Michael Tinker Pearce
Member
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2016
- Messages
- 1,576
Linda loved shooting the Maadi Helwan- a license-built copy of the Beretta M1951. The Maadi, however, has issues; entirely my own fault and probably fixable. So Linda bought an M1951 off of Gunbroker. Rather funnily I thought she was buying it for her, and she thought she was buying it for me. Sort of a 'Gun of the Majii.'
It's cosmetically rough, which is why she got it at a good price, but the mechanicals are buttery smooth and nice. It also turns out to be a more interesting gun than we thought. It's a Series 2 Egyptian contract gun, one of 50,000 made for the Egyptians prior to them licensing the design to produce in-country. The Egyptian Army request a heel-magazine release, a simplified grip and larger sights, which Beretta provided. Interestingly when they began to produce the guns under license they did not include any of these features. This gun has the Egyptian state seal on the slide, but no importer or import marks; a bit curious, that.
Helwan magazines will work fine in the Beretta with only a tiny modification that does not affect their ability to be used in the Helwan, which solves the spare magazine problem nicely.
I may clean up the cosmetics, or leave the old war-horse as she is; that will be largely up to Linda's preference. I'm very much looking forward to shooting it!
It's cosmetically rough, which is why she got it at a good price, but the mechanicals are buttery smooth and nice. It also turns out to be a more interesting gun than we thought. It's a Series 2 Egyptian contract gun, one of 50,000 made for the Egyptians prior to them licensing the design to produce in-country. The Egyptian Army request a heel-magazine release, a simplified grip and larger sights, which Beretta provided. Interestingly when they began to produce the guns under license they did not include any of these features. This gun has the Egyptian state seal on the slide, but no importer or import marks; a bit curious, that.
Helwan magazines will work fine in the Beretta with only a tiny modification that does not affect their ability to be used in the Helwan, which solves the spare magazine problem nicely.
I may clean up the cosmetics, or leave the old war-horse as she is; that will be largely up to Linda's preference. I'm very much looking forward to shooting it!