Felk is one of those pistols that is unfortunately named
after the sort of noise that you might make
when you try the trigger on it.
Thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and this is indeed a Felk.
This is a TF919 Felk, it is a full-size 9mm Parabellum,
and it is the first pattern of the Felk pistol.
We'll talk about the others in a few minutes.
The designer was a guy named Edward Karl Felk and he patented this in 1994.
He had a business in New South Wales, Australia, making among other things, trailers.
Like boat trailers, cargo trailers, that sort of thing.
And decided he wanted to make pistols in Australia.
Now the problem was Felk didn't really have access to the machining capability
to make pistols, nor the ... experience of making pistols, but he had his design.
And so what he did is he found a company that would be interested in subcontracting
manufacture of all of the pressure-bearing parts, the slides and barrels basically.
And that company was Star in Spain.
Now Star would in fact contract and manufacture the slides and barrels,
and I think maybe a few of the other small parts, for Felk.
This was the mid-1990s, Star was in significant financial trouble at the time.
It had become basically impossible for them to ... export handguns
to the UK, this had been one of their major markets.
It was now much more difficult to export pistols to the United States after 1994
and the assault weapons ban passing, which restricted magazine capacities.
Star had recently not won the new Spanish Army contract for pistols,
that went to ... Gabilondo and Astra-Unceta.
They were in trouble, they kind of needed anything they could get.
And so they took this contract to manufacture parts for this Australian guy named Felk.
They considered taking on the whole pistol as a Star project, that didn't really ... take off.
They tried to interest Interarms in purchasing the Felk.
Interarms was the main importer into the United States of Spanish pistols from, like, Star.
The problem was the Interarms reps got a close look at a Felk.
The stuff made by Star is actually pretty nice, the rest of the pistol is not so impressive.
And at this point, Interarms still had something like 30,000 Star pistols
in inventory that they were still working on selling.
So Interarms turned down the project and a few years later Star would go bankrupt.
So that leaves us with sort of this orphaned pistol.
The top end made by Star, reputable, I mean their reputation
is a bit tarnished in the United States, but not necessarily fairly so.
Star knew what they were doing and they made good quality parts.
The bottom end, the polymer, was made in Australia.
And you put these together and you have an interesting attempt
at a modern polymer-framed striker-fired double-stack 9mm service pistol.
So let's take a closer look at this guy.
There it is, right on the side of the gun - Felk.
... Frankly I feel bad for the guy, I get that it's cool to have your name on your gun.
And it's a significant accomplishment to ... put a pistol into production,
that's not trivial by any means.
But I would have to think that if I had a name that sounded like Felk
I'd come up with a different name for the pistol.
Uh, well, at any rate.
Here on the bottom we have (much like Glock would do)
a metal plate embedded in the polymer frame to have the serial number.
This one is a mere 245 serial number.
We also have a little Australian logo moulded into the grips, TF.
I assume the "F" is for Felk, I don't know if "T" is trailer or something different.
But it is repeated on the other side of the grip, along with markings from the original manufacturer,
which was Felk Industries, Warner Bay, Australia.
Calibre on the barrel and the slide.
American Arms was the company that imported these.
They are marked "Made in Spain" because of the Spanish subcontracting to Star.
Although they are not ... Spanish proofed anywhere
because they weren't complete pistols in Spain.
And then there's our model designation, TF919.
These were made in both 9mm and .40 Smith & Wesson.
The .40 calibre ones are designated TF400.
Interestingly we have sort of a Beretta-inspired open slide here with a fixed front sight on it.
The rear sight is not terrible, a square ... notch with two white dots.
You can loosen that screw, drift the sight side to side for zeroing, tighten it back down.
Magazine release in the normal place, the magazines are a little tight in there.
This holds 18 rounds, it's a quite high capacity magazine especially for the time.
In 9mm. I think it was 14 rounds in .40.
And there was also some use of transparent polymer magazines.
It's unclear to me whether those came first or second,
or if they were only on a later version of the pistol.
What is pretty clear is that the polymer magazines were fragile and tended to crack.
The metal magazines are very much preferable, and that's what this one has.
Whether these were originally also offered with the transparent mags, I'm not sure.
The most unique element of this is the ... manual safety,
which is right there, it's that little pivoting bar in the trigger itself.
So if you pull it back like that, well now it blocks the trigger
and you can't pull the trigger and the gun is safe.
And then to disengage it you just pivot it back down, and now you can pull the trigger.
Now should you decide to pull that trigger you will find a rather stiff trigger pull,
but it's actually not terrible.
The viewer who loaned me this pistol did so under the specific condition
that I tell him how the trigger compares to other really terrible modern-ish triggers.
And the answer is it's really not that bad.
It's heavy, but it's not particularly long.
You can see that like after you've fired it, the trigger is still kind of all squishy and moves.
The reset is ... it's long.
But as things go, like this is way better than for example, a Nagant revolver trigger
or one of the four-barrelled Cobray Derringer triggers, or any of that sort of stuff.
It's ... crummy by modern pistol standards, but it's not that bad really.
Most pistols that are going for the sort of "Wonder 9" aesthetic
have a reasonably modern takedown method.
The Felk does not, this disassembles just like a 1911 or a High Power.
We're going to pull the slide all the way back, and then push out the slide stop pin.
So there we go.
This then comes out, and then the slide comes off.
Hold on ... I have to pull the trigger, which means
because of the magazine safety I have to put in the magazine.
There we go, now I can pull the slide off.
Once we're inside here this is pretty typical stuff.
We have a non-captive recoil spring with a polymer guide rod in it.
Then we have our barrel. Barrel is made by Star, it's a good barrel, nothing wrong with that.
This is striker fired so there's our striker, striker spring.
The striker spring retainer back here is also polymer.
And we have a really big firing pin block, or striker block there.
So when this is pushed down, then the striker can protrude and fire,
If that's not pushed down, the striker is prevented from doing so, that's a good drop safety.
And in the gun itself, it is this little pokey protrusion here
that when you pull the trigger it's going to slide backwards
and push that up, deactivating the safety.
Then we have this surface back here that is going to hook onto
this little foot of the striker there.
When you pull the trigger that slants back at an angle,
and then it'll go back, pull the striker back and then eventually slip off,
release the striker, and allow it to fire.
That's the ejector, that's what kicks out the empty cartridge when the slide reciprocates.
And that's pretty much all there is to it.
We have two sets of short metal inserts for the slide to ride on.
So it's not just polymer rails there, you do have a little bit of metal.
But the frame itself ... just has a really cheap feel to it.
You can see that this was made in two halves and then bonded together.
So there's a seam running all the way around the pistol.
While the slide is really pretty well made, thanks to Star,
the frame does not give that same impression.
The frame feels really pretty cheap and flimsy.
There's a tangible seam running around the whole periphery of the gun.
And if you really look at it up close you start seeing things
where like it wasn't really well trimmed,
things aren't quite parallel to each other.
It ... really just doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence.
The trigger pull especially, the trigger is squishy.
Like the trigger's still moving here, nothing else in the gun is, but the trigger still moves.
The safety is goofy, and really a bad idea.
And that is really I think what contributed
to this pistol being a complete and total commercial failure.
One of the neat things I can show you here is exactly
how the magazine safety works in this particular model.
So there's this sort of curved horn-like piece in here.
And it's got a little spring on it that is always pushing it down.
And notice it has a little square cutout there.
So when it's pushed down it actually hooks over the trigger bar
and stops the trigger from moving backwards.
When I take a magazine and insert it into the gun,
that hook is going to catch on the front of the magazine,
and it's going to be lifted up.
And it's lifted up far enough that that little square cutout no longer catches the trigger.
So that's a nice simple magazine safety
that's visible and I can show you how it works easily enough.
Details on the further development of the Felk are really quite sketchy.
But there was a follow-up model that was a bit different in several regards.
It had a closed slide, it was actually made as both a full-size and a compact model.
And it was designated the MTF919 or, I think, MTF400.
Those have a trigger safety that looks just like a Glocks'
instead of this rather creative and unique, and maybe not so great,
style of like manual trigger safety on the original TF919s.
So those are out there as well. It's a little unclear exactly what the specific chronology was.
But the MTFs were like late 1990s.
They also appear to have been a complete failure commercially,
and ... all patterns of Felks are really scarce in the United States these days.
So a big thanks to the viewer who loaned me this one to film for you guys.
It's really cool getting a chance to take a look at guns like this that are essentially
commercial orphans for all sorts of (usually pretty darn good) reasons.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.