Can Anyone Identify This Gun?

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KenRocks

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So we moved into a new house a few months ago and one my roommates went out onto the covered porch to smoke a cigarette. She noticed something funny poking out of the rafters and pulled it down...what she thought was a red plastic toy gun is actually a rusted red real gun...

I've been trying to get my hands on it for a month now to post it up here and figure out what it is, and today I finally got some pictures. There is a possibly legible serial number on the frame, and what appears to be Chinese script on the other side...both are faint and rusty, and very hard for me to get a picture of...

Honestly thought it was a zip gun until I saw the engraving...

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That's quite a find. Shame about the condition, but it I love stories like this. Eventually it's bound to be my turn to find one, right? ;)
 
Definitely a late production (1939-1945) type 14 Nambu from the extended finger guard and the magazine retaining spring. Not only that, the solid knurled cocking piece means it is very near the end of the production run, probably 1945. Earlier cocking pieces were three tandem rings.

Can it be restored? If so, it is very collectible.

Bill
 
If that can be restored in any meaningful way, there's hope for my plan to live past 120 ;)

I really enjoy the "ID my gun" threads (of which I've started only one), because it's neat to see the distributed knowledge that forums like this collect / display / archive.

Warm fuzzy feeling :)

timothy
 
WOW!

As others have already stated, a type 14 Nambu.

If only it could talk and tell the tale of how it made it from 1940's Japan to the rafters of your new residence.
 
Well, people beat me to the answer, it's a Nambu. That's an absolute crying shame about the condition.
 
heh.. as soon as the image loaded I shouted "NAMBU" heh..
There are some videos of its operation on youtube, japanese gun magazine company, its all in japanese but they show it in operation.

Defenitly looks like something brought home from the war, and yes very collectible. The caliber is probably the wackiest thing about the nambu's. As far as I know they were the japanese sidearm during wwii, I would check wikipedia for more information.

Very very cool though, I would love to 'find' a gun, just love it. Working or not, the mystery of determining where it came from, and how it got there would keep me busy for quite some time.

Really a shame its rusted, theres no way it will ever be restored... If theres one thing that you should do to that thing, is try and recover the serial number.
 
That's an absolute crying shame about the condition.
Click to expand...
At least he can't have an AD with it in said condition!

(For the 3 people on THR that might not know: The Type 14's sear can be tripped without pulling the trigger. You really can't/shouldn't carry it with a chambered round)
 
HTML: 
(For the 3 people on THR that might not know: The Type 14's sear can be tripped without pulling the trigger. You really can't/shouldn't carry it with a chambered round)

I think that's type 94....and didn't someone prove that's a wives tail?:confused:
 
We found it in Houston, so the climate definitely didnt help much. Oddly enough, its not the only strange find in this house...we found an odd knife stuck up above one of the door frames as well, sadly its in the same condition. The stamp on the blade doesnt appear to be english, although with it in the same condition as the gun, its not especially legible...the fact that I dont read the language anyway makes it a bit more difficult to decipher. My other roommate gave it to me to clean up a bit to see if we can recover any markings...a visitor said he believed it was a Hitler youth knife, but I tend to disagree...there's a fleur de lis on the handle, which doesnt quite seem appropriate. I'll get a picture up if anyone knows knives as well :)

Although I know it will never fire again, I'd kinda like to see if I could clean it up a little bit and maybe break the mechanism loose. As it is, its completely frozen up...at least it was stored unloaded.

I'd love to know the story behind it, and at least get the serial so it can be dated...any suggestions on a solvent that I can maybe soak it in and clean it up a bit? Anyone ever "restored" something like this (I figure thats the wrong word, in this particular case, since this is clearly beyond any repair)?

Thanks alot for the help, guys...took a nap and came back to a full thread :)
 
"I think that's type 94....and didn't someone prove that's a wives tail?"

You definitely CAN fire a Type 94 merely by pressing on the exposed trigger-bar, but the Type 14 (and the Luger, which the trigger design for both the Type 14 and Type 94 was taken from) has enough metal guarding the trigger-bar, that you'd have to deliberately press in on it with a pointed tool to get it to fire. You can fire a striped Luger upper all by itself, though, since the "guard" is part of the lower.
 
From my understanding of the Nambu, it is now just as reliable as the day it came off the assembly line.

Probably a war trophy, I bet it got put up in the rafters after they had kids or something and forgotten...
 
After WWII, there were many copies made of the so-called "Hitler Youth" knife. Some were made in Germany or France, where use of the swastika was banned, so they used some other symbol, commonly the fleur-de-lis. Those have little value even as knives, since most were poorly made from soft steel.

Jim
 
From my understanding of the Nambu, it is now just as reliable as the day it came off the assembly line.
Click to expand...

Maybe, maybe not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWLdIdzPUX8

This video is pretty eye-opening about the Nambu. It looks like a pretty clever piece to me - up to par with what the Japanese do with their manufacturing these days.

After seeing it in action, I'm wondering if all the reliability reports were a result of witnessing crummy late-war production pieces fail. EVERYTHING the Japanese made late in the war was junk - doesn't mean the original designs were junk, though.
 
I think the collection of aluminum cans in that last picture may be worth more than the gun ;)

Maybe if you soaked it in a good rust remover or used motor oil it may clean up enough to make it a display piece. If only it could talk.
 
Eh...never intended it to be a sale item, I'm honestly much more interested in it's story. We were scratching our heads for a week or two trying to figure out what the thing was before I got a picture, and I'm honestly surprised...never even heard of a nambu. Combined with the knife, the story was a little more interesting.

Really I just wanna see if I can get the rust off and make it look nice...after all the time it's spent outside, I wouldnt even trust the thing for a "hide behind a tree and yank this 20ft string" test...

Might get over my aversion to the landlord and see if I can find out who lived here previously.
 
Rust removal

IIRC, you can remove the rust from it while leaving the metal by taking a small bucket of water with baking soda in it and put a steel rod on one side not touching the object to have rust removed. Then you take a battery charger and attach the negative to the metal rod and the positive to the metal object to have rust removed. Do this outdoors as it produced hydrogen gas.

Do in internet search on it, but I think that is the jist of it.

In any regard, that is a cool find.
 
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