RAP 401 just modernized Star BM?

[Ash]

Okay, follow this reasoning. An epiphany came welling out of my dusty mind today, something that should have occured to me long before. Several years back, before I bought my RAP 440, I thought it looked basically like a double action compact 1911. Well, I bought one after reading Cruffler's review and decided it was among the best made pistols I have ever owned. It has a smoother trigger than anything I have save for a Colt Trooper Mk IV and turned out to be very reliable.

Now, we all know the relationship between the Astra A-75 and the RAP pistols. Now, the Astra A-75 is basically just a double action version of the A-70, right? Well, looking at the Star BM's, I have just realized that the Astra A-70 is really just a modernized BM. Now, if it is just a modernized BM, then really, the A-75 can be called the same thing. And, with that, the RAP 440 is, for all practical purposes, an updated and modernized Star BM.

Now, that is akin to saying the Beretta 92 is, for all practical purposes, a modernized P-38, but, well, it's the truth, ain't it?

Ash

 

[Preacherman]

Errr... no. The Star BM is a long-distance cousin to the 1911. The Astra A75 is a long-distance cousin to the SIG range. BIG difference...

 

[hksw]

IMO, if you're trying to find a relation between the A-75 with BM I think the link being made could be true for most of the semiautos, i.e. they are very thinly linked to one another in design. (Excluding tilting blocks, rotating barrels, gas op, etc. of course.)

The BM is more akin to the MAS 35/CZ-75/SIG P-210 than to the A-75 which is more derived from the Hi Power. But, in the beginning, they are all linked back to JMB's designs.

(Enclosed kidney shaped cam to lock up the barrel as opposed to the open cam of the modified Browning actions.)

 

[PCRCCW]

Id say the CZ75/Sig 210 influence is very credible. Most Semi autos are improvements, in the designers opinion anyway, over other similar guns.
Thats how it is with most things....especially mechanical devices........
Shoot well..........

 

[Ash]

Compare them side to side. The Astra A-70 is a single-action pistol with a frame-mounted safety attached to the tang with the trigger bar on the right side under the grip, just like the Star. It uses the Sig-style lock-up, but most new pistols use that. The Astra A-75 is double action, but still uses the trigger bar on the right side, which contributes to its smoothness. But, in the end, the Star BM was a single-stack, compact single-action 9mm. Lockup was with a swinging link and locking lugs milled in the slide. The Astra A-70 was a single-stack, compact single-action 9mm with its lockup in the Sig fashion using the ejection port. However, unlike the CZ-75 or Sig 210, the slide rides on the outside and not the inside (like the Star BM).

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The A-70 and A-75 were not related to the A-80/90/100 pistols save by a similar milling of the foreward portion of the slide.

 

[hksw]

[Correction, I was thinking of the Star B Super instead of the BM with regards to the linkless lock-up. With that, the B Super is more closer to the RAP than the BM, IMO.]

Eh, so what is more critical in determining the lineage of a gun design? Which way the slides go (inside-out vs, outside-in, a simple design decision) or how a gun locks up (a decision requiring more thinking and work)?

By your path of thinking, you're saying that action type is not as important as some other, (IMO less critical) basic characteristics. You should be able to say, then, that the RAP 440 is a modernized 1911 Officer.

In the end, all of the tilting barrel action designs today can find their way all the way back to JMB's. So yeah, you can say that the RAP is distantly related to the BM, but then again you can say that for all of the tilting barrels.

 

[Ash]

Yeah, but consider the A-70 was introduced very soon after the BM was discontinued, and the A-75 quickly after that. It stands to reason that the 70 was an attempt to capture the market that the BM held. Star came out with the Firestar, but the A-70 is far closer to the BM than the M43. Indeed, when position and design of the controls, the size and weight, and magazine are considered, the BM and the A-70 are the same. One who trains on a BM will be very familiar with the A-70 (and 75), much more so than, say training with a CZ-75 or Sig 210 (I have a CZ-75 and can't draw much of a connection at all). The A-70 uses the same trigger design, safety design (and location), and positioning of the BM (as the manual shows). In fact, the ONLY design difference between the two is lockup. And, since the A-70 is, design wise, only an updated BM, then the A-75, which is an updated A-70, would be a further evolution.

So, to sum it up, the A-70 is far more than a distant cousin of the BM, but a clear mechanical copy differing only in the lockup (just as related, save for manufacturer, as the CZ-97 is to the CZ-75 as far as design goes). And, as the A-75 differes, design wise, only in action of trigger and safety (because of it being double action) and is fully accepted as a modernized A-70, it is only 3rd generation from BM. Previous statements about aesthetics were only to draw attention to the mechanicals. I would not even begin to link one single characteristic between pistols to trace lineage. It would take more than that. But, just as the Beretta 92 is a clear descendent of the P-38, it is clear the A-75 (and copies) are clear descendents of the Star BM.

 

[themic]

I had no idea we had this much knowledge of RAP and ASTRA lineages sitting around here. Y'all have lost me. My RAP always works, it's heavy as a brick, and i love it.

I'd always thought of it as a distant descendant of a SIG, for no good reason, I suppose. Just looked like one when I got it.

What's a good way to identify lineage? Slide rails, locking mechanisms, trigger assemblies, looks, function? Can we really know for sure what people were thinking when they designed something?

Functionally, the most unique thing about the RAP for me, at least, is that it can be carried DA/SA or SA cocked and locked. One other unique thing is that slamming in a loaded magazine automatically dislodges the slide-stop; i.e. reloading doesn't require that second step of slingshotting the slide or hitting the slidestop with your finger/thumb. Can we find design basics in this sort of thing going back pre-ASTRA?

Unfortuantely, I haven't handled and ASTRA or a STAR for that matter, so I don't know the answer to these questions.

 

[Ash]

In truth being related to a Sig sounds better than the BM. If the Star had been made in Sweden and discontinued in 1930, I would not have been so quick to point out the relationship. Because it was made in Spain and was discontinued not long before the A-70 came out, the relationship became obvious, at least to me. If for nothing else, the A-70 fills the exact same role that the BM filled right after the BM was discontinued, and does so with the same location of the controls, the same trigger and magazine designs, etc.

This is academic, of course. We could go to Astar, the compand comprising the merged remnants of Astra and Star and ask them about it. They probably wouldn't tell us, and so we are left with nothing more than conjecture and something about which to debate or agree, depending on the point of view.

Ash