about everything else we have in our modern lives.

 

[2152hq]

Beautiful condition pistols. The Lignose is often called an Einhand (sp?) "One Hand" for the (supposed) ability to manualy operate the slide with the shooting hand. Never had one so I don't know how easy it is to operate that way,, or not.
I've had the larger frame Frommers but never the pocket model.
Quite an extensive collection can be made just chasing down the early European pocket autos.

 

[deadin]

I’ve owned several Frommer Stops over the years. These guns are mechanically fascinating. Talk about “over-engineered”. They employ a “Long Recoil” locking system. (On a .32 yet!) The barrel and slide are locked together for the entire length of the slide travel. When the slide and barrel reach the rearmost position the slide is retained and the barrel is released to return forward stripping itself off of the fired case. After the barrel reaches its forward position the case is kicked out and the slide is released to pick up a fresh round from the magazine, chamber it and relock to the barrel. There is a double coil spring arrangement in the tunnel on the top of the slide (on one guide rod) that has to be “tuned” just so to get everything to work in the proper order.

 

[cmort666]

The Chinese (Norinco, I think) made a 9x19mm service pistol that uses the "einhand" cocking system.

 

[deadin]

There also was a Spanish on that had a kind of a lever that flopped down from the slide that allowed one handed use.
As I remember it also had a spur trigger. It was called a JO-LO-AR. I had one at one time. Here's a link.. The Jo-Lo-Ar Pistol