Well, I FINALLY got mine!!! I just put 50 rounds through it yesterday, and here’s my impression. It is only MY opinion, so evidently YMMV.
The way they come
Others have already written about the packaging (even with pictures) and all the oil these guns come drowned in, so I won’t have to elaborate on that. I’ll just say that, even with all that oil, I could still see rust in some places. This is probably because the blueing salts were not properly neutralized after they were applied. In any event, it is only minor rust slush that didn’t affect either the metal integrity or the finish. It was just weird to see rusty oil in some corners.
What you get in the box, besides the gun, is: two magazines (short ones), a cleaning rod and a funny, Altavista translated user’s manual. Oh, and something else funny too! When I opened the box I thought somebody had included a couple of crack bags in there. Thank God it wasn’t that, but it was funny! They made little bags with cheese cotton and filled them up with some type of white powder, probably to control moisture in the box.
The finish
The finish is typical Norinco; scary! I mean, some parts look like they were machined by hand, with an old worn out file. And that is being nice, because I think the hammer group, and the sides of the barrel bushing where it meets the slide, must have been “machined” by some Chinese guy with his own teeth. It certainly isn’t anything like the finish on the new Norinco 1911’s, which I thought was very good for their price.
The fit
Fit of the major metal parts is relatively good, nothing too tight, nothing too loose. The only thing I thought could have been a little tighter was the bushing to barrel fit. But what the heck, this isn’t a match gun, so who cares?
Pulling on the slide while the hammer is down, as many have already said, is incredibly hard. But I think this must be part of the design, because the hammer resistance is part of the whole equation to make the gun work properly. I believe if the hammer didn’t put so much resistance on the slide, the recoil spring would have had to be a lot beefier. So just #### the hammer before pulling the slide.
The trigger
The trigger pull on mine is far from ideal. It is heavy, gritty, uneven, inconsistent, jerky and… what else can I say? If I decide to keep it, I’ll break down the hammer group and polish the parts a bit. But that hasn’t been decided, yet!
The safety, the stupid safety!
Well, it just had to go! Mine worked well, as designed, so I left it on and fired the first magazine like that. Big mistake! Even though it worked, and wasn’t really hard to engage/disengage with my shooting hand thumb, without changing my shooting grip; the weird and tiny screws on both sides of the safety lever where hurting my hand and thumb pretty bad. So I took them all off before I continued to my second mag.
The sights
The sights are a round bottom U notch and a thin square front post. I usually don’t like round bottom U notches on the rear sight, preferring the square bottom ones myself. However, I found these sights were quite good and very user friendly. The U notch is deeper than normal U notches usually are, and I liked that. And, although the front sight is kind of skinny by today’s standards, I was able to fire quick aimed double taps without a problem. I think they are very nice sights for a gun this cheap. Unfortunately, in my hands, they came adjusted about 3” to 4” to the right at 10 mts, so I’ll have to take care of that too. They were right on for elevation.
Reliability
Well, it is pretty good indeed! I was able to fire about 55 rounds and had only one failure to feed. They were 50 rounds of Win USA 124gr FMJ and 5 rounds of CCI Speer FMJ (unknown weight). The one round of USA just hung up on the ramp, for some reason, and stayed halfway inside the magazine. I think the problem must have been how the round was laying in the magazine, because the slide just missed its rim and pushed it by the waist. I had polished the ramp to a mirror finish beforehand, and the rest of the ammo fed 100%. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll use an excuse directly from the Tupperware book of excuses and just say: “I limpwristed it!
Ergonomics
Well, this might the deal breaker for me! This gun must have the most uncomfortable/un-ergonomic grip design ever put on a handgun. My God! It is a little too short, a little too thin, and it has a weird angle to it. Try as I might, I am just not able to get a proper hold on it, so I can’t engage the trigger properly. It also makes it a little hard to manage its recoil and make it feel a little top/front heavy. Not that this guns recoils a lot, but I’m sure this grip makes it feel a lot worse than it really is. I shot it alongside my Para P14/45, out of which I was shooting standard pressure 230gr FMJ loads, and although the .45 had noticeably more recoil, it was a lot more comfortable to shoot and easier to control.
And, just to top off the ergonomics boondoggle, this gun drew blood from me from the get go. Yep, I was being hammer-bitten big time. That had not happened to me since I last fired a Walter PPK/S in .380 ACP, about 20 years ago.
Of course, you do need to keep in mind that this grip feeling business is very subjective. Everybody has different hands and everybody has different tastes and preferences. This opinion is based solely on “MY PREFERENCES”. YMMV!
I had brought 150 rounds with me, but ended up shooting only the first 50. I didn’t like the hammer bites and my blood was dirtying the new “beauty”, so I just had to stop. I’ll probably try it again using different holds, to see if I can avoid the hammer bites and improve trigger control. But in the end I think I’ll just try to get Tokagyp grips for it. If I can’t get any, I’ll try making a set myself. If none of that works, then I might just sell it.
So, to sum it all up: with this gun, what you pay for is exactly what you get, nothing more; nothing less. Well, maybe a liiiiittle bit more! If you don’t mind the fit and finish (not all guns need to be works of art) and you like the grips, then this is the best bargain on the market. It certainly is a very good bargain for new shooters who are very short of cash. I mean, even a broken student can come up with $124 to get one of these delivered to his door. You can get to shoot right away, instead of waiting for a whole year, or 20 years, before you can gather enough money to buy an original Colt 1911 or a brand new Sig 226. Yes, those other guns are certainly nicer, but they won’t hit the paper target any harder, and you may have to wait for a long time before you can afford one, if ever.
Mine is practically 100% reliable and I am able to hit my target 100% of the time at 10 mts., even though I don’t like the grips and the hammer bites me.
Would I buy another one, or would I have bought it, if I knew what I know today? No. But I have other guns I can shoot, and getting this one might only turn out to be a hassle, if I decide to sell it. But if it was going to be my first gun, or if I had tried it and liked its shooting qualities before I bought it, I certainly wouldn’t have minded its cheap allure at all. I would have gotten it in a heartbeat.
I hope this helps those of you wondering about this cheapie. If you like the Tokarev ergonomics and are not looking for pride of ownership, then go for it before they’re all gone. You won’t be disappointed.
Edit: I found a possible cure for the hammer bites.
I am happy to have found out that I'm not the only one with the hammer bite problem, this guy had it too:
h t t p://hiddendefense.########.com/2008/05/my-chinese-russian-modified-grips.html
Unfortunately, he also proves that the solution that I had envisioned (namely install Tokagypt grips) did not help at all. However, he was able to modify them to fix the problem, so there’s still hope. Now I still have the problem of finding the grips. He ordered them from Martar, but I don't think they have any left anymore.
The way they come
Others have already written about the packaging (even with pictures) and all the oil these guns come drowned in, so I won’t have to elaborate on that. I’ll just say that, even with all that oil, I could still see rust in some places. This is probably because the blueing salts were not properly neutralized after they were applied. In any event, it is only minor rust slush that didn’t affect either the metal integrity or the finish. It was just weird to see rusty oil in some corners.
What you get in the box, besides the gun, is: two magazines (short ones), a cleaning rod and a funny, Altavista translated user’s manual. Oh, and something else funny too! When I opened the box I thought somebody had included a couple of crack bags in there. Thank God it wasn’t that, but it was funny! They made little bags with cheese cotton and filled them up with some type of white powder, probably to control moisture in the box.
The finish
The finish is typical Norinco; scary! I mean, some parts look like they were machined by hand, with an old worn out file. And that is being nice, because I think the hammer group, and the sides of the barrel bushing where it meets the slide, must have been “machined” by some Chinese guy with his own teeth. It certainly isn’t anything like the finish on the new Norinco 1911’s, which I thought was very good for their price.
The fit
Fit of the major metal parts is relatively good, nothing too tight, nothing too loose. The only thing I thought could have been a little tighter was the bushing to barrel fit. But what the heck, this isn’t a match gun, so who cares?
Pulling on the slide while the hammer is down, as many have already said, is incredibly hard. But I think this must be part of the design, because the hammer resistance is part of the whole equation to make the gun work properly. I believe if the hammer didn’t put so much resistance on the slide, the recoil spring would have had to be a lot beefier. So just #### the hammer before pulling the slide.
The trigger
The trigger pull on mine is far from ideal. It is heavy, gritty, uneven, inconsistent, jerky and… what else can I say? If I decide to keep it, I’ll break down the hammer group and polish the parts a bit. But that hasn’t been decided, yet!
The safety, the stupid safety!
Well, it just had to go! Mine worked well, as designed, so I left it on and fired the first magazine like that. Big mistake! Even though it worked, and wasn’t really hard to engage/disengage with my shooting hand thumb, without changing my shooting grip; the weird and tiny screws on both sides of the safety lever where hurting my hand and thumb pretty bad. So I took them all off before I continued to my second mag.
The sights
The sights are a round bottom U notch and a thin square front post. I usually don’t like round bottom U notches on the rear sight, preferring the square bottom ones myself. However, I found these sights were quite good and very user friendly. The U notch is deeper than normal U notches usually are, and I liked that. And, although the front sight is kind of skinny by today’s standards, I was able to fire quick aimed double taps without a problem. I think they are very nice sights for a gun this cheap. Unfortunately, in my hands, they came adjusted about 3” to 4” to the right at 10 mts, so I’ll have to take care of that too. They were right on for elevation.
Reliability
Well, it is pretty good indeed! I was able to fire about 55 rounds and had only one failure to feed. They were 50 rounds of Win USA 124gr FMJ and 5 rounds of CCI Speer FMJ (unknown weight). The one round of USA just hung up on the ramp, for some reason, and stayed halfway inside the magazine. I think the problem must have been how the round was laying in the magazine, because the slide just missed its rim and pushed it by the waist. I had polished the ramp to a mirror finish beforehand, and the rest of the ammo fed 100%. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll use an excuse directly from the Tupperware book of excuses and just say: “I limpwristed it!
Ergonomics
Well, this might the deal breaker for me! This gun must have the most uncomfortable/un-ergonomic grip design ever put on a handgun. My God! It is a little too short, a little too thin, and it has a weird angle to it. Try as I might, I am just not able to get a proper hold on it, so I can’t engage the trigger properly. It also makes it a little hard to manage its recoil and make it feel a little top/front heavy. Not that this guns recoils a lot, but I’m sure this grip makes it feel a lot worse than it really is. I shot it alongside my Para P14/45, out of which I was shooting standard pressure 230gr FMJ loads, and although the .45 had noticeably more recoil, it was a lot more comfortable to shoot and easier to control.
And, just to top off the ergonomics boondoggle, this gun drew blood from me from the get go. Yep, I was being hammer-bitten big time. That had not happened to me since I last fired a Walter PPK/S in .380 ACP, about 20 years ago.
Of course, you do need to keep in mind that this grip feeling business is very subjective. Everybody has different hands and everybody has different tastes and preferences. This opinion is based solely on “MY PREFERENCES”. YMMV!
I had brought 150 rounds with me, but ended up shooting only the first 50. I didn’t like the hammer bites and my blood was dirtying the new “beauty”, so I just had to stop. I’ll probably try it again using different holds, to see if I can avoid the hammer bites and improve trigger control. But in the end I think I’ll just try to get Tokagyp grips for it. If I can’t get any, I’ll try making a set myself. If none of that works, then I might just sell it.
So, to sum it all up: with this gun, what you pay for is exactly what you get, nothing more; nothing less. Well, maybe a liiiiittle bit more! If you don’t mind the fit and finish (not all guns need to be works of art) and you like the grips, then this is the best bargain on the market. It certainly is a very good bargain for new shooters who are very short of cash. I mean, even a broken student can come up with $124 to get one of these delivered to his door. You can get to shoot right away, instead of waiting for a whole year, or 20 years, before you can gather enough money to buy an original Colt 1911 or a brand new Sig 226. Yes, those other guns are certainly nicer, but they won’t hit the paper target any harder, and you may have to wait for a long time before you can afford one, if ever.
Mine is practically 100% reliable and I am able to hit my target 100% of the time at 10 mts., even though I don’t like the grips and the hammer bites me.
Would I buy another one, or would I have bought it, if I knew what I know today? No. But I have other guns I can shoot, and getting this one might only turn out to be a hassle, if I decide to sell it. But if it was going to be my first gun, or if I had tried it and liked its shooting qualities before I bought it, I certainly wouldn’t have minded its cheap allure at all. I would have gotten it in a heartbeat.
I hope this helps those of you wondering about this cheapie. If you like the Tokarev ergonomics and are not looking for pride of ownership, then go for it before they’re all gone. You won’t be disappointed.
Edit: I found a possible cure for the hammer bites.
I am happy to have found out that I'm not the only one with the hammer bite problem, this guy had it too:
h t t p://hiddendefense.########.com/2008/05/my-chinese-russian-modified-grips.html
Unfortunately, he also proves that the solution that I had envisioned (namely install Tokagypt grips) did not help at all. However, he was able to modify them to fix the problem, so there’s still hope. Now I still have the problem of finding the grips. He ordered them from Martar, but I don't think they have any left anymore.
Last edited:
