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The Czechs and former Czechoslovakians have a wealthy historical past of attention-grabbing and dynamic arms design. Weapons just like the CZ-75, the BREN gun, and lots of extra got here from the minds of Czech and Slovak individuals. Vaclav Holek was a Czechoslovakian arms designer who lived from 1886 to 1954. He and his brother had been prolific arms designers with a protracted historical past of patents and plenty and plenty of work on the earth of machine weapons after World Struggle I. Between machine gun designs, Holek designed two pistols, one for the navy and police, often called the Praga Mannequin 1919, and one aimed on the civilian market, referred to as the Praga Mannequin 21.
The Praga Mannequin 21 is an odd-looking little gun, and as a fan of pocket pistols and peculiar designs, I used to be drawn to the pistol. Its odd look meant I needed to dive deep into the Praga Mannequin 21 and be taught the story behind this pretty unique-looking little pocket pistol. It turned out to be pretty attention-grabbing, nevertheless it wasn’t precisely essentially the most profitable pistol of its period.
The Praga Mannequin 21 – One Handed
The whole design of the Praga Mannequin 21 relies on one-handed operation. The notch on the high of the slide is a groove designed to permit the person’s finger to grip and cock the slide. You may discover a definite lack of a set off. Effectively, the set off makes use of a folding design, very similar to the Colt Patternson, and a folding set off doesn’t want a stinking set off guard. The set off would mechanically deploy when the slide reciprocated just a few millimeters.
Within the Twenties, it was a typical expectation to hold an computerized pistol with an empty chamber. The design course of and concept was {that a} shooter might grip the gun and function it solely with a single hand. When you did need to carry the gun cocked and locked, the set off might be manually folded upward, however you needed to retract the slide barely to take action and retract the slide barely once more to deploy the set off.
The pistol had a really flat and near-featureless design. It would slot in a pocket very nicely. It has the SIG SAS remedy earlier than SIG ever existed. There have been no snags current to catch on the draw, and it will slide right into a pocket reasonably simply. The journal launch is on the backside of the grip in a really European-style design. There are not any seen sights, only a trench on the high of the slide.
Contained in the Praga Mannequin 21
The gun used a easy blowback design and utilized the .25 ACP. It’s a tiny gun, and the barrel sits tremendous low, giving it a really low bore axis, however that doesn’t matter a lot with .25 ACP. Because the barrel sits so low the recoil spring sits above the barrel. An attention-grabbing design function is the actual fact it makes use of a picket information rod. In response to a translation from a Czech Museum web site, it achieves “elastic and quiet motion of the bolt.”
I’m not fairly certain if that works, however I’m guessing a wooden information rod can be fairly low cost. The journal held six rounds in an excellent easy single-stack journal. The weapon featured {a magazine} security that was highly regarded with European pistols within the period. Whereas it’s pretty easy so far as pistols go, it’s definitely distinctive in its design.
There are someplace between 7,500 and eight,600 of those handguns produced. I’ve seen each numbers tossed round. The weapon was constructed for 2 years however has since pale away. Whereas the gun wasn’t profitable, the general design of the Praga Mannequin 21 is sort of attention-grabbing. Sadly, attention-grabbing doesn’t at all times imply profitable.
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