I went to the Forks of the Delaware gunshow yesterday with only one purpose in mind: acquire another CZ52 magazine to modify for 9mm bullet length. There was another gunshow Black Friday, (guys drop off the wives for shopping then go to the gunshow until they get the cell call to go pick them up) which had brought quite a few vendors in the past; this year, not so much. In fact, the only military surplus handguns were 2 Tokarev TTC's, pretty beat and the guy wanted too much $$$. But I knew this really BIG show was coming up and there just hadda be a CZ52 mag somewhere among the 800 tables. Nope! The one vendor who offered repo mags was out-of-stock. And there were no CZ52 guns or parts of any kind to be found. Un-frickin-believable!

One guy had a 50 caliber ammo can heaping full of various mags. I held up my own mag as a sample and he said the distinctive oval windows were a sure sign to identity and he said he remembered 2 or 3 down near the bottom. Oh happy days! Depending on price, I might buy all of them. But I had to do the digging. Long story short, it was a wild goose chase.

So I made my way up and down aisle after aisle searching, searching...nada, zip, zilch. I must say, there was enough Nazi paraphernalia to outfit the whole German army and Luftwaffe combined...I saw so many tables filled with the stuff that at one point I stopped and thought to myself, did I turn the wrong way at the end of the last aisle and go through it again? Nope, just lots of folks with Nazi stuff to sell.

Undaunted, and not wanting to let a perfectly good gunshow go for naught, I went back to the very first table and started over. I have in my meager collection of surplus military handguns ( for some unexplained reason long guns of that vintage don't float my boat) an Italian Beretta model 1934 made in '43, 2 German P-38's...a '43 Walther and a '45 Mauser, a Spanish Star model B made in '43, and a Russian Nagant revolver leftover from WWI. What was missing was something from Imperial Japan.

So my second time through each aisle I tried to remember where I saw Type 14 Nambu's. They are the most plentiful Jap handguns and consequently the least expensive depending, of course, on condition. There were maybe 10 at this show. Now I'll be the first one to admit to knowing diddly squat about Jap guns. (the only one I ever touched was an Arisaka rifle my uncle brought back from the South Pacific.) But I have seen pics of these Type 14's and the rear cocking piece is the most unusual feature. So I stopped at a dealer's table who had one with a knurled knob that was out of the ordinary.

I asked to have a look. He goes into his spiel about all numbers matching, yada, yada, yada. I said that means nothing to me, I'm looking for a shooter not something to hang over the fireplace mantel. I don't know if this is a gunshow thing or what but he had a zip tie through the action as lots of vendor's did. He removed it and proceeded to open the slide, but couldn't get it to rack all the way open. Again and again. He even disassembled the gun, reassembled it and it still wouldn't open all the way. Other folks chimed in with helpful hints as to what the problem could be, to no avail. (He said he was embarrassed at not knowing the problem, that all the correct parts were there, it must be something simple that was overlooked but he couldn't fool more with it when other folks wanted to look at his other guns, and I couldn't blame him) I said I'd take a chance on buying it as-is if he lowered the price. We haggled a bit but he didn't come down enough for me to bite. Until I told him I would be using my C&R license, that he wouldn't need to fool with any paperwork or a call to the state police for the usual buyer's check. He came down $100 and I bought it.




8mm Nambu Type 14, Second series, made February 1944, Nagoya Army Arsenal, Toriimatsu factory. You can tell that by the number 19.2 stamped on the frame. This is the date given in the Japanese system based on the reign of the Emperor which started in 1925. The 2 is the month of manufacture.




This style of fine knurling was only done this month and only ~6000 of the more than 176,000 with the large trigger guard were ever made...pretty rare! But it meant nothing if it wouldn't shoot.





I went to another table and bought a box of newly made but more important, reloadable 8mm Nambu ammo. I went home and this is where karma shone down on me for some unknown reason. I took it apart and lo and behold a piece of that plastic zip tie was wedged behind the locking block. I cleared it with my handy dandy Snap-on pick set without doing any other damage. The dealer was correct; every small part was stamped with the last 3 numbers of the serial, even the wood grips and magazine. There is a dot over the magazine's number meaning this was the spare. There is no import mark anywhere. The bore is bright, shiny with no pitting. Apparently the officer who carried this pistol didn't have much need to use it this late in the war or he was very good at keeping it oiled.

I loaded a few rounds and went out back to give it a go. But the cases stovepiped instead of completely ejecting. After doing a bit of browsing on the interweb it turns out to be a common problem of a combination of wimpy ammo and bad springs. So an order went out to Wolff Gunsprings for a service pak to replace them all and a new magazine spring as well. Another order went out for the required .320" bullets, more reloadable cases and of course a reloading die set. As was suggested, I'm going to pull those factory bullets, scrap the powder and load them with some Winchester 231.

EDIT: I pulled the bullets from the PCI cartridges, which were on average 84.5gr instead of the listed 83gr., dumped the fine-grained spherical powder and reloaded with 4.5gr of W231. I used my 357SIG seating die as a makeshift until my CH-4D Redding dies arrive. Joy, joy, joy, these reloads fed, fired, and ejected just like clockwork. It's too windy to set up my chrono to clock the speed. Some other day for that.




Here you can compare my bottlenecked pistol ammo, from the left: 8mm Nambu...7.62x25 (30 Torarev) and the real powerhouse round 357 SIG.


I should learn to stay away from gunshows lest I spend myself into the poorhouse. Oh hell, I'm contributing to our feeble economy to some extent. And I still have need for that CZ52 magazine.

If you have any interest in Jap Nambu handguns here is a definitive website by a Canadian woman professor named Teri:
Nambu World

Nice looking piece. You found the right website.

Bad springs are the most common problem with the Type 14, they weren't very good to begin with, and the Wolff replacement springs are the answer.

What did you ultimately pay for it?

Since this HDS headstamped PCI factory ammo refuses to function through the Nambu, (although it might once the Wolff springs are installed) I feel that the cost of the Redding reloading die set needs to be added to the cost of the pistol to get an accurate picture of total investment...~$750. Merry Christmas to me!

There was a break in the weather yesterday for me to do some load testing now that the new Wolff springs are installed.

The new factory PCI ammo clocked in at a 5 shot average of 824FPS. Once again they stovepiped rather than completely ejecting. Good news was that the .320" bullets did not keyhole on target, meaning my bore is not one of the sloppy ones.

Next up, my handloads of 4.5gr of W231 using the PCI primed case and the pulled bullets produced a 7 shot average of 1017FPS.

The same load except replacing with a Remington small pistol primer produced 1061FPS. Both of these loads fed, fired and ejected just fine although the empties were tossed into the air straight up and landed about 5' in front of my shooting position. I wonder if that's what the Japs intended?

Here's how those full metal jacketed bullets end up in my bullet trap; flat as a pancake and ready to be remelted into something else. I'm not sure I'm ready to invest in an RCBS boolit mold for this Nambu. Santa are you listening??

That pistol is in amazing condition.