Jennings Bryco made to perform

[Bravo11]

I know what the majority thinks of Jennings Bryco and I don't personally own one but I saw a few at the gun shop last week and was curious if they could be made to perform better.
I've never shot a Jennings but I know someone that has one and he talks about what he calls jams(don't know if FTF or FTE).

 

[Jack T.]

Heard a guy put it best a while back:

Get a good Jennings in 2 steps:
1) lift up the front sight and put a new gun under it.
2) replace front sight.

 

[Bravo11]

I like that.

 

[cornbread2]

I know a gunsmith that has a 5 gallon bucket almost full of these things in various conditions. It did not take him long to fill the bucket.

One common problem is the breech face breaking out of the slide.

This is very common on .380 pistols. The .32 autos don't have this problem as often.

There are slides broken in half and barrels that came out of the frames.

If one owns one of these things and shoots it a lot they will find their pistol in pieces.

 

[Sean Smith]

You can't polish a turd.

 

[extremefishin00]

A friend of mine had a Jennings .25 that quit working. He gave it to me to see if I could figure out what was wrong. I worked the slide a few times, and the thing self destructed in my hands. I mean it literally fell apart. One second I had a whole gun, the next, frame and several small parts were in one hand, slide was on the ground. I agree wholeheartedly with Sean. I don't even think they'd function well as paperweights.

Chris

 

[Tamara]

They can be made to perform very well...
















...as an anchor for very small boats.

 

[Jim K]

For years, my boss at the shop inisisted on selling those and similar guns because they were cheap and people bought them. He also didn't believe in sending stuff back to the factory because buyers would then not have the gun. So guess who got the job of fixing them. Some weren't too bad and could be fixed after a fashion. Others were just unrepairable.

I think they should be worked on in three stages:

1. Find deep lake.
2. Drop gun in lake.
3. Walk away happy.

Jim

 

[P95Carry]

Get a good Jennings in 2 steps:
1) lift up the front sight and put a new gun under it.
2) replace front sight.

Oh my - oh my, oh my,oh my!!

THAT is priceless.

 

[makdoddle]

What Tam said.

 

[swingset]

Gonna break with the hate, and tell you about 2 Jennings that run like champs.

My brother and I long ago (1988) bought 2 of them, when our local dealer sold .25 auto Jennings for $75 a pair! We thought "what the heck" and bought them for the purpose of just goofing off or plinking. We expected a pretty poor pistol. Thousands of rounds and 15 years, very little cleaning and not much attention and these guns are still running great! They eat every ammo we run through them, still shoot good and actually aren't terribly inaccurate. Wouldn't trust my life to a .25, but I can hit tin cans at 10 yards and that's neato to me.

Mine is "pimp" chrome, my brother's is blued (well, it WAS blued), and tho they are the laughing stock of the gun range, we enjoy our little $37.50 guns to this day.

Most are probably as bad as a pistol can be, but not ours.

 

[cornbread2]

The cheak junk materials that these guns are made from will hold up to the recoil and wear of the .22 and .25 rounds.

That is why some have good luck with the small caliber junk guns.

Design this same basic POS in a more powerfull caliber and that is when the trouble starts.

 

[PCRCCW]

Ill tell ya what my cousin and I did a couple of years ago....I heard/knew how crappy these guns were. So we decided to test one of them out..a local pawn shop had the 9mm/w 13 rnd hi cap for under 100$.....so we bought it and a case of cheap 9mm ammo....just FMJ's.

We went into the desert with bets on how long the gun would last!

It shot the entire case of ammo without a failure or breakage of any kind!

We shot the hell out of it with over 5K rnds through it and as far as I know he still has it, buried in his safe............

It never did have a failure or problem of any kind....It wasnt a target gun...but for a gun we bought to break.......I gotta say..it never broke.

Would I buy another one........maybe or maybe not..........

Shoot well..........

 

[cidirkona]

All of the south side pawn shops have them for 80-100 bucks here in Tucson - but I think selling them to a gang-banger is a good idea:

1) Gang Banger A shoots at Gang Banger B with said Jennings.

2) Gang Banger B gets hit and slowly dies.

3) Gang Banger A gets hit in the face with the back of the slide as it tears off the frame and dies of internal hemmoraging.

4) Gang Banger C robs both dead Gang Bangers A and B, takes the Jennings and becomes new Gang Banger A.

5) Repeat.

I say hand them out like they do fresh needles and condoms....

(just kidding, btw)

-Colin

 

[mrapathy2000]

if you can find a cheap one use it for the gun buy back program. heck might even make a profit and do the community a service.

 

[cidirkona]

They've stopped having those here in Tucson - what's the deal with that?

-Colin

 

[Ascot500]

If the original post was meant to solicit input from those who have actually owned Jennings - then I guess it was partly successful.

I wonder - is Jennings/Bryco still in business?

Does anyone know for a fact?

 

[Russ]

I bought a J .22 many years ago at a Wally World for $53. Mine was fairly accurate and reliable. I have noticed some wear on it that is very disturbing to the point where I'm afraid to shoot it anymore. I haven't done it yet, but I think the best way to make it more reliable is to put it in a vice and crush it into a cube shaped item.

 

[461]

I had a Lorcin .25 about 15 years ago that I paid $32.00 for brand new. I can honestly say it was worth every penny. I let it bang around for a while in the truck to plink with every now and again. It'd usually make it through a magazine without a jam. I doubt there is any real performance enhancements that could be done, the frame and slides are Zinc pot metal and just plain won't last.

Had a buddy who went against my advice and bought one for his wife as a way to get her into shooting, th efirst round fired out of battery as the round was going into the chamber, burst the case and shot the hot gasses out the side. She won't go near a firearm now and complains horribly every time he wants a new one.


Lorcin, Jennings, Bryco, Phoenix, Raven etc.. The companies all stem from the same family tree and go in and out of business regularly.

 

[Bravo11]

My plan was to solicit input from owners but hear-say is good too.
I once knew a guy that had a sister that was married to a guy once that had a cousin that owned a Jennings.....You get the drift...I don't mind
I don't know if Jennings Bryco is still in business or not but the local gun shops have NIB J/B's in stock and have had for awhile.

 

[P95Carry]

461 ..... not wanting to take issue with your statement over all those maker's names but .. and do correct me ... I was certain that outa that lot, Phoenix as a Canadian outfit, was all on its own.

 

[Ascot500]

AFIK Phoenix is (was?) headquartered in Ontario California.

 

[Correia]

I have some experience with a Jennings .22. It worked as a single shot, but you had to use a knife to extract the spent casing. That is first hand knowledge.

Personally I think that if you dropped it in a sock, and then swung the sock around as a club it would be a decent weapon. As a gun? Probably not as good?

 

[Omaha-BeenGlockin]

Had a Raven years ago----passed for a fairly decent single-shot

 

[makdoddle]

They are called "Cobra" now.