Colt 1903 Pocket Hammerless: Education Request

[Monac]

I think a 1908 is a Colt designation, maybe , as the actually Browning 1908 is a longslide version for the 9mm Browning long . Anecdotally my Model 1908 Browning when I got it was in perfect shape but as most Swedish 1908 imports had a .380 acp barrel and a cu down recoil spring. I would struggle to get thru a magazine of good ball .380 with out a jam. I found a new 9mm long barrel and a new Swedish issue recoil spring and swapped it in and with all 9mm long surplus and commercial new 9mm long ammo it seems 100% reliable ! Quite a bit more powerful than .380 also.
So the Colt 1903 model in .32acp has ben for me very reliable with ball ammo, I didn't even try HP in it ! never owned a Colt .380 but have shot them and yes the one i shot would NOT feed HP ammo and the owner said it would choke now and then on ball. It was cherry like my 1903 BTW. Both my .25 and .32 are VERY reliable and I would carry them if I had too. The Remington 51 is a 100% reliable .380 FWIW and the Mauser is a 100% reliable .32 with ball !At top is a Browning 1955 , which is a Browning 1922 version in .380 and it is 100% reliable with ball ammo and a little less so with HP, but pretty good with most new design HP .
View attachment 984168

Gordon, I apologize if I am jumping on you for a typo, but I think you mean 1903 in your first sentence. After the FN Browning Model 1900 32 turned out to be a big hit in Europe, Browning designed another 32 caliber automatic and licensed the North American rights to the design to Colt. Colt got it into production during 1903 and called it the Model 1903. FN was not interested in the design as a 32, because the Model 1900 was still selling like hotcakes.

But FN did want a military pistol, and either they did not like the Colt Browning 38 ACP Model 1900, or Colt held ALL the patent rights, or something. So Browning scaled up the Model 1903 for them and designed 9mm Browning Long for it, a shortened and less powerful 38 ACP. I don't think FN had any prototypes until 1905, and they did not go into production until 1907, when Sweden gave them a large order. When Belgium got overrun by Germany in WWI, Husqvarna of Sweden tooled up for a licensed copy and called it the Model 1907.

At some point - and there is probably a story here I don't know - Colt decided they wanted to offer the 1903 in a larger caliber without too much retooling, and Browning came up with the 380 ACP for them. Colt got into production on that version in 1908, hence the name Model 1908. They then also called their new Browning 25 caliber automatic, which FN had introduced in 1905, the Model 1908, just to be confusing, I guess.

I also had a Husqvarna 1907 converted to 380, and it would not even feed single rounds from the magazine. I have one now in 9mm Browning Long, aka 9x20mm SR, and it works fine. There is a surprising amount of 9mm BL ammo around. The Swedes made a big batch of it for their army in the 1980's (long story) which they surplussed out years ago, and PPU in Serbia also makes it.

Personally - and this is way off topic for this thread - I think a lot of armies would have been better off with the FN 1903 than the pistols they took to war in 1914. It's a much better gun than the Italian Glisenti/Brixia or the Grandpa Nambu or the Frommer Stop.

 

[CapnMac]

The 1908 Colt appears to have been a victim of the inconsistency of springs back in that day.

We are very much in a golden age of springs and the like.

 

[Monac]

The 1908 Colt appears to have been a victim of the inconsistency of springs back in that day.

We are very much in a golden age of springs and the like.

It was a problem with the ejector that caused the jams. The Shanghai Municipal Police, of all people, figured this out (most of their officers were equipped with Colt 1908 380's), and their fix was somehow a small flat spring mounted in a cut on the right side of the slide that pushed on the ejector. (They also put a screw in the frame that locked the safety catch on Fire, which is actually relevant to another thread going on now about safety catches and decockers.)

Colt did not fix the problem until WWII, when the US military noticed that their General Officer's Colt 1908's were jamming a lot and looked into why. The US sent them back for a rework, Colt adjusted the ejectors and then stamped an "M" by the serial number, causing confusion to collectors for many years.

This is all covered in John Brunner's book, and in an article a long time ago in American Rifleman titled "The Myth of the M Series Colt" by a fine gunwriter named Donald Simmons. (The myth was that Colt had made a whole separately serialzed run of Colt 1908's for the US military with M-series numbers.)

I am sorry to be Mr. Nitpicky today. Springs are far more often the cause of problems in automatics than something like this. And springs certainly are just one of many things that are much better now than they used to be.

PS of 3/13/21 - The spring in the slide that the Shanghai Municipal Police installed on their Colt 380's bore on the barrel, not the ejector. I should have realized this; the ejector is a fixed component, whereas the barrel has at least a very small amount of play.

 

[Gordon]

Yeah I had a Biden moment and was thinking Browning 1907 , not 1908. Yes Colt "called " their .380 modified 1903 a 1908, which is also the .25 pocket model.
Weird about the 1907 " converted" to 9 mm kurz is such a dog ! Seems lick it should have worked with the shorter recoil spring and a smoothed up chamber transition. Mine did feed, sometimes. The 9 mm long restoration made it a great little pistol !

 

[NIGHTLORD40K]

---
So you're familiar with the High Standard Jamamatic... I mean "Duramatic," I see...

Nope, came close but dodged that bullet thanks to feedback from THR members.

Im really sick of tinkering with jam-prone autopistols, no matter how old, cool, or pretty they may be. The only ones Ive kept are at least 95% reliable with commonly available ammo. Im lovin my revolvers these days, lol.

The only blowback pistols I still own are a Ruger Standard, S&W 422, and (believe it or not), an Astra A600.

 

[Jim Watson]

I have wished I had bought a 9mm BL barrel when available and then looked for a "big" 1903.

I agree with Monac, the 1903 is a better pistol than a lot of the ones actually issued.

 

[NIGHTLORD40K]

I think a 1908 is a Colt designation, maybe , as the actually Browning 1908 is a longslide version for the 9mm Browning long . Anecdotally my Model 1908 Browning when I got it was in perfect shape but as most Swedish 1908 imports had a .380 acp barrel and a cu down recoil spring. I would struggle to get thru a magazine of good ball .380 with out a jam. I found a new 9mm long barrel and a new Swedish issue recoil spring and swapped it in and with all 9mm long surplus and commercial new 9mm long ammo it seems 100% reliable ! Quite a bit more powerful than .380 also.
So the Colt 1903 model in .32acp has ben for me very reliable with ball ammo, I didn't even try HP in it ! never owned a Colt .380 but have shot them and yes the one i shot would NOT feed HP ammo and the owner said it would choke now and then on ball. It was cherry like my 1903 BTW. Both my .25 and .32 are VERY reliable and I would carry them if I had too. The Remington 51 is a 100% reliable .380 FWIW and the Mauser is a 100% reliable .32 with ball !At top is a Browning 1955 , which is a Browning 1922 version in .380 and it is 100% reliable with ball ammo and a little less so with HP, but pretty good with most new design HP .
View attachment 984168

Very nice pile of classics there!

I define my M51 Remington as a hesitation locked, delayed blowback pistol (I know this is open to debate), but my .380 has been flawless as well!

 

[Jim Watson]

Mr Browning said Mr Pedersen was the best gun designer in the business.
He had to be good to design stuff that did not infringe on Browning patents and work as well as it did.

 

[toivo]

Just FYI ....

https://www.michaelbane.tv/forum/index.php?topic=6401.0

 

[GeoDudeFlorida]

Gordon, I apologize if I am jumping on you for a typo, but I think you mean 1903 in your first sentence. After the FN Browning Model 1900 32 turned out to be a big hit in Europe, Browning designed another 32 caliber automatic and licensed the North American rights to the design to Colt. Colt got it into production during 1903 and called it the Model 1903. FN was not interested in the design as a 32, because the Model 1900 was still selling like hotcakes.

But FN did want a military pistol, and either they did not like the Colt Browning 38 ACP Model 1900, or Colt held ALL the patent rights, or something. So Browning scaled up the Model 1903 for them and designed 9mm Browning Long for it, a shortened and less powerful 38 ACP. I don't think FN had any prototypes until 1905, and they did not go into production until 1907, when Sweden gave them a large order. When Belgium got overrun by Germany in WWI, Husqvarna of Sweden tooled up for a licensed copy called the Model 1907.

At some point - and there is probably a story here I don't know - Colt decided they wanted to offer the 1903 in a larger caliber without too much retooling, and Browning came up with the 380 ACP for them. Colt got into production on that version in 1908, hence the name Model 1908. They then also called their new Browning 25 caliber automatic, which FN had introduced in 1905, the Model 1908, just to be confusing, I guess.

I also had a Husqvarna 1907 converted to 380, and it would not even feed single rounds from the magazine. I have one now in 9mm Browning Long, aka 9x20mm SR, and it works fine. There is a surprising amount of 9mm BL ammo around. The Swedes made a big batch of it for their army in the 1980's (long story) which they surplussed out years ago, and PPU in Serbia also makes it.

Personally - and this is way off topic for this thread - I think a lot of armies would have been better off with the FN 1903 than the pistols they took to war in 1914. It's a much better gun than the Italian Glisenti/Brixia or the Grandpa Nambu or the Frommer Stop.

My Colt Vest Pocket 25 is just stamped “Colt Automatic” over “Calibre 25”. Was “Model 1908” the Colt internal designation or was that how it appeared in the catalogs?

I own one but only as a novelty. I really never bothered finding out much about it.

 

[GeoDudeFlorida]

Nope, came close but dodged that bullet thanks to feedback from THR members.

Im really sick of tinkering with jam-prone autopistols, no matter how old, cool, or pretty they may be. The only ones Ive kept are at least 95% reliable with commonly available ammo. Im lovin my revolvers these days, lol.

The only blowback pistols I still own are a Ruger Standard, S&W 422, and (believe it or not), an Astra A600.

I can’t prove it with just a post but I do have a Duramatic which is both accurate and reliable with standard velocity .22LR. Seriously.

 

[halfmoonclip]

Okay, first the drop safety issue. Is it a firing pin inertia thing, or a concern that the hammer can be bounced off the sear? Presume the grip safety only blocks trigger movement. Where is the risk here?
As regards the .32 works/.380 doesn't thing; purely speculation, but the Walther PP series leap to .380 was crowding the envelope. Slide velocity was increased considerably, so there was less time for the cartridge stack to rise.
Finally, my own '03, which is pretty presentable. Saw it in a local shop, looked good, and I bought it without due diligence. Taken home and field stripped, the barrel was a perfect wreck. Bullets would need a headlight. Finally figured that I knew this particular gun; it had belonged to a friend of the family, who only fired it on New Years, with black powder blanks. Found a minty replacement barrel at a gunshow; problem solved.
Moon