Funderb
Member
This weekend I decided to take it onto myself to repair the browning 1922 that has been sitting INOP for more than 2 years. The brittle firing pin had snapped off one day at the range, or maybe after, because we didn't know never to dry fire it.
You think a cz52 pin is weak? hah!
Either way, I meandered out to the local hardware store and picked up some 3/4" number 4x40 machine screws and a matching drill tap kit. At home I proceeded to drill a 3/32" hole in the firing pin cup, and cut threads into the new hole. Then I screwed the screw into it from behind, applied loctite liberally, and through a combo of grinding wheel, dremel, file, and sandpaper, I reproduced the old firing pin from the shaft of that screw.
Then came the strenuous dry fire / snap cap / expended shell impact test, all of which the new pin passed. You can almost not tell this new pin from the old one.
The next day was the range. Unfortunately I had a limited supply of .32 auto rounds left over for the gun, due to the inoperable condition it had been in, but I fired first two rounds, slow fire, both impacted the target at 15 yards within 1/4" of each other high and to the right. (let me remind you of the horrible crappiness with which i shoot pistols)
Then I went ahead and shot the rest of the 30 or so rounds in the box.
Let me tell you, how dreamily this thing functioned.
Other than the fact that I shot all these into a 4" circle at 15 yards,
It was like shooting a feathergun.
I pulled the wonderfully light trigger that had no creep and a short pull,
after this I had plenty of time to feel the firing pin slide into the back of the shell, igniting the primer. This set off the rapid burn of the powder, projecting the round down the sharply rifled barrel. As the pressure dropped I felt the brass let go of the chamber walls and the slide slowly slid back along the rails of the frame, at the end of its travel, the firing pin reached its full displacement and the slide continued, shoving the pin hard into the primer once again and levering it quickly over the extractor claw and out into the cool and calm beyond. Shortly thereafter the slide began its journey back to the breech face, stripping off cleanly, another round from the waiting mag, and jamming it into the chamber as the extractor locked over the rim of the cartridge.
And as the pin waited again to release a little more entropy, there smoldered a hole not far from the center of the paper 15 yards beyond.
That thing shot like a dream. Compared to my daily ingestion of super hot surplus 7.62x25, which is more like a:
"pull click, what the hell just happened where did the bullet go?"
I recommend the pistol to anyone as a plinker. It was fantastically fun to shoot, and had the recoil of an airsoft.
You think a cz52 pin is weak? hah!
Either way, I meandered out to the local hardware store and picked up some 3/4" number 4x40 machine screws and a matching drill tap kit. At home I proceeded to drill a 3/32" hole in the firing pin cup, and cut threads into the new hole. Then I screwed the screw into it from behind, applied loctite liberally, and through a combo of grinding wheel, dremel, file, and sandpaper, I reproduced the old firing pin from the shaft of that screw.
Then came the strenuous dry fire / snap cap / expended shell impact test, all of which the new pin passed. You can almost not tell this new pin from the old one.
The next day was the range. Unfortunately I had a limited supply of .32 auto rounds left over for the gun, due to the inoperable condition it had been in, but I fired first two rounds, slow fire, both impacted the target at 15 yards within 1/4" of each other high and to the right. (let me remind you of the horrible crappiness with which i shoot pistols)
Then I went ahead and shot the rest of the 30 or so rounds in the box.
Let me tell you, how dreamily this thing functioned.
Other than the fact that I shot all these into a 4" circle at 15 yards,
It was like shooting a feathergun.
I pulled the wonderfully light trigger that had no creep and a short pull,
after this I had plenty of time to feel the firing pin slide into the back of the shell, igniting the primer. This set off the rapid burn of the powder, projecting the round down the sharply rifled barrel. As the pressure dropped I felt the brass let go of the chamber walls and the slide slowly slid back along the rails of the frame, at the end of its travel, the firing pin reached its full displacement and the slide continued, shoving the pin hard into the primer once again and levering it quickly over the extractor claw and out into the cool and calm beyond. Shortly thereafter the slide began its journey back to the breech face, stripping off cleanly, another round from the waiting mag, and jamming it into the chamber as the extractor locked over the rim of the cartridge.
And as the pin waited again to release a little more entropy, there smoldered a hole not far from the center of the paper 15 yards beyond.
That thing shot like a dream. Compared to my daily ingestion of super hot surplus 7.62x25, which is more like a:
"pull click, what the hell just happened where did the bullet go?"
I recommend the pistol to anyone as a plinker. It was fantastically fun to shoot, and had the recoil of an airsoft.
