[ New FN High Power ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look at the
Browning High Power, well actually the FN High Power.
Not the original Browning design, this is in fact FN's
brand new reincarnation of the High Power pistol.
And this is a pistol that's generated quite a lot of
anger in some camps, certainly controversy.
There are some people, who as far as I can tell, believe that this pistol's mere existence
is a blasphemous insult upon the memory of John Browning and Dieudonné Saive.
But I think there's a really good reason for this pistol to exist,
and once you understand why it exists, I think it makes quite a lot of sense.
So you may or may not recall that back in early 2018
FN announced that they were ceasing production of the Browning High Power.
Frankly its sales had dropped to be pretty terrible,
the machining for the Browning High Power had never been updated.
I actually had the chance 10 or 12 years ago now to see some of the original tooling
that was still being used to make Browning High Powers at FN in Herstal.
And what I saw specifically was like the barrel production line.
And it was just this almost endless row of ... single-cut shaper machines.
Where you'd put a block of metal in, and it would go through a machine with a custom cutter,
and one individual cut would be done on the part.
And then you'd pick that part up, and take it to the next machine and put it in that,
and it'd go through one more cut. On down this vast hall of machine tools.
That's not an efficient way to make pistols any more, that's how we were making pistols
in, say, 1935 when this design was adopted by the Belgian Army.
But it was an iconic pistol, it was a classic,
it was a well-regarded pistol that just stayed in production for that long.
Well 2018, finally we get to the end of life of the original Browning High Power.
And ... even as they were shutting down that production line,
plans were starting to be formulated for a new version of the High Power.
So yeah, it's interesting that Springfield Armoury came out with their new High Power,
which is just essentially a clone of the original,
very close to the ... announcement date for FN's new High Power, but it is in fact just coincidental.
This has been a project in the works at FN for about 5 years now.
And ... the intention is obviously not to simply recreate the original.
There have always been recreations of the original, even while FN was still making them.
There are Turkish ones, there are Israeli ones.
... Who else? There are a variety of countries, ... Hungarian copies of the High Power.
It's kind of like the CZ 75, in that it's a classic iconic pistol
that has always been copied by a bunch of different people.
There's never been a want of inexpensive copies of the Browning High Power.
But what FN decided to do was not just recreate it.
The problem is there are actually a lot of issues with the original High Power.
It was a ground-breaking pistol in 1935, not so much any more today.
And so probably the best analogy for the new High Power is it's like the new Ford Bronco.
Or perhaps the new FJ Cruiser, but ...
we'll pretend the FJ Cruiser doesn't exist, it's like the reintroduced Ford Bronco.
It is a pistol that is intended in many ways to ... attract the nostalgia
of those who have fond memories of the original High Power.
Kind of like the new Bronco is there to attract the memory of
those who had fond memories of the original Bronco.
The problem is if you go out and buy an original Bronco,
you get in it and you drive it around a little bit, and you realise like,
"Oh wait, actually this thing gets like 6 miles to the gallon.
And there's no air conditioning and I live in Arizona.
And the suspension's like really rough, this thing's incredibly loud if I take it on the highway.
Like boy, I must have been a much tougher person back 30 years ago
when I had and loved my original Ford Bronco.
Or maybe time has simply made one forget the downsides of that original."
Well, that's the case with the High Power. There are a bunch of problems with the original High Power.
The hammer inevitably bites you, I can't shoot one of these
for more than a full magazine without getting blood on the back of my hand,
unless I deliberately have a poor grip on the gun.
... You can't shoot them all that long for accuracy before you kind of have to rebuild them.
Extractor springs don't last all that long.
The magazine capacity, while good at the time
13 rounds, excellent. Not so much any more.
Now if you're looking at a practical modern pistol,
17 is the minimum reasonable capacity.
And there's stuff out there with 18 or 19, or maybe even 20
in ... just slightly oversized magazines, 13 isn't going to cut it.
Even 15, the upgraded magazines that have been introduced over the past 50 years for the High Power,
even 15 rounds is still below par for today's pistols, and so on.
And so what do you get when you try to take the ... soul of the original High Power,
but rebuild it as a modern pistol with modern features,
and modern fabrication technology that allows it to actually be made efficiently?
That's where you get the new FN High Power.
So let's take a closer look at this, compare them and see what they've changed,
what they've kept the same, and whether overall this is a good thing.
Alright, A Tale of Two High Powers.
Here's an original one from the '50s and here's one of the new ones.
So right off the bat you can see a number of the aesthetic [features]
that were very specifically kept on this pistol. We have shape of the grips.
We have the iconic shape of the front end of the slide out here with this undercut.
Interestingly, they actually chose to put in what's colloquially sometimes called the "thumb print",
this little relief cut on the front of the slide.
On the original guns, the really early ones like this,
that exists to help you disassemble the pistol.
Because when you lock it open, that thumb print lines up with what is your takedown pin.
On the new one there is no need for that, it's on there purely for aesthetic qualities.
The shape of the front of the slide has been retained.
Although it's interesting they gave the new pistol a full-length guide rod,
so there has to be a hole in the front of the slide for that to come out when the slide reciprocates.
The long slide stop lever here was also duplicated for no real mechanical reason,
just again to copy the looks of the originals.
The hammer has been carried over, the safety is actually taken
from the later versions of the actual FN Browning High Power.
They've made it bigger, but they've kept the basic style.
They have also kept a number of mechanical elements from the original design,
but we'll take a look at those in a minute when we disassemble these.
First, what have they got rid of? What have they changed?
Well first off, the new pistols are definitely larger.
One of the nice things about the original High Power is that
it was a really pretty svelte, efficient-feeling pistol.
The new one is definitely larger, the grip frame is longer,
the grip front to back is longer, the gun is wider overall,
and you can pretty distinctively see that.
... I wouldn't call this any longer a svelte pistol.
Frankly it's got kind of fat, like the new Broncos compared to the old Broncos.
But in the process of doing that they have changed
the geometry of the grip frame to accommodate a wholly new magazine.
So there were some people who were really upset
that the ... new High Powers didn't use the same magazine as the originals.
Well, I don't want to use the originals.
Like the originals consist of, at least in my collection, a number of
potentially sketchy early production ones, and then a bunch of crap Triple K mags.
I would just as soon have new production better magazines.
Especially when the capacity is 4 rounds higher,
that's like 25% more than my original mags.
Bless them, they have also got rid of the magazine safety.
So one of the features of the original High Power is that if the magazine's out, it won't fire.
And that also contributes to often a pretty crummy trigger press.
Not always, ... like this one's actually pretty decent,
but there's a lot of High Powers out there that have really terrible triggers.
And that is in part due to the mechanical interference from the magazine safety.
Well the new High Powers will fire just fine, thank you, without a magazine in them.
And they have really pretty darn good single-action triggers.
Tiny bit of creep in there. This one's had like almost no rounds through it at this point,
so that I'm sure will clean itself up a bit more with use.
But it's a really good trigger to start with,
much better than any of the stock High Powers that I have.
They have also made the controls ambidextrous.
So FN eventually did make the High Power with an ambidextrous safety.
But on these new ones you now have an ambidextrous safety.
You have an ambidextrous slide lock/slide release.
The magazine release is not, but these controls up here are.
They have also dramatically simplified disassembly,
so you don't have to push a pin out at all any more.
Now you just lock the slide open, flip this disassembly lever down,
and then the slide comes right off the front of the gun.
That is a really nice simplification. ...
You don't have to mess around with worrying about scratching the side, and pin punches,
any of that, like this is a great improvement.
Before I go further I should also mention the ergonomics.
Like I said, the hammer's always chewed the bejesus out of ... the back of my hand there
if I had anything resembling a modern high proper grip on the gun.
I've already taken the slide off here, but it should be pretty clear that this hammer
is no longer in any danger of hitting me, no matter how high and tight of a grip I have on this.
And that's a fantastic improvement as well.
Let's take a look at the inside of the frames here. One of the interesting things to me is that
FN kept the trigger mechanism from the original High Power
where when you press the trigger, this bar right there is pressed upward.
Does it here too, you can see it poking out right there between the slide rails.
That actually goes up, hits a lever in the slide, which ... pivots to the back, which pushes down.
And it is actually downward pressure on this component right here, that fires the High Power.
And that was an interesting change from what is much more typical in a lot of pistols.
And they went ahead and kept that. So here it is on the originals,
push that sear down and we can drop the hammer.
Of course there are some changes up in the front of the slides.
The magazine safety has been removed from the new one,
so of course you've got some bits that aren't in there any more.
And then we have this fixed rotary disassembly block here on the front of the new one
where there was a hole for a cross pin on the originals.
Now the new High Powers come with some really pretty-cheap feeling plastic grips.
... They've got them in a couple of colours, but these things are kind of yuck.
However they've arranged with VZ Grips to make G10 grips in a whole variety of different styles.
So you have some options for something better than the stock factory grips.
Now I've taken these grips off because I want to show you that
the new High Powers actually have a removable back strap.
So there's a little spring latch here, and if I just push that down
I can slide the back strap (and this is a solid metal piece)
you can slide that off the back of the frame.
Once I do that, the upper part of the back strap is also free to move.
This is held in place on the hammer spring right there.
Which by the way is another improvement over the original,
this has a coil hammer spring where the originals have a flat mainspring.
So on the original High Powers the whole back end of the frame is one solid construction.
By doing this, FN has given themselves options for other things they can do in the future.
In particular, presumably, flat versus arched versus large versus small
sorts of back straps to fit various different people's hands.
There are also some changes to show you up in the slide.
Of course the takedown pin is no longer there, so we don't have a hole for it up here.
The original High Powers had a little short spring guide.
Short enough that the front of the slide was closed off,
and this would just come up to about the front of the slide when it cycled.
On the new High Powers we have a much longer guide rod, plastic this time, or polymer.
But it's long enough that it necessitates an open front of the slide.
And of course, the locking system has also changed to be a bit more modern.
Originally of course, you had circular locking lugs on the ... barrel,
which locked into recesses in the slide.
The more modern style, which has been used in quite a lot of pistols
because it's a lot ... cheaper to manufacture,
is to have the locking surface be ... essentially the front of the chamber here
and have it lock into the front ledge of the slide right there.
So there are no circular cutouts in the slide, this makes things faster and easier to manufacture.
The transfer system in the slide functions the same way in principle, but the parts are different.
So on the original High Powers this was a milled piece, you can see it pivots back and forth there.
So pulling the trigger pushes this end up, which pushes this end down,
which pushes the sear and releases the hammer.
On the new ones this ... actually looks like a stamped part.
It is now under spring tension, which is probably a good idea.
And pushing up here again pushes this end down, which trips the sear and releases the hammer.
The new pistols also have internal extractors.
The original High Powers kind of went back and forth, some had internal, some had external.
On these new ones ... it's an internal extractor right there.
The new High Power has an ejection port that's got to be about 200% the size of the original one.
This is for a couple of things. First off, it's because this has to be open
for the new locking system where it's this surface that locks.
And there's no reason not to have a wide open ejection port.
This is going to make malfunctions, failures to fully properly eject,
much more difficult to happen on the new pistol than it was on the old one.
Even during the original production, FN had to open up this ejection port early on
because it was a little too small and it was causing problems.
And then of course the sights are way bigger
as well on the new pistol, that's another pretty nice improvement.
You can see the difference in the front sights,
and it's even more obvious here on the rear sights.
The original over here has this little tiny V notch.
And the new pistol has a properly modern, large rectangular squared-off notch, so much better sights.
My personal take on this is the new High Power is a pretty cool pistol, I like the concept.
I like that FN recognises that they can make a pistol that's simply there to be fun to shoot.
It doesn't have to be everything tactical all in one package, like fun is allowed.
And yes, it's not a purist's pistol, but
there are only like a few hundred thousand original FN High Powers out there,
actually, there's probably more than a million of them out there.
If you really want an original High Power,
you're not going to want one that came off the factory line yesterday anyway.
You're going to want an old classic, historically relevant
Browning High Power, and you can still get one of those.
I like the idea of taking that concept, updating it, modernising it, and building a new pistol out of it.
Now in addition, this gives FN a new pistol platform to work with going into the future.
So they undoubtedly are going to be releasing versions of this that have optics cuts.
You'll notice that the back strap was removable, this gives them options for
different ergonomic features: larger back straps, smaller back straps, some of those other things
that we see in modern pistol designs that weren't in some of the classic ones.
Frankly, I think it would be super cool to play up the retro nostalgia a bit.
I would love to see when there's an optics cut version like
a 500 metre tangent sight that you can bolt into the optics cut.
And perhaps a new back strap that has a shoulder stock cut in it, perhaps.
I think that'd be really cool. Will it happen? Probably not, but it would be neat.
Maybe some custom gunsmith can be talked into doing something like that.
At any rate, is it bigger than the original High Power? Yeah.
... Is it the classic High Power? No, of course it's not.
But I think it is a cool pistol in its own right that ... has the potential
to stand on its own characteristics.
If FN does decide to really put some time and money and effort into this,
the idea of having a single-action only pistol chassis,
I think there's a lot of places that one can go with that.
Other than the 1911, there aren't a ton of single-action only pistols out there
other than the inevitable CZ 75 variations.
So let me know down in the comments, what do you think?
Is this in fact blasphemy against Browning's legacy?
Or is it a fun reinterpretation of something
that in no way damages the existence of the originals?
Hopefully you guys enjoyed this video. We'll be following this up with a trip out to the range
with one of the new High Powers to get a feel for it in the hand. Hopefully you'll stay tuned for that.
Thanks for watching.