hey guys thanks for tuning in to another
video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm in
McCallum and today we have a couple of
pretty unique twenty-two caliber pistols
to take a look at one of these is a half
dosa and one of them is a Zonda but
they're basically the same gun just
incrementally improved so the story here
starts with half dosa which is Hispano
argentino a fabrica a optima vilius sa h
AF da sa this was a company set up in
1925 as a licensee or a franchisee to
make hispano-suiza automobiles in
argentina and they eventually
diversified a bit and got into making
small arms now the best-known pistol or
the best-known small arm at all to come
out of half dosa was the balusters
molina and the balusters regard pistols
which are kind of like simplified Colt
1911's and they're cool guns will have
that those are subject for an entirely
separate video because what they ended
up also developing in the early 1950s
was this the model H a automatic pistol
its 22 caliber it has a 10 round
magazine and what makes it really
interesting is that it is an open bolt
gun so its semi-auto only but it fires
from an open bolt and that makes it
pretty unique now in 1953 half dasu shut
down completely they went bankrupt in
the early 50s basically while they were
making these possibly coincidence
possibly not once they went out of
business
a group of the former employees got
together and created their own company
called
our motive ar mo TI v sa and they set up
making a refined version of this same
pistol again in at this point would be
talking like 53 - maybe 1955 and so they
made an improved version and
fundamentally the same it's still an
open bolt semi-automatic 22 caliber
pistol so well let's take a closer look
at these and see how they work
so here's the pair of them you can
obviously see they have the same profile
but the closer you look the more little
differences there are the magazine
releases are different the end caps are
different the muzzle configuration is a
little different a bunch of stuff change
between these two guns the first one to
be made was the H a by huff dosa and
they have this H a embellishment in
their grips and that is in both grip
panels left and right we have a serial
number back here this is ninety three
thousand six hundred I can guarantee you
they did not make ninety three thousand
of these guns so what I am pretty sure
they did is number these is four half
dasu to have main you have numbered
every gun they made in the same
continuous series so by 1953 they had
manufactured guns up to about a hundred
and eight thousand serial number and so
I suspect that and the vast majority of
those were balusters Molina's this was
probably produced sometime during that
series so hence the 93,000 serial number
and then on the top of the frame we have
the general markings so pistola h a
caliber 22 fabrica poor huffed awesome
and manufactured by half dosa and
patented let's see if we can get the Sun
on their patented balusters molina
industria argentina so the company and
the model as for controls we have the
trigger obviously the safety on this is
a rotating a little lug like that and
the safety disconnects the trigger so
obviously with the bulk closed here it's
not going to do anything anyway because
it is an open bolt gun but when it's on
safe the trigger is completely
disconnected and does nothing the sights
are really really tiny let's see if the
camera will focus there's the rear sight
yeah so that's all you got this isn't
exactly a target pistol interestingly
the magazine release is kind of a unique
thing it is spring-loaded here but you
don't actually do anything with the
catch you just pull the magazine out the
bottom and it pops that catch open so
spring you know spring force retains the
magazine in the gun and when it's locked
in like that it'll stay there until you
actually pull it out this is a ten round
magazine and you know it it's pretty
similar to other 22 caliber pistol
magazines
nothing revolutionary there what is
really unusual about this is the bolt so
there's no charging handle on this thing
however the frame is open on both sides
and there are sir a shion's on the front
of the bolt and the [ __ ] you grab those
and pull the bolt back so that is that's
cocked and ready to fire and and I have
it on safe so it's not gonna fire until
we put it on fire there we go and the
bolts a little sticky so that is what
would normally happen now it does have a
disconnect err
so once you've fired it it will only
fire a single round and then you have to
reset the trigger now in order to fire
this gun has a fixed firing pin that's
one of the things you can do with an
open bolt gun you don't have to have a
floating firing pin because as soon as
it chambers the round you can just go
ahead and fire it on this the fixed
firing pin is on the bottom of the bolt
face and I'm pretty sure that ended up
being a potential safety hazard because
that would change it in the improved
version the potential issue here is with
the the firing pin knob on the bottom
there was a possibility of detonating a
rimfire cartridge as it was being picked
up from the magazine and pushed into the
chamber so in theory it probably would
have been better to have that firing pin
on the top of the bolt face or they'd
have a moving firing pin and that's what
they would introduce in the improved
model this disassembles very easily we
just unscrew the rear cap of the
receiver be careful when you get to the
end because the recoil spring will try
and throw the cap across the room so
there is the end cap if a recoil spring
and guide and then just pull the bolt
out the back of the gun and that's all
there is to it that's your firing sear
just like a submachine gun when you pull
the trigger it drops the sear which
releases the bolt to go forward and
there's really nothing to this that's
the surface that the sear holds on to
there's your fixed firing pin on the
bottom and your extractor and then these
grooves cut so that you can
have a grip on the bolt now when the new
employees got together with their new
company to put this gun back into
production they made some changes so
right off the bat you can see that there
is only a cutout on one side of the tube
receiver instead of both and we now have
this scalloped out section here so this
one is cocked rather like an m3 grease
gun we just grab it with your finger and
pull it back like that making sure not
to release it early where it might
actually go back far enough to grab a
cartridge and then if your finger slips
and it chambers it and fires when you're
trying to [ __ ] the bolt that's that's
not a good thing that is a potential
hazard with open bolt guns the sights on
this are still not target sights but
they are definitely bigger so that's
another improvement there's the rear
sight so definitely more visible still
not world standard but now we have the
brand name trade name zonda on both grip
panels there and on the left side of the
receiver we have Zanda caliber 22 now it
is a fabrica DePorter motor ese so made
by our motor sa patented industry
argentina instead of the original
spring-loaded magazine retention we now
have a standard sort of magazine catch
where you push the lever back and remove
the magazine it is still a 10 round 22
caliber magazine identical really the
safety however has changed and and it's
really actually pretty a pretty cool
clever little safety mechanism so as an
open bolt gun there is never around
staying in the chamber so when you
engage the safety all it actually does
in fact I've had it on safe when you
disengage the safety it cams the
magazine upwards to the point that it
will actually feed a cartridge when the
bolt drops when the gun is on fire or
when the guns on safe right there the
magazine drops down so you can see it
moving up and down right there through
the ejection port and we can also see it
moving up and down at the bottom the
the safety doesn't do anything with the
trigger it simply moves the magazine if
the magazine is not in position to feed
then matter if the bolt closes or if you
pull the trigger or what it's not going
to fire so that that's actually a really
clever little solution now there was
also the potential problem I mentioned
of the gun discharging while it was
trying to chamber a cartridge because of
that fixed firing pin and the zonda guys
came up with a solution for that as well
so for this one in order to disassemble
it we actually have a little
spring-loaded catch or detent on the
bottom depressed that rotate this about
sixty degrees it's no longer threaded
it's now got a series of interrupted
lugs we can take the rear cap off the
recoil spring and guide are basically
identical and then and take the bolt out
the back and they have added a moving
firing pin so it's a little hard to see
but the firing pin there actually does
move in and out just very subtly and
it's connected to this tab on the top of
the bolt so when that tab goes down it
forces the firing pin out and that is
spring-loaded so that it will retract
back in under any pressure when this tab
is not being pushed down if you look
inside the receiver right here is a
little angled metal block and that acts
to push this lever down when the bolt
closes so this still fires upon closure
of the bolt but now there is a safety
mechanism to ensure that it doesn't fire
before the bolt is closed so right there
you can see that block go in right about
there it's going to actually activate
the firing pin and fire the round well
not surprisingly a weird pistol like
this wasn't ultimately a commercial
success and I don't know the exact dates
but the the startup to make the zonda
pistols also went out of business and
these remain both quite rare guns on the
US market today of course there is a
prohibition in the US on manufacturing
new open bolt semi-auto
but that doesn't apply to guns that
predate that restriction which was in
the 1980s so guns like this are
grandfathered under that law anyway
they're pretty cool interesting little
unusual guns and hopefully you guys
enjoyed the video if you do enjoy seeing
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it's the folks there that make it
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like this and bring them to you thanks
for watching