Astra Model 600 straight-blowback 9x19mm!

I love mine!

Mine came with the matching, serialized clamshell holster, 2 matching magazines, and a third, unserialized mag. The fit and finish are nearly prewar Luger standard and mine has never jammed- not once. As you say, the trigger is kinda rough, but recoil isnt as bad as you would think. I leave the hammer cocked on mine all the time- the main spring provides much of the blowback resistance and is hella stout!

The 600s saw little action and are often found in good condition, unlike the 400s which were flogged badly in the Spanish Civil war and beat all to hell.

There is also speculation that the 600s, being made for a German contract, were finished to a higher degree to impress the Wehrmacht buyers and promote more sales- but few were actually delivered before the Allied landings cut them off.

I have no doubt your post confuses the masses who think any gun not featured on a tacticool blog/YouTube channel is worthless for defense.

A surprisingly well-made, Spanish pistol that was sold very cheaply (like so many other surplus firearms were) in the fifties and early sixties. However, people with weak hands will be frustrated at how hard it is to retract the slides on these pistols.

That's a cool acquisition. Sci-fi movie & tv prop masters like to arm villains with Astra pistols. Not a common sight.

If I bought one I'd invest in a new full power recoil spring.

Carl N. Brown said:

That's a cool acquisition. Sci-fi movie & tv prop masters like to arm villains with Astra pistols. Not a common sight.

If I bought one I'd invest in a new full power recoil spring.

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Wolff listed them last time I looked, but the "recoil" or "return to battery" spring is less critical on this design than the actual hammer mainspring.

Astra A-series pistols featured prominently in a few episodes of Firefly- amongst others, Im sure.

Nice pistol, congratulations!
I see them used in some '70 low budget Italian detective movie to simulate supressed pistols, LOL!

Tinker

Your description of your Astra 600 sounds very much like the one I had. It was my first semi-auto pistol and I had a fun time trying to field strip it for the first time and then getting back together! It was very well made, nicely finished, and capable of some decent accuracy (sights could have been a bit taller). But my hand and wrist didn't care much for the recoil of the straight blowback design. I was usually good for 50 rounds or so and I was done with it for the day.

That's very nice. If I ever run across an affordable one, it's coming home with me.

I have a Late post war 400 ( 1" longer barrel than 600 =6")that is 98% mint and marked 9mm/.38 on the original barrel it came in an Interarms box with instructions and I bought 5 like new mags for it and the holster in 1979. I shot .38 supers in it , a few boxes when I first got it and it was pretty snappy but funtioned 100%. I shot quite a few Spanish 9mm Bergmanm lead bulleted Spanish training loads that were dirt cheap in the 80s and it shot pretty well with those too. When the Internet came about I found out a few things about the gun , where to look for cracks and the dangers of .38 super in them ect. Sooo the internet lead me to Federal Arms which sold Korean Manufactured Stainless barrels in 9mmx19 , and also the original 9mmLargo caliber. I bought three of them , one threaded and extended in 9x19 and one normal length and one normal length in 9x23 Largo/.38 Super. I also bought a couple sets of the heavier Wolfe spring kits and completly stripped the gun and replaced the main and recoil and firing pin springs and honed the fire control system with my trigger slip stones. I sot the gun a bit and tried my friends suppressor on it years ago with some 147 sub sonics and it was very good ! It does not need a a piston recoil accelerator device being the barrel is fixed and my gun is a tack driver withose stailess barrels. I chronographed a few loads out of it and shot some Winchester .38 Supers from mid 90s and was surprised to see them not much hotter than than the 124 grain 9x19 Nato loads of the time. Same with 9x21 which were right there with the standard 9x19 loads . Now I will NOT endorse shooting .38 Supers in the 400 , just my ignorant history with mine.
These pistol are kewl and my kids were in awe of it growing up as Destro in GI Joe used one For some reason when I put it in my LGS a few years back , for a reasonable price, it went unsold after a year. I took it back (which cost $30 in Ca.) and still have it and actually plan on keeping it for real hard times . Funny to see Tinker tinkering with his.

Good older thread with some tips and tricks: https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/i-want-a-astra-600-bad-idea-or.845845/

Also I agree vociferously with NIGHTLORD40K's comment on the springs.It's good to remember that hammer fired guns generally use the re-cocking of the hammer as part of the delay mechanism. Even on Browning link guns, reducing the mainspring (hammer spring) weight or even the hammer weight, can cause battering and even malfunctions.

On the Astra blowbacks, the hammer cocking is best thought of as the delay mechanism. Much like small hammer fired .32s and .380s, this gives a short period of (slower) initial extraction which is critical to operation. Of course, jumping up to 9 mm Luger/Parabellum pushes this system to the edge, so don't lighten the spring, and be sure to replace it if old, etc.

I have an Astra family! The 400 is a bit hard to feed, but I can pull the bullets from Supers, drop the charge 20% and re-assemble. By all means get new springs. That hammer spring really is critical. Rack the slide with the hammer already cocked an notice how much easier it is.

Gordon said:

Now I will NOT endorse shooting .38 Supers in the 400 , just my ignorant history with mine.

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It is like shooting +p+ ammo in a revolver not designed for it. You may not blow it up but you will beat it to death .

Gordon, there is a danger with 400s. There are two types. The type 1s were made prior to 1926. The Astra logo had an "E" and a "U" stamped above and below the word ASTRA. The letters are rather hard to see. The address stamp begins with " ESPERANZA Y UNCETA" The type 2 had a logo that had "U" and "C" stamped in the same place and the address stamp read "UNCETA Y COMPANIA" The biggest difference between the two is the improved heat treatment used on the second type. The danger is obvious in the fourth picture. This was an early gun and a crack had developed in the thin part of the lower ejection port. It went unnoticed by me and I paid the price. Safety glasses prevented me from getting anything worse than a nice shiner.

Now, this is not to say that the early guns were unsafe, they are not. But as one can see by the wear on the grips, my gun had had God knows how many thousands of rounds run through it before I got it. They have a potential weakness and checking the slide before every shooting session is good insurance. I am told these cracks start small and expand over time. It appears from your post that you are aware of this.

The 600s never had this problem. I'm guessing but I'm pretty sure shooting +p ammo in a 600 is not advised, as it is loaded to 38,500 PSI, 38 Super goes to 36,500 PSI. Standard 9mm goes 35,000 PSI.

Mr. Tinker, you have a really nice piece, there!

Mines 1948 made , or 49 and was basically in storage until later 70s when Interarms bought them and imported them. They treated these mint ones like new old stock and indeed they are. I put all springs I could get from Wolff as I did for many of my guns during mid to later 90 s . Like I said , Santa Barbara 9x23 Largo was as hot as super during that period both doing in the low 1200 fps range. I shoots them flawlessly in the factory and federal ordinance barrels

How did your trigger come out, Gordon?
I have read of target shooting with Astras in Spain.
Also Stars, an old gunzine showed a Star with pinkie rest at bottom of frontstrap and a 2 lb trigger.

Jim Watson said:

How did your trigger come out, Gordon?
I have read of target shooting with Astras in Spain.
Also Stars, an old gunzine showed a Star with pinkie rest at bottom of frontstrap and a 2 lb trigger.

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The trigger is around 4.5 pounds with almost no take up but with a little overtravel , the reset is very short. It is a decent trigger. The sights are a little off ; 2" high at 50 feet and the gun from bags shoots 3" 50 yard groups with a ball 115 grain PMC 9x19 in the federal ordinance stainless threaded barrel which is 6.5" long . That is the only long distance set up I checked. I checked because that barrel makes a ragged hole at 50 feet with that load. It's not a target gun and I don't shoot it much since the 90s when I shot 1200 Santa Barbara lead training rounds with the 9x23 Largo barrel. in the resprung gun. I had a Destroyer Carbine then thab shot another 1200 of those somewhat nasty Spanish berdan loads of 9mm Bergmann . I also have a Star AS in 9x23/.38 that I also bought a 9x19 Federal Ordanance stainless threaded barrel for back then . That is an excellent gun also. I had a few other Spanish guns and on the late 90s internet belonged to a very good Spanish Pistol blog site.

If anyone's interested in the pressure of various Spanish rounds, and what we have available today (all things people have tried or asked about!), I have a discussion and put together a little chart on this page:
http://star-firearms.com/info/index.shtml

Screenshot of the pressure chart:

The maximum pressure allowed for the commercial 9x21IMI caliber is 2350 bar which corresponds to 34100 psi when measured by the piezoelectric method. The maximum limit for this caliber is set at 2700 bar which corresponds to 39160 psi. However, in the test that every single 9x21 IMI pistol must pass at the Italian Proof Bench in order to be sold on the civilian market, a cartridge is fired that develops 3055 bar corresponding to 44309 psi.

Firing a proof cartridge once is likely not going to damage a straight blow back gun. Repeated firing of plus P 9x19 or .38 super is not a good idea. for many years the american ammo people I believe down loaded the .38 super because of the many guns meant for the standard .38 ACP. I think the ammo factories in some cases now days do load .38 super to the correct spec.

5-SHOTS said:

The maximum pressure allowed for the commercial 9x21IMI caliber is 2350 bar which corresponds to 34100 psi when measured by the piezoelectric method. The maximum limit for this caliber is set at 2700 bar which corresponds to 39160 psi. However, in the test that every single 9x21 IMI pistol must pass at the Italian Proof Bench in order to be sold on the civilian market, a cartridge is fired that develops 3055 bar corresponding to 44309 psi.

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It's been a couple years since I did this chart, but at the time there was pointedly no SAAMI spec. You saying there's another standards body that has these pressure limits? If so, can you say which one so I can check and refer to them?

barnetmill said:

Firing a proof cartridge once is likely not going to damage a straight blow back gun. Repeated firing of plus P 9x19 or .38 super is not a good idea. for many years the american ammo people I believe down loaded the .38 super because of the many guns meant for the standard .38 ACP. I think the ammo factories in some cases now days do load .38 super to the correct spec.

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This is a primary reason I had to do the ammo safety section. Someone doesn't blow themselves up firing a magazine of the wrong ammo in their old gun, tells everyone "worked for me!" No, you just got away with it, so far.

shoobe01 said:

It's been a couple years since I did this chart, but at the time there was pointedly no SAAMI spec. You saying there's another standards body that has these pressure limits? If so, can you say which one so I can check and refer to them?

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The characteristics of the cartridges and the pressures in Europe are established by the C.I.P. (or CIP or Cip).
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_Internationale_Permanente_pour_l'Epreuve_des_Armes_à_Feu_Portatives
I share the table for the most common pistol and revolver cartridges. Pressures are expressed in bars.

You can find more or less all the CIP tables here on this Italian website:
https://www.tiropratico.com/htm/CIP.htm

This is the CIP poof mark on my last purchased pistol, a factory chambered and marked 9x21 IMI Taurus G3. This proof mark attests the pistol passed the 3055 bar proof cartridge test.

Although CIP was organized in 1914, I find no mention of it in the old Gun Digest articles on individual European national proof testing. I doubt the standards are much different, though.

Jim Watson said:

Although CIP was organized in 1914, I find no mention of it in the old Gun Digest articles on individual European national proof testing. I doubt the standards are much different, though.

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The CIP is an organization between member States. Each of the States that adhere to the CIP respects its rules in equal measure. Germany, Italy, etc., have their own National Proof Bench which tests weapons and there is mutual recognition between the various Proof Benches precisely because they all adhere to the CIP standards. The test on my Taurus G3 was conducted in Italy at the Banco Nazionale di Prova in Gardone Val Trompia, as the mark indicates. The N under CIP means "smokeless powder".
Some other guns in my possession are proofed in Germany. The CIP is probably located in Liège because the very important Belgian Proof Bench was located in Liège and it still exists today.