TOKAREV PISTOL .30 CALIBER (7.62MM)

[nagarifle]

what are the possibly of making an inertia firing pin for the TT? if any.

[timmy]

That's a good question. I'm not sure if the design has enough room for one -- In a day or two, I'll try to pull the 1911 out of the safe and compare it.

[nagarifle]

thanks, look forward to it

[timmy]

After considering this issue of using an inertia type firing pin, as found in the 1911, in a TT 33, I would think that it is possible, but I would not feel very secure doing so without testing it a whole bunch before trusting my life to it. (Remember, the US Army devoted LOTS of testing to the 1911 to ensure that pistol was reliable -- judge for yourself how this effort turned out.) The idea behind an inertia firing pin would be to allow the TT 33 to be carried with a round in the chamber and the hammer lowered, thus only requiring the hammer to be thumbed back to ready the gun in a self-defense situation. (Currently, one would have to cycle the slide before the TT 33 is ready for use, as it is unsafe to carry it with a round in the chamber.)

First of all, consider that the firing pin must have enough weight so that it will store enough energy to reliably detonate a primer. In the case of the 1911 firing pin, it is retained in a typically neat Browning design: There's a sliding firing pin stop that is retained by the firing pin itself. This design allows the firing pin and spring to be removed for servicing without any specialized tool.

In the TT 33, the firing pin must have a slot cut in it for a retaining pin that passes through the slide, locking the pin in place. This pin must be driven out with a special V-shaped punch, due to the peculiar design of the retaining pin. This is a cheaper way of retaining the pin, because it eliminates the milling needed for the Browning design, but the slot cut in an inertia pin for the TT 33 must be longer. The firing pin itself will travel further, since it would be shorter so as not to touch the primer with the hammer down. This would necessitate a longer slot in the firing pin, which would, of course, make it lighter.

In the TT 33 design, it was desirable to make the hammer-sear firing assembly as a unit to allow quick field servicing. So, rather than having room in the mainspring housing for a long leaf spring, like the 1911 design, only a small volume is available for a short, stiff coil spring in the TT 33. In fact, most of the spring resides in a hole drilled up the arm of the hammer! The spring is stiff because the primers needed for the 7.62 x 25 round are necessarily "hard" -- the round is a high pressure round (like the 9 mm Parabellum round) and requires a hard strike to set it off. Also, this same ammunition was used in the PPSH 41 submachine gun, and automatic weapons often have hard primers, as well. For this reason, primers tend to be harder in 7.62 x 25 rounds.

In contrast, the primers in .45 ACP, while also used in Thompson and M3 "Grease Gun" submachine guns, operate at roughly half of the chamber pressure of the 7.62 x 25, so they don't need to be so hard. This, combined with a large leaf mainspring and a heavier firing pin, allows the inertia firing pin of the 1911 to work without problems. (Some say that, if a loaded 1911 is dropped from a certain height on its muzzle, the firing pin will have enough inertia to set off the chambered round. All I can say to this is "hmmmm". I'm not too worried about it!)

So, I would say, one might be able to conjure up an inertia firing pin for a TT 33. It might work. Whether it would be reliable and go bang under any circumstance, I don't know. I would certainly think about having smooth surfaces in the firing pin, as well as the hole it's mounted in. Maybe the spring would need fiddling with to obtain the right tension, as well. If one reloaded ammunition, one could play with different primers that might allow more reliable functioning, but if one is limited to factory and/or surplus ammo, then that avenue wouldn't be available.

One other point should be added to this: if one were able to design a totally reliable inertia firing pin for a TT 33, then bringing the weapon into a condition for ready use would require thumbing back the hammer as one drew the pistol. I'm sure that all of those of us who have handled a TT 33 and cocked the hammer would understand my being a bit skeptical here about the inertia firing pin solving all of the TT 33's problems as a self defense arm. Having a cold or wet thumb would not make for a very reliable process here, especially without plenty of practice.

[nagarifle]

thanks tim
need to fully digest the info. just one question, have you ever come across any one who has made one? as i see this as an interesting project at some stage in life.

[winnie_the_pooh]

thanks tim
need to fully digest the info. just one question, have you ever come across any one who has made one? as i see this as an interesting project at some stage in life.

'Experiments' with a firearms sometimes do not work out

[nagarifle]

[winnie_the_pooh]

Timmy,

A very detailed reply and very clear as well in describing everything I am sure a good holster and a lot of practice of racking the slide while drawing the pistol should overcome,to a large extent, the handicap of having to do this in a self defence situation.

[timmy]

Thanks, Winnie. It's my understanding that the Israeli Mossad for years used Beretta .22 pistols as their weapon of choice. They used standard velocity ammunition to keep down the report of firing. The drill here was a "double tap" firing technique, where the agent would get very close to the targeted victim, and (to the point of your post), the gun's slide was manually cycled when drawn to chamber a round and bring it to a state ready for use. Apparently, a considerable amount of practice was involved in making the draw-cycle slide-point-double tap system effective, which it quite evidently was.

It would be reasonable to assume that a private citizen could master this technique with considerable coaching and lots of practice, or, in fewer cases, with just the practice alone, assuming the person has familiarity with how this would be done. I would ask, in the context of an Indian private gun owner, would these conditions exist?

Next, we'd have carrying something like a 1911 or maybe the hypothetical modified TT 33 we're discussing here, where the user would need to practice the draw-cock-point-fire technique. Perhaps this would not require as much practice/coaching as the cycling of the slide method, but I feel it would still be considerable. A Single Action Army Colt "Peacemaker" has a hammer that's designed to be cocked. A 1911, with its smaller hammer, is much less amenable to thumb cocking when bringing the weapon to the ready state. A TT 33 with an inertia firing pin, when compared to a 1911, has a hammer that's mostly shrouded and extremely stiff -- it is much less handy to near-instant cocking than even the 1911, so it would (in my opinion) require a lot more practice to make it an effective carry weapon when modified for this technique.

Then, moving down the list to easier guns to bring to the ready, we'd have the 1911 in Condition 1, or "cocked and locked" status: Thumbing off the safety to fire the 1911 like this is very quick, compared to either of the two operations listed above, cycling the slide and cocking the hammer, but this still requires practice. When the chips are down and one is faced with personal danger, there's no time to be fumbling with the safety when bringing the gun to action. One might thing that this is a "no-brainer," but under the strain, fear, and adrenaline rush of a threat, lots of bad things can happen. That's why practice, practice, and more practice is necessary to master these techniques, so they will be instinctive when the time comes. How much practice? I'm sure this depends on the individual, as some can form habits more easily than others. But in all three of the cases I've just mentioned, I am sure that for just about every individual who walks the face of the earth, we're talking about much more practice than the casual box or two of cartridges per year.

Easier to master than all these would be the double action pistol, where a round can be carried in the chamber and the hammer is cocked with the first pull of the trigger, as with a double action revolver. While this is an improvement over the effort to master the methods of cycling the slide, cocking the hammer, and thumbing off the safety, it still requires practice, because the trigger pull on the double action first shot (the most critical one) is usually very stiff. This is especially true with guns meant for military use and their copies: these guns fire military ammunition which normally has harder primers, and therefore military guns usually have much more power in their ignition systems than necessary to ensure the gun goes bang when the trigger is pulled. This makes for a very stiff double action trigger pull, and again, lots of practice is required to master this, just as it is with a double action revolver.

To speak plainly, there's a whole lot of difference between shooting a cocked single action revolver in the relaxed confines of the range, compared to operating a handgun under threat/combat conditions and having to cycle the slide, cock the hammer, thumb off the safety, or master a stiff DA trigger pull in the heat of a life or death situation. I'm sorry, but there's simply no way of getting around EFFECTIVE practice when it comes to mastering a handgun for use as a self-defense weapon.

My bottom line to this long winded discussion is that the TT 33, whether used as built with a slide-cycling technique or when thumbing the hammer back when modified with an inertia firing pin (assuming that this can be done to effectively operate under all conditions) is very far down the list, in my opinion, for use as a personal self-defense weapon.

As a matter of fact, if one has access to a reliable IOF revolver, I'd say that would be a much better choice than a TT 33. The TT 33 has a much more powerful round, true, but the first emphasis ALWAYS has to be placed on being able to deliver a bullet to the target, not the power of some bullet whooshing about willy-nilly in the atmosphere somewhere. Only when the bullet can be placed reliably at the point of aim is the weapon/cartridge worth a hoot as a self-defense weapon.

It is true that (famously, as the story goes), the Colt .38 revolvers were notoriously ineffective at stopping Moro tribesmen in the Philippines back at the turn of the last century, and that the Army found that the old SAA .45 Colt was more effective in stopping them. However, this comparison is between these two cartridges when the bullets were placed on target! A .38 Colt or even a .22 Short placed on target is ALWAYS going to be more effective than a miss by even a handgun shooting 600 Nitro Express. This is no excuse to go about undergunned with a "pop gun," starting gun, or try carrying an air gun as a self defense weapon, but if one cannot trust that the bullet is going to make it to the target without some degree of reliability, then one is better off throwing the gun at an assailant. After all, that is the purpose of the gun in the first place!

[xl_target]

.... Thumbing off the safety to fire the 1911 like this is very quick, compared to either of the two operations listed above, cycling the slide and cocking the hammer, but this still requires practice. When the chips are down and one is faced with personal danger, there's no time to be fumbling with the safety when bringing the gun to action. One might thing that this is a "no-brainer," but under the strain, fear, and adrenaline rush of a threat, lots of bad things can happen. That's why practice, practice, and more practice is necessary to master these techniques, so they will be instinctive when the time comes. How much practice? I'm sure this depends on the individual, as some can form habits more easily than others. But in all three of the cases I've just mentioned, I am sure that for just about every individual who walks the face of the earth, we're talking about much more practice than the casual box or two of cartridges per year.

I found this out the hard way. Shortly after getting my permit to carry, I took a course in the basics of self defense for carry permit holders.
I had practiced in front of the mirror many times to get my draw and fire in decent shape and I wasn't really worried.
One of the exercises was to draw on command while facing a standard torso target and put two shots into it. The distance was about 10 feet. No sweat, right?
Wrong! Its one thing doing it in front of the mirror. It totally another thing doing it under stress. Generally under stress, the first things to go are your fine motor skills, then your peripheral vision. With your moves being timed and with the instructor yelling at the top of his voice in your ear, even the simplest move like getting your cover garment off your gun starts getting to get difficult. Most of us managed it but we were not fast, by any means. There were a lot of mistakes made by everyone. Safeties, left on, etc. etc. This stress was minor compared to what one might face when your life is in danger so I don't think it would get any better without practice.

Easier to master than all these would be the double action pistol, where a round can be carried in the chamber and the hammer is cocked with the first pull of the trigger, as with a double action revolver. While this is an improvement over the effort to master the methods of cycling the slide, cocking the hammer, and thumbing off the safety, it still requires practice, because the trigger pull on the double action first shot (the most critical one) is usually very stiff. This is especially true with guns meant for military use and their copies: these guns fire military ammunition which normally has harder primers, and therefore military guns usually have much more power in their ignition systems than necessary to ensure the gun goes bang when the trigger is pulled. This makes for a very stiff double action trigger pull, and again, lots of practice is required to master this, just as it is with a double action revolver.

That is one of the reasons that I like the P series SIGS. Even though they are duty sidearms and the double action is stiffer than the single action trigger pull, it is by no means excessive. It is, however, smooth. So all I had to do was to get the gun out cleanly, present it to the target and pull the trigger. Many people like Glocks and other striker fired pistols for this exact same reason. Things got better in subsequent classes but as Timmy notes, "practice, practice and more practice is necessary....". A balky or recalcitrant handgun is not going to help make matters any better. In fact, it could cost you your life.

[shooterz]

Hello gentlemen. just thought I would give you my thoughts on the Tokarev. I have 2 Yugoslavian M57. I have purchased almost all of my ammo online here in Washington State. The surplus ammo is generally very good, but it is corrosive. As for the power...looks up the figures for yourself, but it has more energy in ft lbs. than either the 9mm parabellum or the 45 acp. Accuracy is excellent. I have made shots at 50-100 yards on gallon jugs consistently. They are very well built for their purpose of protection. In having shot well over 1500 rounds, I have had maybe a handful of failures to eject or feed. I would love to fire one of your IOF 32 revolvers, and envy those of you that have them. Cheers all, Troy

[rraju2805]

THANX A LOT FOR the informations..

[dr.jayakumar]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... l_TT33.jpg
thanks friend.
regards

[nagarifle]

Hello IFGians

hi no i do not have one for sale but would like to suggest that one should post in the wanted section of the forum and best not to display personnel info on the public forum.

[nagarifle]

why not take the time to read the forum rules instead of posting in every section? do that before you get banned.
please check out

http://indiansforguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=15160

and save your self the headache