horge
Member
Range Report and Evaluation : Bersa Thunder 380
I decided on the Bersa Thunder 380 for a first handgun purchase after receiving very good advice from THR members, steering me away from a certain other handgun. I also benefited from the excellent review posted much earlier by Stephen Camp.
My own attempt at a report is based on a session some time back, leavened by experiences with the same pistol in the weeks since.
Description
The Bersa Thunder 380 is a small (6.6" x 4.7" x 1.3" or 168mm x 120mm x 33mm) blowback-action pistol chambered in .380 ACP, bearing a clear resemblance to the Walther PPK, and weighing in at 1.2 lbs (.56 kg). The slide is steel, while the frame is aluminum alloy with polymer grips. The steel 3 ½" (90mm) barrel also serves as the recoil spring guide rod.
The pistol is DA for the first shot, with all subsequent shots SA (though of course you can just initially cock the hammer, which draws the trigger back 2/3 way for a short-pull SA first shot). There is an (over)abundance of safety features. The long first DA triggerpull, a manual safety lever on the slide (up to fire, down to safe), a magazine disconnect safety, and in late models, even a built-in key-operated integral gunlock (see photo below)
The model we chose, in 'satin nickel' finish, is sold in the Philippines with two 9-round nickelplated magazines included, all in a cardboard box. The mags have polymer floorplates. While the polymer is very tough, I imagine they can be broken by a sufficient hard impact. Reloads "with retent" are thus the order of the day.
NIB, the nickel-finish model with two mags retails for P18,200 (that's about $330), with a 30-45 day waiting period for permit papers to come through. You're out an initial 12% downpayment, with the balance due on firearm pickup. The duotone and blued finishes similarly come with two mags included, and are less expensive. Firearms are heavily taxed here.
The pistol has no explicit provision for user-accesorization towards night sights, lights, or other doodads, though someone with some workshop skills can probably adapt a universal-type kit (non-destructively, hehe) to his or her Bersa Thunder.
Handling
The trigger is (to me and my wife) smooth and quite light even in DA.
Racking the slide can initially take a bit of effort for absolute beginners (like yours truly and my wife). The manual safety can also be difficult at first to flick on and off with the thumb. About a week of dry fire drills, around 50 rounds through the gun at the range, and subsequent cleaning solve both issues of stiffness, either because the gun gets broken in or the user develops muscle strength and technique
A common complaint from beginners I've spoken to is how the safety lever can hurt the fingers when racking the slide: this happens when the slide slips from the racking hand prematurely, and the safety drags hard across a finger. Nevertheless, the protrusion is there to be exploited in pulling back the slide, or else avoided with practice.
The factory magazines provide an excellent finger extension.
Personally, I think the 7-round factory mag looks better on the piece, but I was not really buying for looks (well, okay, my wife required that I choose the satin nickel finish) and besides the 7-rounders are apparently not available here in the Philippines.
The three-dot sights are adequate: front fixed, rear adjustable for windage only.
The gun has a natural 'point' and balance for most persons I've discussed it with. I'd probably have preferred black sights with white or luminous dots, instead of the orange-dot-on-nickel scheme, but there was no such option.
The trigger guard has a hooked, serrated fore-end. It is too far forward for my trigger finger to rest on, but I can anchor my weak-hand forefinger around it if I have to. The strongly-square section of the triggerguard can dig its edge into the stronghand middle finger, right where the guard meet the grip: for those wary of developing even mild calluses, maybe a pre-emptive band-aid for range sessions is a good idea. I quickly learned to simply live with it.
The trigger comes with an overtravel stud on its rear face. Unfortunately the trigger's steel is harder than the frame's aluminum, and a tiny dent quickly develops in the frame where the stud contacts it. A three- to five-deep patch of masking tape (or some other adhesive pad) can protect that small area from getting nicked.
For those with small hands, the magazine release can be hard to reach because the polymer grip is unnecessarily thick just beside it. A gradual slope down to the magazine release would have been better, with a relief for the thumb's first joint. Such relief cannot be executed as a DIY modification to the existing factory grips, which are thin-section 'hollow' casts.
No slide bite, trigger bite or hammer bite was ever experienced.
The pistol is rather well balanced and again, it points very naturally.
Range Performance
The pistol was put through its paces with three different cartridges. I don't know how to use the range's chrono. I was at the time a first-time user and so hesitant to impose on the RO. Until I get around to it, here are manufacturers'/FBI specs on the cartridges used:
Cartridge//Bullet//Velocity 0yds//Velocity 50 yds//Penetration(bare gel)//Expansion
PMC Starfire// 95 gr // 920ft/s // 847ft/s // 9.5" // 63%
Remington Golden Sabre// 102 gr // 940ft/s // 901ft/s // 8.8" // 67%
Armscor (FMJ)// 95 gr // 945ft/s // 907ft/s // >18.0" // not applicable
Of course JHP penetration is deeper through clothed gelatin, but at significant cost to proper expansion of the bullet.
At the range, the PMC had the sharpest recoil, while the Armscor and the Remington were comfortable to shoot. The PMC and Remington produced a significant fireball, and this might be an issue for defense situations at night. I shot 50 Golden Sabres and 40 apiece of the Starfire and Armscor. All cartridges were reasonably accurate for this first-time shooter -I never missed the paper targets. More importantly, thecartridges showed themselves exceedingly reliable in the Bersa Thunder, with no malfs involved. Subsequent range trips bore out this perceived reliability for all three cartridges.
I shot at orange contact paper (adhesive-backed vinyl, actually) disks about 6" (160 mm) across, to sort of approximate the A-zone, or a human head. These orange circles were slapped onto standard cardboard silhoutte targets, and shot at from about 11 yards (11 meters).
One magazine of each cartridge was used per target below.
I also tried double-taps with the Armscor FMJ, and one-handed shots with the PMC Starfire.
The double taps (the two pairs closely spaced below) were very satisfactory and confident, while the one-handed let-offs seemed pretty lucky to wind up on the orange paper --partly because the PMC kicked more.
The RO thought I was silly (or rather, full of myself) to even try that stuff on my very first time out, but we had the range to ourselves and it was not against range rules and, darn it, I did it for THR! An absolute beginner's experience has to count for something, no?
I've since been made to understand that repeated, habitual double taps with full-load defensive ammo can be hard on the aluminum alloy frame. With all that review-stuff shooting done, I turned greedily to a box of cheap range-reloads for some fun shooting.
Bad idea, those reloads.
The range ammo was too weakly loaded, some with damaged bullets and a LOT with dented casings. Out of only 150 such reloaded cartridges, I got 3 near-squibs and 4 split casings. I actually asked for a split casing to bring home and photograph, but the RO said sorry -it was range property and still reusable. The total number of malfs on the wretched reloads was 29 out 150; failing to eject 21 times, failing to cycle 7 times, with one semi-serious jam where a soft bullet wedged in firmly onto the ramp lip. Even when the reloads didn't cause a malf, the weak charge had the rounds hitting very low and left. The pistol also got very dirty and accumulated hard, sizable grit (up to 1mm across) very, very quickly on these regrettable reloads.
Never again. I'm probably going to bring Armscor FMJ's for bulk-practice from hereon. It costs 3x as much as the range reloads (with PMC 4x, and Remington 6x as much), but I'm willing to pay triple to be spared the aggravation and cumulative damage to the firearm.
With proper factory ammo, the Bersa Thunder 380 is to us a good, reliable shooter, though it seems to demand cleaning every 100 rounds or so to keep its accuracy. I don't seem to remember friends' guns (.40, 9mm or .45) getting this dirty as quickly. I nevertheless doubt I'll need to go 100 rounds in a defense situation, heheh, and the RO's are happy to clean the gun for me.
Bottom line, the first two mags in a clean Bersa Thunder 380
are pure, reliable gold when it comes to POA=POI. From a defense handgun,
that's exactly what I want.
Stripping, Cleaning and Maintenance
Field stripping is extremely easy, though reassembly can take a lot of practice to do smoothly and quickly: one has to pull the slide back fully and seat it downward confidently, without worrying about slide bite, or it won't engage the rails.
The grips and the trigger bar need to come off to afford a good cleaning. For the former, there's only one screw per grip panel and you're in. For the latter, there's a retaining nut and washer to remove and then you just have to pull the trigger bar (the spring will stay behind) out to check for crud behind it. When returning the trigger bar, you have to make sure the magazine disconnect strap is hiked up against its spring tension, or the trigger bar won't seat all the way in. Reassembly with an improperly-seated trigger bar is not a good idea.
Fearing for the nickel finish (thanks to advice from BigG, StandingWolf and others), I have used nothing but lighter fluid as a cleaner/solvent, in conjunction with cotton swabs, plastic and bronze bore brushes. This is a flame hazard, of course, and so has to be done with appropriate safety precautions. The fluid is used both as a solvent and as a squirt-rinse. It's a good carbon solvent and an excellent degreaser. From there I lube with either Shell Helix Ultra 5W40 or Mobil1 5W50. If I could get a fully-synthetic SAE 10W60 or a bit more, I would.
I am thinking about trying FP-10, as soon as I can find a source for it locally.
Funds to buy it would be nice too
Overall
After a quick break-in, two months of regular use has shown little further change indicative of wear. My wife is able to reliably and quickly empty three mags into a 6" target at 24 feet. She is still getting better eight weeks into her first-ever use of a handgun. In that time, and despite her very slight build she has learned to rack this pistol and clear malfs with ease.
The pistol is not an airweight carry piece, but maybe the weight helps resist recoil for better shooting performance.
A real (whiny) complaint of mine against this handgun is my inability to accesorize it.
It's like, I just gots ta, you know?
I've had to hand-carve my own wood grips -not too easy given the very thin sections and necessary reliefs near the safeties, controls and trigger bar. As for night sights or laser widgets, well... that's an even tougher slog. Considering how fugly it could turn out when overdone, maybe the difficulty of customization is a blessing...
Think: fuzzy dice hanging from the muzzle, you know?
Now, the .380 ACP cartridge has its detractors, and they have a point if we look at the gel performance of any individual .380 JHP cartridge. However I do appreciate the .380's easy handling recoil-wise, and my resultant ability to fire more rapidly and accurately: I can try to make up for one bullet's ballistic shortcomings with eight more quickly sent to the same area, before I have to swap mags. I and my wife now seem to be able to do that sort of thing reliably with this pistol, and on that count alone the Bersa Thunder is a very satisfying purchase, and the choice of .380 ACP seems justified.
For home defense standby, I'd keep this pistol with a round in the chamber, mag out, safety off (thanks to Tiberius, Walt, Tuner, Fuff, Jim Watson and many others for their thiughts on this). I'd be relying on the magazine disconnect as the safety.
For holstered carry, I'd probably keep it chambered, uncocked and unlocked --relying on the long DA first pull as the safety.
Into its second month of use, I think my wife and I are attaining some amount of confidence in our ability to use this piece effectively for self defense, even one-handed. Heck, with good ammo, double or even triple taps are easy to execute with accuracy.
I am exceedingly pleased with this reliable little gun,
and I am deeply grateful to THR's many residents for helping steer me towards it.
Mabuhay to y'all.
I decided on the Bersa Thunder 380 for a first handgun purchase after receiving very good advice from THR members, steering me away from a certain other handgun. I also benefited from the excellent review posted much earlier by Stephen Camp.
My own attempt at a report is based on a session some time back, leavened by experiences with the same pistol in the weeks since.
Description
The Bersa Thunder 380 is a small (6.6" x 4.7" x 1.3" or 168mm x 120mm x 33mm) blowback-action pistol chambered in .380 ACP, bearing a clear resemblance to the Walther PPK, and weighing in at 1.2 lbs (.56 kg). The slide is steel, while the frame is aluminum alloy with polymer grips. The steel 3 ½" (90mm) barrel also serves as the recoil spring guide rod.
The pistol is DA for the first shot, with all subsequent shots SA (though of course you can just initially cock the hammer, which draws the trigger back 2/3 way for a short-pull SA first shot). There is an (over)abundance of safety features. The long first DA triggerpull, a manual safety lever on the slide (up to fire, down to safe), a magazine disconnect safety, and in late models, even a built-in key-operated integral gunlock (see photo below)
The model we chose, in 'satin nickel' finish, is sold in the Philippines with two 9-round nickelplated magazines included, all in a cardboard box. The mags have polymer floorplates. While the polymer is very tough, I imagine they can be broken by a sufficient hard impact. Reloads "with retent" are thus the order of the day.
NIB, the nickel-finish model with two mags retails for P18,200 (that's about $330), with a 30-45 day waiting period for permit papers to come through. You're out an initial 12% downpayment, with the balance due on firearm pickup. The duotone and blued finishes similarly come with two mags included, and are less expensive. Firearms are heavily taxed here.
The pistol has no explicit provision for user-accesorization towards night sights, lights, or other doodads, though someone with some workshop skills can probably adapt a universal-type kit (non-destructively, hehe) to his or her Bersa Thunder.
Handling
The trigger is (to me and my wife) smooth and quite light even in DA.
Racking the slide can initially take a bit of effort for absolute beginners (like yours truly and my wife). The manual safety can also be difficult at first to flick on and off with the thumb. About a week of dry fire drills, around 50 rounds through the gun at the range, and subsequent cleaning solve both issues of stiffness, either because the gun gets broken in or the user develops muscle strength and technique
A common complaint from beginners I've spoken to is how the safety lever can hurt the fingers when racking the slide: this happens when the slide slips from the racking hand prematurely, and the safety drags hard across a finger. Nevertheless, the protrusion is there to be exploited in pulling back the slide, or else avoided with practice.
The factory magazines provide an excellent finger extension.
Personally, I think the 7-round factory mag looks better on the piece, but I was not really buying for looks (well, okay, my wife required that I choose the satin nickel finish) and besides the 7-rounders are apparently not available here in the Philippines.
The three-dot sights are adequate: front fixed, rear adjustable for windage only.
The gun has a natural 'point' and balance for most persons I've discussed it with. I'd probably have preferred black sights with white or luminous dots, instead of the orange-dot-on-nickel scheme, but there was no such option.
The trigger guard has a hooked, serrated fore-end. It is too far forward for my trigger finger to rest on, but I can anchor my weak-hand forefinger around it if I have to. The strongly-square section of the triggerguard can dig its edge into the stronghand middle finger, right where the guard meet the grip: for those wary of developing even mild calluses, maybe a pre-emptive band-aid for range sessions is a good idea. I quickly learned to simply live with it.
The trigger comes with an overtravel stud on its rear face. Unfortunately the trigger's steel is harder than the frame's aluminum, and a tiny dent quickly develops in the frame where the stud contacts it. A three- to five-deep patch of masking tape (or some other adhesive pad) can protect that small area from getting nicked.
For those with small hands, the magazine release can be hard to reach because the polymer grip is unnecessarily thick just beside it. A gradual slope down to the magazine release would have been better, with a relief for the thumb's first joint. Such relief cannot be executed as a DIY modification to the existing factory grips, which are thin-section 'hollow' casts.
No slide bite, trigger bite or hammer bite was ever experienced.
The pistol is rather well balanced and again, it points very naturally.
Range Performance
The pistol was put through its paces with three different cartridges. I don't know how to use the range's chrono. I was at the time a first-time user and so hesitant to impose on the RO. Until I get around to it, here are manufacturers'/FBI specs on the cartridges used:
Cartridge//Bullet//Velocity 0yds//Velocity 50 yds//Penetration(bare gel)//Expansion
PMC Starfire// 95 gr // 920ft/s // 847ft/s // 9.5" // 63%
Remington Golden Sabre// 102 gr // 940ft/s // 901ft/s // 8.8" // 67%
Armscor (FMJ)// 95 gr // 945ft/s // 907ft/s // >18.0" // not applicable
Of course JHP penetration is deeper through clothed gelatin, but at significant cost to proper expansion of the bullet.
At the range, the PMC had the sharpest recoil, while the Armscor and the Remington were comfortable to shoot. The PMC and Remington produced a significant fireball, and this might be an issue for defense situations at night. I shot 50 Golden Sabres and 40 apiece of the Starfire and Armscor. All cartridges were reasonably accurate for this first-time shooter -I never missed the paper targets. More importantly, thecartridges showed themselves exceedingly reliable in the Bersa Thunder, with no malfs involved. Subsequent range trips bore out this perceived reliability for all three cartridges.
I shot at orange contact paper (adhesive-backed vinyl, actually) disks about 6" (160 mm) across, to sort of approximate the A-zone, or a human head. These orange circles were slapped onto standard cardboard silhoutte targets, and shot at from about 11 yards (11 meters).
One magazine of each cartridge was used per target below.
I also tried double-taps with the Armscor FMJ, and one-handed shots with the PMC Starfire.
The double taps (the two pairs closely spaced below) were very satisfactory and confident, while the one-handed let-offs seemed pretty lucky to wind up on the orange paper --partly because the PMC kicked more.
The RO thought I was silly (or rather, full of myself) to even try that stuff on my very first time out, but we had the range to ourselves and it was not against range rules and, darn it, I did it for THR! An absolute beginner's experience has to count for something, no?
I've since been made to understand that repeated, habitual double taps with full-load defensive ammo can be hard on the aluminum alloy frame. With all that review-stuff shooting done, I turned greedily to a box of cheap range-reloads for some fun shooting.
Bad idea, those reloads.
The range ammo was too weakly loaded, some with damaged bullets and a LOT with dented casings. Out of only 150 such reloaded cartridges, I got 3 near-squibs and 4 split casings. I actually asked for a split casing to bring home and photograph, but the RO said sorry -it was range property and still reusable. The total number of malfs on the wretched reloads was 29 out 150; failing to eject 21 times, failing to cycle 7 times, with one semi-serious jam where a soft bullet wedged in firmly onto the ramp lip. Even when the reloads didn't cause a malf, the weak charge had the rounds hitting very low and left. The pistol also got very dirty and accumulated hard, sizable grit (up to 1mm across) very, very quickly on these regrettable reloads.
Never again. I'm probably going to bring Armscor FMJ's for bulk-practice from hereon. It costs 3x as much as the range reloads (with PMC 4x, and Remington 6x as much), but I'm willing to pay triple to be spared the aggravation and cumulative damage to the firearm.
With proper factory ammo, the Bersa Thunder 380 is to us a good, reliable shooter, though it seems to demand cleaning every 100 rounds or so to keep its accuracy. I don't seem to remember friends' guns (.40, 9mm or .45) getting this dirty as quickly. I nevertheless doubt I'll need to go 100 rounds in a defense situation, heheh, and the RO's are happy to clean the gun for me.
Bottom line, the first two mags in a clean Bersa Thunder 380
are pure, reliable gold when it comes to POA=POI. From a defense handgun,
that's exactly what I want.
Stripping, Cleaning and Maintenance
Field stripping is extremely easy, though reassembly can take a lot of practice to do smoothly and quickly: one has to pull the slide back fully and seat it downward confidently, without worrying about slide bite, or it won't engage the rails.
The grips and the trigger bar need to come off to afford a good cleaning. For the former, there's only one screw per grip panel and you're in. For the latter, there's a retaining nut and washer to remove and then you just have to pull the trigger bar (the spring will stay behind) out to check for crud behind it. When returning the trigger bar, you have to make sure the magazine disconnect strap is hiked up against its spring tension, or the trigger bar won't seat all the way in. Reassembly with an improperly-seated trigger bar is not a good idea.
Fearing for the nickel finish (thanks to advice from BigG, StandingWolf and others), I have used nothing but lighter fluid as a cleaner/solvent, in conjunction with cotton swabs, plastic and bronze bore brushes. This is a flame hazard, of course, and so has to be done with appropriate safety precautions. The fluid is used both as a solvent and as a squirt-rinse. It's a good carbon solvent and an excellent degreaser. From there I lube with either Shell Helix Ultra 5W40 or Mobil1 5W50. If I could get a fully-synthetic SAE 10W60 or a bit more, I would.
I am thinking about trying FP-10, as soon as I can find a source for it locally.
Funds to buy it would be nice too
Overall
After a quick break-in, two months of regular use has shown little further change indicative of wear. My wife is able to reliably and quickly empty three mags into a 6" target at 24 feet. She is still getting better eight weeks into her first-ever use of a handgun. In that time, and despite her very slight build she has learned to rack this pistol and clear malfs with ease.
The pistol is not an airweight carry piece, but maybe the weight helps resist recoil for better shooting performance.
A real (whiny) complaint of mine against this handgun is my inability to accesorize it.
It's like, I just gots ta, you know?
I've had to hand-carve my own wood grips -not too easy given the very thin sections and necessary reliefs near the safeties, controls and trigger bar. As for night sights or laser widgets, well... that's an even tougher slog. Considering how fugly it could turn out when overdone, maybe the difficulty of customization is a blessing...
Think: fuzzy dice hanging from the muzzle, you know?
Now, the .380 ACP cartridge has its detractors, and they have a point if we look at the gel performance of any individual .380 JHP cartridge. However I do appreciate the .380's easy handling recoil-wise, and my resultant ability to fire more rapidly and accurately: I can try to make up for one bullet's ballistic shortcomings with eight more quickly sent to the same area, before I have to swap mags. I and my wife now seem to be able to do that sort of thing reliably with this pistol, and on that count alone the Bersa Thunder is a very satisfying purchase, and the choice of .380 ACP seems justified.
For home defense standby, I'd keep this pistol with a round in the chamber, mag out, safety off (thanks to Tiberius, Walt, Tuner, Fuff, Jim Watson and many others for their thiughts on this). I'd be relying on the magazine disconnect as the safety.
For holstered carry, I'd probably keep it chambered, uncocked and unlocked --relying on the long DA first pull as the safety.
Into its second month of use, I think my wife and I are attaining some amount of confidence in our ability to use this piece effectively for self defense, even one-handed. Heck, with good ammo, double or even triple taps are easy to execute with accuracy.
I am exceedingly pleased with this reliable little gun,
and I am deeply grateful to THR's many residents for helping steer me towards it.
Mabuhay to y'all.
but it is usable by me... I just can't call it mine or she calls my USP hers... 
Oh well, I ran upon a Bersa Thunder9 and I sure enjoy shooting it 'and' her 380 when she ain't around.
