Lost my heart today

[GOPHER SLAYER]

I went to the range today and I lost my heart. A fellow showed up late in the day and only shot pistols. One caught my eye even three benches away. I had to go ask about it. It was beautifully machined and finished. In fit and finish this pistol rivaled the looks of commercial Lugers I have seen. I asked if I could hold it and the nice gentleman said I could shot it if I wanted. The grip fit my small hand even though it had a double stack magazine and held fifteen rounds of 9mm Luger. The slide was on the inside of the frame and the sights were good too. It had a broad square notch rear and a wide blade front. The trigger let go at what I would say was about four LBS. A pleasure to shoot. The pistol was a MAB, made in France and it was made entirely of STEEL. I absolutely lusted after it. Is this pistol still manufactured? I don't think that gun could be produced in this country today for less than a thousand bucks.

[Jupiter7]

Company went defunct in 1982. Neat gun, kind of a mix of a lot of popular designs before it.

[krit29-2]

when I was in my early twenty's a MAB PA15 was one of the first pistol's I purchased from a little pawn shop..
15 rounds 9mm and oh so heavy.. accurate too..
couldn't really find a use for it other than a fun gun here in Ohio at the time , traded it off for a S&W 357 for hunting

[Artful]

PA-15

PA-15 Target


MAB PA-15 was the French issue sidearm from 1970's to the late 80's, being replaced by a license made copy of the Beretta 92F.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAB_PA-15_pistol

The MAB P15 pistol (also known as the PA-15, for Pistolet Automatique 15) was developed by the Manufacture d'Armes Automatiques de Bayonne (MAB) during the early 1970s based on the earlier 9x19 MAB Modele R Para pistol, which was originally created for the French army trials of late 1940s. The P15 saw minor use by the French military and was also widely exported for commercial sales. Production ceased in the late 1980s, and while there were rumors of this pistol being made in the former Yugoslavia, it seems that this venture never went past talks or experimenting. The P15 was a solid, accurate pistol with large magazine capacity and low felt recoil. Probably the only “drawback” of this system was its single action trigger, a slightly old-fashioned setup by the standards of the time.

The MAB P15 is a delayed-blowback pistol with a rotary barrel. It uses a variant of the Savage-Searle system, originally developed in the USA in 1905-07. The breech part of the barrel has two lugs, one at the top and one at the bottom. The lower lug is engaged in the perpendicular cut made in the frame insert, and allows the barrel to rotate but not recoil. The upper lug follows a curved track cut in the inner surface of the slide. When the gun is fired, the pressure of the propellant gas forces the cartridge case back against the slide. The recoil of the slide, via the cam track, forces the barrel to rotate to the right; at the initial stages of the shot, when the bullet is still in the barrel and pressure is high, the rotation of the barrel and, subsequently, the opening of the slide, are opposed by the inertia of the barrel plus torque created by the bullet following the rifling. As soon as bullet leaves the barrel, the torque force disappears and the slide forces barrel to rotate all the way through the cam arc. There’s a straight cut in the slide which then allows it to go back without any further resistance from the barrel. The trigger is single-action, with an external hammer and a manual, frame mounted safety. There is also an automatic magazine safety. Magazines are of double stack design, and hold 15 rounds. Sights are fixed, with the rear being dovetailed to the slide. Manual safety was a lever at the left side of the frame, above the grip panel. To put on safety, push the lever up; to set to “Fire”, pull the lever down

How to disassemble MAB PA-15 pistol: 1) remove the magazine by pressing the magazine release button; 2) check that the chamber is empty; 3) cock the hammer 4) pull the slide rearward for about 6mm (1/4 of an inch), to align the rear end of a slide stop with the disassembly notch in the slide; 5) pus the slide stop pin inwards from the right, and then pull it out completely from the left; 6) pull the slide forward and out of the frame; 7) turn the slide upside down, and push the base of return spring guide slightly forward, and then pull it up at out of the slide; 8) move the barrel forward until it completes its rotation in the slide (about 8mm), then pull it out of the slide.
Reassemble in reverse order.

[GOPHER SLAYER]

Thank you Art. That was a world of information in three paragraphs. Since these pistols have a 15 round capacity, are they even legal in California?

[MT Chambers]

Hard to imagine anyone getting charged up about a 9mm semi-auto, or any auto for that matter, except maybe a Borchardt, Bergmann, Mauser '96, Mannlicher.

[texaswoodworker]

Hard to imagine anyone getting charged up about a 9mm semi-auto, or any auto for that matter, except maybe a Borchardt, Bergmann, Mauser '96, Mannlicher.

Cough cough.

[9.3X62AL]

Hard to imagine anyone getting charged up about a 9mm semi-auto, or any auto for that matter, except maybe a Borchardt, Bergmann, Mauser '96, Mannlicher.

I have a few autopistols in 9mm and other calibers that I enjoy very much. The 9mm's biggest problem is the American ammo makers that insist upon adulterating or castrating it, down-loading it in most cases to 75% of its true potential.

[UnderDawgAl]

hard to imagine anyone getting charged up about a 9mm semi-auto, or any auto for that matter, except maybe a borchardt, bergmann, mauser '96, mannlicher.

b-h-p

[GOPHER SLAYER]

Al, I know only to well what you are talking about. I once traded a beautiful Luger made by the German firm of Simpson just after WW1. They made ten k before Hitler pulled their contract. Seems they were Jewish. I was on vacation in Missouri shooting the pistol in the bottom of an abandoned lime quarry. The Luger would jam least once with each magazine. I traded it off on the way home and I had paid a whopping forty two bucks for it. About two weeks after I had returned home I was reading a gun magazine and a man had written a letter asking about the same problem I had with my Luger. They advised him that American ammo was just too week to work the Luger action. Grrrr

[StratsMan]

The 9mm's biggest problem is the American ammo makers that insist upon adulterating or castrating it, down-loading it in most cases to 75% of its true potential.

Not just 9mm Luger, either... I had a Mauser HSC that would not run on Winchester, Remington or Federal 380 ammo... Ran fine on Fiocchi tho...

Sry if this qualifies as Hijacking the Thread....

[Scout800a]

Description sounded like a cz75. Try one of those

[jakec]

Cough cough.

man that is one sweet gun!!!

[Markbo]

Too bad it's a nine.

[9.3X62AL]

Not just 9mm Luger, either... I had a Mauser HSC that would not run on Winchester, Remington or Federal 380 ammo... Ran fine on Fiocchi tho...

Sry if this qualifies as Hijacking the Thread....

8 x 57 Mauser is another caliber that gets watered down by USA ammo companies. The contempt shown to its customer base by the ammo and component makers isn't a new development brought on by the ObamaNation's crackpot policies. No, sir--they have kept us in the dark and fed us bovine end product for a long, long time. The sitch is just more overt and longer in duration this time around. We must be Portobellos.