[ Schwarzlose 1908. ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video episode on ForgottenWeapons.com.
Today we have a really interesting pistol to take a look at, it is the Schwarzlose 1908.
What makes this really unusual is that it is a blow-forward semi-auto pistol.
There are only three designs like this that were ever really commercially available, and this is the most common of them.
So we're going to take a look, we're going take it apart, we're going to take it shooting, and we're going to see how it works.
[ A Brief History of the Pistol. ]
This was designed by Andreas Schwarzlose, same inventor who designed the Austrian Model 1907 Schwarzlose machine gun.
He had a whole slew of patents both in Germany, in the US, in Britain, basically around the world.
This pistol was not his greatest hit ever. Somewhere on the order of 10,000 of these were made.
They were sold both in Europe by Schwarzlose, and they were also sold here in the US by the Warner Arms Company.
The guns were made from 1908 until 1911 in Germany, so they weren't around all that long.
It wasn't a particularly popular pistol for some reasons that we'll get into.
However Warner did sell them in the US, and after the Germans stopped making them
Warner had bought a bunch of parts and they assembled some of the pistols here in the US and sold those as well.
You can tell those because on the grip panel they actually have a "WAC" embossed in them for Warner Arms.
There is some evidence (although it's not conclusive), that Warner may have bought the tooling for the pistol,
and built some of the parts and pistols here in the US, but we really can't confirm that. Not sure.
Now these are in .32 Automatic, or 7.65mm Browning, which was a fairly common calibre at the time.
Very popular both for police and army officers, and civilians.
So it's nice that an old pistol like this is chambered in a cartridge that's still very commonly available today.
These were sold to individuals, they were also sold to army officers.
They were never actually officially adopted or issued by a military, but they were purchased privately by a number of officers.
So they did see use during World War One and maybe to some extent during World War Two, although probably not in significant numbers.
[ Blow-forward? ]
Now some people aren't really familiar with how a blow-forward would work.
And what actually happens is when when you fire the pistol, there is this recoil energy from the gun
that normally would blow a slide backwards.
Well, if the slide can't go backwards, if the breech block is fixed, that recoil energy is still going to have to go somewhere.
So if the slide can move forward, it will. And that's how this pistol is designed.
Another way to think about this would be like if you have an explosion
and you just set it off on the ground, that's going to blow stuff in all directions.
However, if you set off an explosion right next to a wall, all the blast is going to be deflected away from the wall.
If you think about the breech of the Schwarzlose being that wall, you can see how the energy is going to blow the slide forward.
Now the main downside to a blow-forward mechanism, and there are there couple, but the biggest one is recoil.
When the slide on normal pistol comes back towards you, it's actually absorbing some of the recoil energy,
and thus making the recoil of the pistol feel lighter.
On a blow-forward, since the slide is going forward, you're creating, through Newton's laws,
you're creating an equal and opposite reaction force coming backward.
In effect the slide is creating more recoil coming back to the shooter.
[ Controls. ]
Alright, so let's take a look at the controls on the Schwarzlose 1908.
We have a grip safety, it's a bit unusual in that it's here on the front strap of the gun.
Typically, we're used to grip safeties being on the back, but this was an early design and, you know, a lot of things were still up in the air.
To go along with the grip safety we also have this little button.
And what that does is actually allow you to disable the safety.
You push the safety all the way in, pull that button up, and then back down.
And as you can see, it has locked the grip safety in the ready to fire position.
So if you wanted to do some target practice or shooting, and didn't want to have to deal with
keeping pressure on that grip safety, you can disable it using that button.
Now there is no other manual safety on this pistol, so if you do disable the grip ... that's it.
We have a magazine release here on the heel. This is fairly typical of European .32s.
I don't know if it's common to all the Schwarzloses, but in this particular one the magazine release is a very stiff spring.
So it kind of takes some work to get a magazine in there.
Now of course what makes the Schwarzlose an unusual design is its blow-forward mechanism.
As you can see like this, whenever you fire, the slide actually goes forward rather than back.
There's a hammer inside here, this is a hammer fired pistol.
The recoil spring is here under the barrel.
And really it functions much like a regular blowback, except the slide is going in the opposite direction.
Let's go ahead and take it apart. You can see how it comes apart and what the internals look like.
[ Disassembly. ]
So disassembly of the Schwarzlose is not really trivial, it kind of takes some fiddling and some getting used to.
And the easiest way to get started is actually to lock the breech open.
I'm using a spent cartridge case here just to hold it open.
Now you can see that in our spring guide down here there's a little hole.
... I'm a little surprised this hole doesn't go clear through,
maybe that's just for strength, but it certainly makes it a little trickier to take apart.
I'm going to use a small drill bit that fits that hole nicely.
I can put it in there, and then I can pull the guide rod forward, and rotate it down slightly.
Now with the spring disengaged, I can pull the slide off the front.
[ If you're slightly more careful, the recoil guide won't go flying across the room when you do this. ]
Alright, so the trigger mechanism of the Schwarzlose 1908 is really pretty ingenious, pretty clever.
The hammer does not actually lock back, it sits here, it's always under spring tension,
you can see I can push it back.
And what operates the hammer
is this bar in the slide, so there's a protrusion right here that actually catches in the hammer,
right there, and holds it back when the slide is closed.
Now this bar is movable in both x and y directions.
... You can see there are two bumps, one here and one here, and those can either fire or prevent the gun from firing.
So this one right here is operated by the trigger. When you pull the trigger it pushes this bar inwards,
which pushes the hammer catch back into the slide, and allows the hammer to come forward.
You can see the trigger
right here.
When I pull the trigger, that comes back,
that's going to impinge on this piece inwards, and fire it.
Now the other operation that we have going on here is this little detent,
right here. This is a safety.
It mates up with
this bump on the sear bar, and if this is not all the way
this direction, up into the camera,
what will happen is this sear bar can be pushed down. And that prevents the trigger from having any effect,
because here's your trigger operator and here's your safety, if the safety is pushed up,
then that trigger connector disappears.
The practical upshot of this is if the gun's not in battery, if the slide is not all the way back
so that this detent can sit inside this hole, then the gun won't fire.
The trigger has no effect, and you can't fire the gun out of battery.
So the extractor holds a cartridge case like this, against the breech face.
When you fire, the slide starts moving forward. And once it's moved forward far enough to clear the cartridge
the firing pin is still exerting spring pressure on it, and that pushes it out
and away from the breech face and out the ejection port.
We have our recoil spring guide here. Now when ... you contract it fully like this and rotate it slightly
clockwise, or counter-clockwise, depending which way you're looking,
it allows you to take the slide off the top of the pistol, and it locks the spring in place.
Now there are a pair of grooves on the bottom of the slide here,
and those fit into a pair of matching grooves in the frame,
and allow the slide to mount on like so.
This is really pretty finicky to take apart, so if you have one
I don't recommend doing this more than you really need to, it's kind of a pain in the butt.
[ Reassembly. ]
Alright, now to reassemble the pistol. We have our spring guide locked in place.
We're going to take the slide and just ... match the grooves up,
run the slide all the way back, and then we can grab this hole in the front of the spring guide,
rotate it
back into place.
And there we have the pistol ready to go again.
[ To the Range! ]
My understanding is that recoil with this will be worse than with any typical .32, because it is a blow-forward action.
So got it loaded up. Something that we do want to point out, this is not a particularly
safety friendly gun because of its blow-forward design.
You have to grab the slide and run it forward, and if you're not paying attention
it's pretty easy to get your hand in front of the muzzle and cover yourself, and you want to avoid that, so.
There we go. We have a rather stiff grip safety.
We have a very stiff trigger. We have little tiny sights. So this is probably not going to be a particularly accurate pistol.
That is in fact one of the least comfortable .32s I have ever shot in my life.
This little, narrow, solid steel back strap really does a nice job of focusing the recoil force into the web of your hand.
And it is definitely a lot sharper than any other .32 I've shot.
Looks like we have a malfunction on our last round here.
It's a failure to fully eject.
There we go.
Did I mention this was a really unpleasant pistol to shoot? Because this is a really unpleasant pistol to shoot.
So I usually find myself enjoying just about every gun I get to shoot, but as I said, this one, oof boy,
... I like having it, not so sure I'd want to go shoot it every day.
Thanks for tuning in, I hope you guys enjoyed the video.
And tune back in to ForgottenWeapons.com for more information on unusual early automatics.