cz-52 vs tt-33

Coalded, check out the CZ forum, they had a sticky on it a few years ago, gist was, not really safe to do

The ONLY safety issue I've ever heard about with CZ-52s, is the malfunction of the decocker mechanism on some of them. I've seen that issue on the pistol range; luckily the gun was pointed in a safe direction -- even though the owner wasn't thinking about the potential discharge.

And then there's the problem with firing pin's breaking -- solved by getting after-market replacements. Not a safety issue, just a minor PITA.

I almost picked up CZ-52 factory converted to 9mm -- but passed it by; I later went back to see if it was still there, but it wasn't. there. It wasn't.

there is NO "factory converted"
sorry, NO, all 9mm barrels are aftermarket
It was originally a 9mm gun, but due to the fact they were Combloc they had to go with X25

there is NO "factory converted"
sorry, NO, all 9mm barrels are aftermarket
It was originally a 9mm gun, but due to the fact they were Combloc they had to go with X25

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I wasn't trying to suggest that CZ (Strakonice) had anything to do with the conversion -- I should have put quote marks around "factory" -- I was only trying to say that it wasn't done by Bubba or his cousin.

The manual and the box the 9mm CZ-52 came in were professionally done and consistent with a commercially modified and marketed weapon. It was far more nicely packaged than the CZ-50 I got a few years earlier -- The manual was well-translated and illustrated.

While I do think it WAS "factory" converted, I suspect the factory was something like the one run by the Gnomes at Century Arms. (There's no way it could have been done at the CZ factory that built it as that factory was no longer building handguns. By the time those CZ-52s made it to the U.S., the factory where the CZ-52 had been built was building motorcycles and precision equipment. All firearm production had been shifted to a different factory, and the CZ-52 hadn't been built for a decade or two...

I'm surprised to hear that the CZ-52 was first developed as a 9mm weapon, as how NO OTHER military weapon routinely issued to the Eastern Bloc military used 9mm ammo. That may have been a design goal, but I can understand why it never happened. Apparently, only a few (very elite) Special Forces units/personnel even had access to 9mm weapons or ammo.

Walt Sherrill said:

The ONLY safety issue I've ever heard about with CZ-52s, is the malfunction of the decocker mechanism on some of them. I've seen that issue on the pistol range; luckily the gun was pointed in a safe direction -- even though the owner wasn't thinking about the potential discharge.....

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That issue is caused by excessive wear (or deliberate home "trigger job") of the aforementioned firing pin plunger or retractor/lock. here is a good post about the correct way to touch up this trigger, and explains the decocker problem in good detail. (there used to be a post on doing a trigger job that actually caused alot of these problems, but I cant find it now, they may have removed it, one can hope).http://www.czfirearms.us/index.php?topic=4980.0 as he states, you should really never trust ANY firearms decocker 100%.

Walt, don't forget CZ is the home of the WONDER 9(mm) Cz75, first of the first...
so Yeah, it was but remember at the same time there was 'unrest' and the crack downs in Ukraine, Poland and Hungary...
Oh, forgot, they were ALSO tooled for 9mm because of their war time production in WWII

Walt, don't forget CZ is the home of the WONDER 9(mm) Cz75, first of the first...
so Yeah, it was but remember at the same time there was 'unrest' and the crack downs in Ukraine, Poland and Hungary...
Oh, forgot, they were ALSO tooled for 9mm because of their war time production in WWII

Click to expand...

When the CZ-52 was first designed and later built, there was unrest, but it was primarily private citizens who were unhappy and restless, not important segments of the existing power structure/government -- like the arms makers. After Hungary, things quieted down a bit, and it wasn't until the mid '80s that nationalism in all of the member countries of the Communist Bloc started to become (or was allowed to become) a force for independence.

Until then, trying to build a military weapon in a non-approved caliber would have been a sure way to get fired and maybe even imprisoned. (Then, too, the folks pushing for 9mm weapons would have had to set up ammo manufacturing processes to support a 9mm version of the gun; I find the whole idea hard to grasp.)

And YES, the CZ-75 was built in 9mm, but that was 25+ years later, conceived in a totally different manufacturing organization (still called CZ), a different CZ factory and staff, and designed by František Koucký, fresh out of prison. The design was apparently intended for international sales, and not military use. CZ hoped to sell it overseas, and did, but the Western blockade of Communist Bloc goods kept these CZs from hitting it big time. (You could get them in Canada and West Germany and places in Africa and the Eastern Bloc, but almost nowhere else. Quite a few CZ-75s came back to the U.S., first having been sold to G.I.s, in US Post and Base Exchanges in Germany. A lot of those guns were tricked out by a firm named Frankonia. Very nice guns.)

It wasn't until around 1985 -- the start of liberalization under Gorbachev in the Soviet Union -- that 9mm ammo could even be used by military units in the Communist Bloc, and the gun itself was first made available to civilians in Czechoslovakia about then.

During the dark years of Communist rule, the Communists had kept their patents for the weapon "secret," so the unprotected (under international law) design was simply "cloned" in the West, by Tanfoglio. It was the hot gun for a number of years in IPSC starting in the mid 80's.

The Czech National Police LATER used the first alloy-framed CZs (the PCR, for "Police of the Czech Republic"), and that led to some changes in manufacturing processes to address problems with the earliest models. Those problems have long-since been resolved, and the alloy-framed versions now are as robust as the steel versions -- the FORGED alloy P-01 seems especially robust.

If you have any technical references [or historical articles or books about the subject, etc.] that tells us more about the 9mm episodes, please share it with us, as I'd really like to know more about that part of their history. Even info about using 9mm by the Communist Bloc in WWII would be of interest.

I've done some C&R collecting over the years, and read quite a bit, and I have always believed that only the Germans (for the P-38 and P-08 and P-35s) and the United Kingdom (for their High Powers) used 9mm in WWII. The ONLY 9mm weapons I've ever seen from the Soviets were CAPTURED weapons, later re-arsenaled and used by their police and border guards AFTER the war -- I had one of those Lugers, myself. I'd like to know more.

[Later addition: the Germans also used some Stars, from Spain. I had one of their Model Bs, with Waffenampt -- but found later that those marks were likely faked by the importer or distributor. The Germans DID use Star Models Bs, however. I'm sure a few other oddball guns slipped into the German Amry's inventory, but I never heard of the Soviets using anything in 9mm until long after the war, and then only with captured weapons..]

I would have to dig, most of it was from people connected with old timers (and in czech) that were active in the Czech arms industry, second hand accounts, from what it seemed, the Czechs were tooled up for 9mm (remember the German production from WWII) and they had to RE-tool to x25...