Mauser HsC
Some years back, I’d a friend who was, well, beefy. Large. A seriously big man. Being not-tiny, myself, I was always sensitive to using pejorative nomenclature. And he was a good friend. His name is Bud.
We two (and friend Dave, the mechanic) were adjacent to a berm at an undisclosed location (near an amusement park kinda in what was then a legal grey area between Phoenix and Tempe. Desert between the cities. County land. Sorta. ‘Legal’ to discharge firearms. Maybe.
Dave was showing Bud his Mauser HsC, blue, in .380 ACP. A seriously-designed pistol in an less-than-serious caliber.
‘Course, I wouldn’t want to be shot with it, regardless!
And we were test-firing a round into the berm. And Bud, on his first round, dropped the Mauser into the gravel!
Of course, Dave was upset. Who wouldn’t be? Someone dropping your pistol?
The reason was there were parallel grooves in the man’s hand post-firing!
Bud was well-schooled in pistolcraft, and taught to grip handguns as high to the boreline as possible. Less muzzle rise and apparent recoil. And the slide returned neatly, slicing two grooves into the web of his hand, as he had gripped it so high. Apparently, he also had similar experiences with guns with long hammer tangs.
Slide bite. Hammer bite.
Even though I was/am not tiny, my hands aren’t as beefy as Bud’s, and rarely had issue with being bitten by a slide or hammer. My 1911 has a Commander-style hammer, obviating the problem, and when I had a Browning HP, the hammer bit a little.
But I didn’t care.
I always find it interesting that some folks take hammer bite prevention to the extreme. Changing out a service pistol hammer to a Commander hammer AND have a gunsmith build up the recoil shoulder on the pistol (aka a beavertail). I would think one solution alone would solve the problem.
Browning High Power, not mine - same hammer, though
But, what do I know? I let my Browning bite me.
Discussion
No comments yet.