Blow-Forward Schwarzlose 1908 at the Backup Gun Match

The Schwarzlose 1908 is the only blow-forward firearm ever to see real commercial sale. It is a compact pocket pistol chambered for .32 ACP, with a 7-round magazine. They were sold by Schwarzlose in Germany and also assembled and sold in the United States in a slightly altered form by the Warner Arms Company. I’ve long wanted to try one out in a semi-practical environment, and the Backup Gun Match provides a perfect venue, as its stages are designed around 5-round revolvers.

The Schwarzlose has a number of deficiencies as a practical gun. It is small and narrow for good conceivability, but that narrow backstop really concentrates the recoil. You would not expect much recoil from a .32, but the blow forward action magnifies it almost to the point of the gun being snappily unpleasant to fire. The sights are small and completely non-adjustable. Most significantly, however, are the potential safety hazards of the blow-forward action for basic handling. The gripping surfaces on the slide are not great and the recoil spring is fairly stiff, and it takes a lot of care and attention to not muzzle one’s own hand. This is particularly worrying when clearing malfunctions, which I had two of during the match. This is definitely a pistol that should be appreciated for its history and mechanical curiosity only!

9 Comments

  1. YEOWCH! Even the Nambu Type 94 pistol is several times more comfortable and several thousands of times more practical to shoot.

    • Note that a very early Japanese self-loading pistol design, the Hino-Komura, was a blowforward;

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IelUFboWuOA

      There was a later prototype SMG, the Mendoza HM-1, in Mexico in the 1950s which worked on the same basic principle and looked very much like an enlarged version of the Hino-Komura pistol.

      cheers

      eon

        • Mendoza had a blow-forward mechanism in which the “slide” including the bolt was pulled forward. Later, in 1975 U.S. patent 3.906.833, “Orozco” the patent was for a folding stock 9mm SMG in which the “telescoping bolt” like the Czechoslovak sa23-26 series or Israeli Uzi, but more like a self-loading pistol’s “slide” a bit like the long-forgotten Madsen m/1945, a handful of which were exported to Mexico and El Salvador, and used a “slide with grooves instead of a protruding bolt handle or the finger groove of the U.S. M3A1 SMG.

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