French pistol from 1873

**Nick VR** · 07-08-2008, 05:27 PM

This is a 11mm French pistol wich has the date 1873 nicely ingraved in it. Unfortunetly it has been deactivated. I'am currently cleaning it up, I will post pictures when its done...

**copdoc** · 07-09-2008, 01:31 AM

Very nice Nick.

These are neat guns. Dad gave me one a couple of years ago. I think I have a pic somewhere. It still has traces of the polish on it. These guns were not blued so that the soldier would have something to do with his spare time. The fit and finish of these guns far surpasses anything you get today. The mechanism is beautiful. One of these days I am going to make a hollow bullet mold and load some ammo. These is some repro ammo but what I have seen did not have the hollow base bullets and may not shoot well.

PS for some reason I can not enlarge the pics.

**copdoc** · 07-09-2008, 01:42 AM

Found a pic on a French flag from the liberation of Auxerre,
France, French WTP2 Mauser, French M1873 and my Dad's M1911A1 Remington Rand service pistol. During WWII he had red colored plexiglass grips on it to match the artillery and 82nd AB patches. The stag grips were given to him in the 60s.