Tokarev!

Hi gang!

My Type 54 pistol finally came in!

For those who ain't come across one yet, it is a Chinese copy of the Russian TT-33 Tokarev sidearm of the "Great Patriotic War"...And my impression of it so far is that it's the AK-47 of the pistol world.

You can kinda see from the pictures that it looks at least a little inspired from Browning guns, but there are some very Russian features. For one, the hammer assembly gets yanked out in one easy piece. For another, instead of having the feed lips positioned on it's magazine, they are machined permanantly into the breach of the pistol! So, damaged mags don't matter. It'll still feed like a champ.

Caliber is the venerable old 7.62x25mm Tokarev round. The only problem is, I can't afford it! The ammo is dirt cheap, but the dealer will only ship in bulk...Sooo, until I feel like throwing down $275 on pistol ammo or the local store comes through for me, I ain't gonna be shooting this piece.

I can still tell ya my impressions though. Skinny grip, and the angle is a little slanted, so it points higher than natural, but to me it feels pretty comfy in my hands. The sights are pure combat sights. Adjustible windage on the rear, fixed front sight. So you can adjust for left to right, but not up and down.

Then again, for sights designed to kill Germanski Soldat at close range, they must have worked just fine. For practical work of picking up on the centre of a human target at pistol fighting ranges of point blank to 12 yards, they are fast enough to pick up on for low end combat sights.

Trigger pull is a little gritty, but not bad at all for a Chinese arm.

The only safety on the pistol is a half cock notch on the hammer, so I would recommend against carrying this one with a round in the spout. If you practice though, you can chamber one right quickly as you draw it, which is how the Russians and later Chinese always managed.

It's dead easy to field strip and clean, and the parts as well as how they work together are very easy to figure out.

All in all, a very respectable adversary...and welcome addition to any collection!

As usual, here are the pics...click em to enlarge!