Michael Zeleny
member
There is only one pistol family properly bearing the name of SIG. The SIG P210 series of pistols was originally made by Schweizerische Industrie-Gesellschaft, a Swiss industrial company founded in 1853 as a train car manufacturing plant in Neuhausen am Rheinfall, Switzerland by Friedrich Peyer, Conrad Neher, and Heinrich Moser. Ten years later, master locksmith Johann Ulrich Hämmerli established his eponymous family company in Lenzburg, Switzerland, to fulfill the Swiss army order for barrel manufacture, eventually distinguishing himself as a world-class maker of target firearms for 50- and 300-meter competition. In 1921 Ulrich’s son Rudolf took over the family business. After Rudolf’s death in 1947, Hämmerli was sold and converted into a joint stock company. Having started their own production of small arms in 1860, SIG took over Hämmerli in 1973. Between 1973 and 1979, they jointly developed various new target pistol models, including the SIG Hämmerli P 240, an ingenious adaptation of the P210 platform to formal target shooting disciplines, available in three user-interchangeable calibers, .38 S&W wadcutter, .32 S&W Long, and .22 Long Rifle, as well as rimfire target models such as the semiautomatic 208, 215, and 212 and the Free Pistols 150 and 152.
Their flagship model however was the SIG P210, a locked-breech semiautomatic pistol derived from the Browning design. John Moses Browning is rightly credited with some of the most significant inventions in small arms. Prominent among them is the tilting barrel short recoil breech lock of the M1911, arguably the best means of retarding the cycling of a self-loading action of sidearms chambered for high pressure ammunition. Its original configuration, however, left a lot to be desired. The M1911 slide has a removable bushing, which adversely affects the consistency of barrel alignment to the slide, the single most crucial factor in determining practical handgun accuracy. Extra clearances that had to be built into the M1911 bushing motivated the development of the Colt Series 70 collet bushing design, with its attendant breakage issues. These days, the same effect might be achieved with spherical barrel bushings popularized by S&W, or flared barrels fitted in bushingless, open front slides. Browning himself solved this problem more elegantly in his swan song, the Hi Power. The GP35 design, left unfinished at the time of Browning’s death while in the employ of Fabrique Nationale d’Armes de Guerre of Herstal, Belgium, and completed by the FN engineer Dieudonné Saive, superceded the M1911 spare part with a bushing permanently pinned into the slide. The GP35 also dispensed with the pivoting barrel link used to pull down the barrel in the recoil stroke of the M1911 in favor of a camlock ramp bearing against a steel lug staked into the frame. The next advance was made in 1934 by the Swiss designer Charles Petter on behalf of the French company SACM. It dispensed with a barrel bushing altogether by machining the slide of the French Mle. 1935 chambered in 7.65 Long in a single piece with a differentially bored front opening. Petter also replaced the Browning-Saive camlock ramp with a closed channel reciprocating against the slide stop pin, and copied the Soviet Tula Tokarev 1930 innovation making the hammer and lockwork into a single assembly easily removable for cleaning and maintenance. SIG licensed the Petter design in 1947 to compete in the Swiss military trials. Its winning entry was adopted two years later as the Pistole 49, a.k.a. the SIG P210, chambered in 9x19, as a replacement to the Parabellum 06/29, which had been issued essentially unchanged since the beginning of the century. P210 variants have also been adopted by the Royal Danish army, as well as select units of the West German Bundeswehr, and a number of Swiss police and private security agencies. The Swiss Pistole 49 was decommissioned in 1975, when it was replaced by the SIG-Sauer P220, designated the Pistole 75, though people who did previously get one as their ordnance weapon got to keep it.
The P210 is a single action self loading pistol with a detachable 8-round single stack magazine. Its one original contribution to the development of the Browning design was the inverted slide rail arrangement. The M1911 slide rails run outside of the frame. The GP35 improves on this by having two sets of rails, the inner and the outer. Given equal clearances, the end-to-end length of slide rails is the most important factor determining the alignment between the slide and the frame. The M1911 has about half the slide-to-frame engagement of the GP35, while the latter has about half the engagement of the P210. Thanks to this feature, the Swiss pistol can combine a superior slide alignment with sufficient working clearances. One of its design specifications was that it had to be equally usable unmodified for competitions at 50 meters as its predecessor, the superbly accurate Swiss Parabellum 06/29, chambered in 7.65x21mm. The target was a Swiss C50, with the 10 ring a disk of 5 centimeters, just under 2" in diameter. To be competitive, the P210 had to produce groups under 5 centimeters with match quality ammunition. Despite being handicapped by the tapered case 9x19mm Parabellum ammunition, inherently less accurate than the bottlenecked 7.65x21mm Parabellum, the P210 readily achieved its design brief. This is attested for every pistol by an enclosed test target fired at that distance with ordnance 124 grain FMJ ammunition. Barrels with rifling especially designed for lead bullets is also available as an option. All pistols come with a numbered test target, an instruction manual, and a magazine loader. Available accessories include cleaning kits, serially numbered 120, 150, and 180 mm barrels in 9mm or 7.65mm Parabellum, specially rifled for jacketed or cast bullets, .22 Long Rifle conversion kits, short hammer assemblies for use with adjustable sights, front sight pushers, and heavy “Sport†recoil springs. It is still widely used and considered as a reference standard in Switzerland for use in centerfire pistol competitions.
The P210 has a few flaws. Most significantly, its safety is inferior both to the M1911 frame-mounted thumb lever supplemented by a grip safety, and the Petter slide-mounted design that locks the firing pin upon engagement, in ergonomics and security alike. It locks only the trigger, leaving the firing pin free to move around. Thus the P210 is liable to discharge accidentally if it falls from a sufficient height on a sufficiently hard surface while a round is chambered, even if the safety is set. The short tang exposes the web of the shooter's hand to pinching by the hammer under the cycling of the frame, though this occurrence can be easily prevented by retrofitting either the factory bobbed hammer or an aftermarket tang extension that bolts on to the screw retaining the hammer assembly in the target models of the P210. A double column magazine might have been an improvement not only on the account of the extra rounds, but in virtue of better accommodating the tapered 9x19mm case. The P210 bottom magazine catch is cumbersome, though far less prone than the side-mounted button to accidental release during carry, something that happens with M1911 and GP35. Moreover, the P210 is unmatched by either of its predecessors in strength, ruggedness, and durability. Its principal drawback is the cost of manufacture.
In the early Seventies, SIG undertook the design and development of a pistol that could be easily and cheaply mass produced with modern technology. In order to save on the production costs, they entered into collaboration with the German firm of J.P. Sauer & Son. Before World War II, Sauer had been located in Suhl in Thuringia. After the war it moved to and reorganized in the Western Occupation Zone in Eckernfoerde in the state of Schleswig-Holstein near the Danish border. Specializing in sporting rifles and shotguns, Sauer made no sidearms since the end of World War II until the first of the SIG-Sauer pistols, the P220. Their contribution to the SIG-Sauer collaboration included a decocking lever that lowered the hammer to a safety notch, which first appeared on the Sauer Model 38, produced during the latter years of the Third Reich. The SIG-Sauer P220 used the mass production expedients pioneered by Sauer and other German arms makers as a wartime time cost saving measures. Thus the precisely made Browning breech locking arrangement mating the barrel lugs with recesses cut into a one-piece forged steel slide was replaced with fitting the squared rear shoulder of the barrel into the front of the ejection port cut out in the slide stamped out of sheet metal, with a separate breechblock pinned into it. Instead of machining the frame out of a tough steel forging, SIG-Sauer fitted a steel feed ramp and trigger housing into a frame made of a light aluminum alloy. Overall, the meticulous principles of Swiss precision gave way to the planned obsolescence of disposable hardware. In fairness, the P220 was developed for the armed forces and adopted in 1975 as the standard issue pistol of the Swiss army and the Japanese self defense forces. To be adopted, the P220 had to compete against the SIG P210 at 25 meters. But it fails to do so at the longer ranges, where the P210 excels.
In 1997, the firearms division of SIG was restructured and renamed SIG Arms Hämmerli AG. It underwent downsizing in 2000, upon the expiration of government contracts for the manufacture of the Swiss military issue assault rifle, transforming its production facilities into a distribution center. On November 30, 2000 the corporate parent SIG divested itself of SIG Arms. The entire arms section of SIG Neuhausen was sold to the two German investors, Michael Lüke and Thomas Ortmeier. As a result, Hämmerli reacquired a measure of corporate independence, reverting to their original company name, Hämmerli AG. In July of 2003 it relocated to Neuhausen am Rheinfall and merged with SAN Swiss Arms AG. Both companies now have the same owners and managing director, but claim to operate autonomously. Hämmerli continues to collaborate with Sauer, e.g. by supplying its aluminium stock supporting the Sauer barreled action of the 205 System.
SIGARMS, Inc. began in 1985 in Tyson's Corner, Virginia, as the U.S importer of SIG and SIG-Sauer handguns, including the P210, the P220, and the pocket pistol P230. Two years later, SIGARMS moved to Herndon, Virginia, and introduced the SIG-Sauer P225 in 9mm, followed by the P226 and P228 in 9mm. By 1990, SIGARMS began stateside manufacture of handgun components, moving to its present location in Exeter, New Hampshire, and beginning the production of the P229 in .40 S&W in 1992. The latest SIGARMS brochure depicts four SIG P210 models: 210-6 and 210-5, both with heavy frames and bottom magazine releases, and 210-6 Sport and 210-5 Sport, both with old style frames, chequered front straps, side mounted magazine catches, and “ergonomic†magazine extensions. The 210-5 is claimed to have a target grade trigger action, with the interim Sport variation boasting an adjustable trigger stop and an “extended slide†that looks like a lumpier barrel clamp-on rather than the integral piece of the latest P210-5LS. For the time being, the Swiss market appears to offer both long barrel variations.
According to SIGARMS, the P210’s slides and frames have always been machined from solid blocks of steel. Owing to the additional expense of raw materials and the extra production effort, this technique is much more costly than machining the same parts from roughly shaped forgings. Other factors being equal, solid steel parts precisely machined from bar stock or forgings invariably surpass cast parts in strength, durability, and reliability. The use of such parts is widely recognized as a premium firearms attribute. Thus the Smith & Wesson factory brochure proudly proclaims that their Model 5906 Military slides and frames are “drop forged from solid stainless steel, and heat treated to an incredible Rockwell 70C surface hardnessâ€. Steel forgings have been destruction tested by FN in their FAL receiver construction trials to yield twice the service life of similar castings, at 80,000 vs. 40,000 rounds.
All P229 Sport slides are CNC-machined from solid steel forgings. Other SIG P22* models use slides made of stamped sheet metal, with breech blocks pinned in, or solid steel slides machined from forgings, some of which appear to be susceptible to sudden breakage: http://www.thegunzone.com/sigp229-fracture.html. The frames of the Sport series pistols are machined from steel forgings, whereas the steel frame of the P220ST starts out as a casting. This information can be readily confirmed by the SIGARMS Customer Service, reachable at 603-772-2302.
http://www.sigarms.ch/
http://www.sigarms.com/
http://www.haemmerli.ch/
http://www.sauer-waffen.de/
http://www.sig-group.com/
http://www.gunfactory.ch/faustfw/sigp210.htm
http://home.t-online.de/home/cswimm/iwa/images/p210-5ls.jpg
www.bignami.it/cataloghi/shr/p210.pdf
http://www.lagardere.ch/catalogue/catalogue.pdf
Their flagship model however was the SIG P210, a locked-breech semiautomatic pistol derived from the Browning design. John Moses Browning is rightly credited with some of the most significant inventions in small arms. Prominent among them is the tilting barrel short recoil breech lock of the M1911, arguably the best means of retarding the cycling of a self-loading action of sidearms chambered for high pressure ammunition. Its original configuration, however, left a lot to be desired. The M1911 slide has a removable bushing, which adversely affects the consistency of barrel alignment to the slide, the single most crucial factor in determining practical handgun accuracy. Extra clearances that had to be built into the M1911 bushing motivated the development of the Colt Series 70 collet bushing design, with its attendant breakage issues. These days, the same effect might be achieved with spherical barrel bushings popularized by S&W, or flared barrels fitted in bushingless, open front slides. Browning himself solved this problem more elegantly in his swan song, the Hi Power. The GP35 design, left unfinished at the time of Browning’s death while in the employ of Fabrique Nationale d’Armes de Guerre of Herstal, Belgium, and completed by the FN engineer Dieudonné Saive, superceded the M1911 spare part with a bushing permanently pinned into the slide. The GP35 also dispensed with the pivoting barrel link used to pull down the barrel in the recoil stroke of the M1911 in favor of a camlock ramp bearing against a steel lug staked into the frame. The next advance was made in 1934 by the Swiss designer Charles Petter on behalf of the French company SACM. It dispensed with a barrel bushing altogether by machining the slide of the French Mle. 1935 chambered in 7.65 Long in a single piece with a differentially bored front opening. Petter also replaced the Browning-Saive camlock ramp with a closed channel reciprocating against the slide stop pin, and copied the Soviet Tula Tokarev 1930 innovation making the hammer and lockwork into a single assembly easily removable for cleaning and maintenance. SIG licensed the Petter design in 1947 to compete in the Swiss military trials. Its winning entry was adopted two years later as the Pistole 49, a.k.a. the SIG P210, chambered in 9x19, as a replacement to the Parabellum 06/29, which had been issued essentially unchanged since the beginning of the century. P210 variants have also been adopted by the Royal Danish army, as well as select units of the West German Bundeswehr, and a number of Swiss police and private security agencies. The Swiss Pistole 49 was decommissioned in 1975, when it was replaced by the SIG-Sauer P220, designated the Pistole 75, though people who did previously get one as their ordnance weapon got to keep it.
The P210 is a single action self loading pistol with a detachable 8-round single stack magazine. Its one original contribution to the development of the Browning design was the inverted slide rail arrangement. The M1911 slide rails run outside of the frame. The GP35 improves on this by having two sets of rails, the inner and the outer. Given equal clearances, the end-to-end length of slide rails is the most important factor determining the alignment between the slide and the frame. The M1911 has about half the slide-to-frame engagement of the GP35, while the latter has about half the engagement of the P210. Thanks to this feature, the Swiss pistol can combine a superior slide alignment with sufficient working clearances. One of its design specifications was that it had to be equally usable unmodified for competitions at 50 meters as its predecessor, the superbly accurate Swiss Parabellum 06/29, chambered in 7.65x21mm. The target was a Swiss C50, with the 10 ring a disk of 5 centimeters, just under 2" in diameter. To be competitive, the P210 had to produce groups under 5 centimeters with match quality ammunition. Despite being handicapped by the tapered case 9x19mm Parabellum ammunition, inherently less accurate than the bottlenecked 7.65x21mm Parabellum, the P210 readily achieved its design brief. This is attested for every pistol by an enclosed test target fired at that distance with ordnance 124 grain FMJ ammunition. Barrels with rifling especially designed for lead bullets is also available as an option. All pistols come with a numbered test target, an instruction manual, and a magazine loader. Available accessories include cleaning kits, serially numbered 120, 150, and 180 mm barrels in 9mm or 7.65mm Parabellum, specially rifled for jacketed or cast bullets, .22 Long Rifle conversion kits, short hammer assemblies for use with adjustable sights, front sight pushers, and heavy “Sport†recoil springs. It is still widely used and considered as a reference standard in Switzerland for use in centerfire pistol competitions.
The P210 has a few flaws. Most significantly, its safety is inferior both to the M1911 frame-mounted thumb lever supplemented by a grip safety, and the Petter slide-mounted design that locks the firing pin upon engagement, in ergonomics and security alike. It locks only the trigger, leaving the firing pin free to move around. Thus the P210 is liable to discharge accidentally if it falls from a sufficient height on a sufficiently hard surface while a round is chambered, even if the safety is set. The short tang exposes the web of the shooter's hand to pinching by the hammer under the cycling of the frame, though this occurrence can be easily prevented by retrofitting either the factory bobbed hammer or an aftermarket tang extension that bolts on to the screw retaining the hammer assembly in the target models of the P210. A double column magazine might have been an improvement not only on the account of the extra rounds, but in virtue of better accommodating the tapered 9x19mm case. The P210 bottom magazine catch is cumbersome, though far less prone than the side-mounted button to accidental release during carry, something that happens with M1911 and GP35. Moreover, the P210 is unmatched by either of its predecessors in strength, ruggedness, and durability. Its principal drawback is the cost of manufacture.
In the early Seventies, SIG undertook the design and development of a pistol that could be easily and cheaply mass produced with modern technology. In order to save on the production costs, they entered into collaboration with the German firm of J.P. Sauer & Son. Before World War II, Sauer had been located in Suhl in Thuringia. After the war it moved to and reorganized in the Western Occupation Zone in Eckernfoerde in the state of Schleswig-Holstein near the Danish border. Specializing in sporting rifles and shotguns, Sauer made no sidearms since the end of World War II until the first of the SIG-Sauer pistols, the P220. Their contribution to the SIG-Sauer collaboration included a decocking lever that lowered the hammer to a safety notch, which first appeared on the Sauer Model 38, produced during the latter years of the Third Reich. The SIG-Sauer P220 used the mass production expedients pioneered by Sauer and other German arms makers as a wartime time cost saving measures. Thus the precisely made Browning breech locking arrangement mating the barrel lugs with recesses cut into a one-piece forged steel slide was replaced with fitting the squared rear shoulder of the barrel into the front of the ejection port cut out in the slide stamped out of sheet metal, with a separate breechblock pinned into it. Instead of machining the frame out of a tough steel forging, SIG-Sauer fitted a steel feed ramp and trigger housing into a frame made of a light aluminum alloy. Overall, the meticulous principles of Swiss precision gave way to the planned obsolescence of disposable hardware. In fairness, the P220 was developed for the armed forces and adopted in 1975 as the standard issue pistol of the Swiss army and the Japanese self defense forces. To be adopted, the P220 had to compete against the SIG P210 at 25 meters. But it fails to do so at the longer ranges, where the P210 excels.
In 1997, the firearms division of SIG was restructured and renamed SIG Arms Hämmerli AG. It underwent downsizing in 2000, upon the expiration of government contracts for the manufacture of the Swiss military issue assault rifle, transforming its production facilities into a distribution center. On November 30, 2000 the corporate parent SIG divested itself of SIG Arms. The entire arms section of SIG Neuhausen was sold to the two German investors, Michael Lüke and Thomas Ortmeier. As a result, Hämmerli reacquired a measure of corporate independence, reverting to their original company name, Hämmerli AG. In July of 2003 it relocated to Neuhausen am Rheinfall and merged with SAN Swiss Arms AG. Both companies now have the same owners and managing director, but claim to operate autonomously. Hämmerli continues to collaborate with Sauer, e.g. by supplying its aluminium stock supporting the Sauer barreled action of the 205 System.
SIGARMS, Inc. began in 1985 in Tyson's Corner, Virginia, as the U.S importer of SIG and SIG-Sauer handguns, including the P210, the P220, and the pocket pistol P230. Two years later, SIGARMS moved to Herndon, Virginia, and introduced the SIG-Sauer P225 in 9mm, followed by the P226 and P228 in 9mm. By 1990, SIGARMS began stateside manufacture of handgun components, moving to its present location in Exeter, New Hampshire, and beginning the production of the P229 in .40 S&W in 1992. The latest SIGARMS brochure depicts four SIG P210 models: 210-6 and 210-5, both with heavy frames and bottom magazine releases, and 210-6 Sport and 210-5 Sport, both with old style frames, chequered front straps, side mounted magazine catches, and “ergonomic†magazine extensions. The 210-5 is claimed to have a target grade trigger action, with the interim Sport variation boasting an adjustable trigger stop and an “extended slide†that looks like a lumpier barrel clamp-on rather than the integral piece of the latest P210-5LS. For the time being, the Swiss market appears to offer both long barrel variations.
According to SIGARMS, the P210’s slides and frames have always been machined from solid blocks of steel. Owing to the additional expense of raw materials and the extra production effort, this technique is much more costly than machining the same parts from roughly shaped forgings. Other factors being equal, solid steel parts precisely machined from bar stock or forgings invariably surpass cast parts in strength, durability, and reliability. The use of such parts is widely recognized as a premium firearms attribute. Thus the Smith & Wesson factory brochure proudly proclaims that their Model 5906 Military slides and frames are “drop forged from solid stainless steel, and heat treated to an incredible Rockwell 70C surface hardnessâ€. Steel forgings have been destruction tested by FN in their FAL receiver construction trials to yield twice the service life of similar castings, at 80,000 vs. 40,000 rounds.
All P229 Sport slides are CNC-machined from solid steel forgings. Other SIG P22* models use slides made of stamped sheet metal, with breech blocks pinned in, or solid steel slides machined from forgings, some of which appear to be susceptible to sudden breakage: http://www.thegunzone.com/sigp229-fracture.html. The frames of the Sport series pistols are machined from steel forgings, whereas the steel frame of the P220ST starts out as a casting. This information can be readily confirmed by the SIGARMS Customer Service, reachable at 603-772-2302.
http://www.sigarms.ch/
http://www.sigarms.com/
http://www.haemmerli.ch/
http://www.sauer-waffen.de/
http://www.sig-group.com/
http://www.gunfactory.ch/faustfw/sigp210.htm
http://home.t-online.de/home/cswimm/iwa/images/p210-5ls.jpg
www.bignami.it/cataloghi/shr/p210.pdf
http://www.lagardere.ch/catalogue/catalogue.pdf
