Patrick Sweeney Posted August 22, 2003 Share Posted August 22, 2003 Back when I started shooting (you know, when a stone axe was considered a suitable backup piece) there were many guns to choose from. One that always was of interest was the P-35, the Hi-Power. for a few years, the P-35 was neck and neck with the 1911 for IPSC dominance. (For those who recall, it was back when there was a team from Rhodesia.) Do any of you see competitors using them in matches? Are they even seen in IDPA shoots? I always loved the way they fit my hand (although I hated they way they bit me and made me bleed) and have been lusting after them again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Singlestack Posted August 22, 2003 Share Posted August 22, 2003 I've been lusting for a custom Hi-Power with a beavertail for years. I love the way they fit my hand too. I would want one in .40. I have a buddy who shoots one in Lim-10. He's not a hot rod, but he has fun with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mistral404 Posted August 22, 2003 Share Posted August 22, 2003 I started out shooting a BHP that was modified by Cylinder & Slide. Novaks, Bar-Sto, C&S hammer, trigger, sear, safety and beveled mag well. NO Beavertail. Shoots one hole group (i should say Bill L. shoots a one group with it-no fliers, the barrel was fitted at Bar-Sto with Bill and the old man). Ralph at C&S did the trigger job. Still has the HP creep alittle but breaks at 2.7#. The part that bites me is not the hammer but the slide nicks the @^@^%@ out of my thumb and I bleed like a stuck pig. I need to dull those edges on the left side. I shot L10 with it and some Limited. I also shot Tuesday night steel with it for a few months when I was traveling to AZ. Now it mostly collects dust. I shoot a STI single stack for L10 and getting an Edge to shoot Limited. I still carry it in a fanny pack once in a while when I am in the Mountains. Nothing fits my hand like that HP and I am most familar with it so that is what I carry on road trips also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benos Posted August 22, 2003 Share Posted August 22, 2003 The High Power is quite the classic piece. I remember my first real experience with one was in about '84, at Second Chance. It was my first year, so not only was I clueless, but I didn't have all the proper blasters. So I borrowed a High Power for the 9-pin event from Bill Wilson (complete with BoMar rib). I remember I did okay with it, even though it seemed a tad sluggish. But it was the trigger's re-set that required the most adjustment - it took about 30 bucks worth of tables before I learned to release it far enough. be Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duane Thomas Posted August 23, 2003 Share Posted August 23, 2003 The Hi-Power is one of my favorite handguns. I never see it in USPSA/IPSC. There simply isn't a division in which it makes a sensible choice, more's the pity. I do see it in IDPA. AAAMOF, most of the people I see competing in ESP use them. Of course, that's not a lot - aside from SSR this is the least popular IDPA division. Now, that "most people in ESP use them" only applies at the club matches. Get out to a state championships and suddenly the .40 STIs/SVIs start coming out of the woodwork. Still, it's a fairly popular IDPA gun. I've always felt the Hi-Power wasn't nearly as popular in the US as it should be. Go out to a decent handgun training class of, say, 40 people. Half the class will be shooting Glocks. Lots of 1911s. Half a dozen or so people with SIGs. Maybe a Beretta or HK or Kahr or two. One or two brave souls firing revolvers. And - maybe - ONE guy with a Browning Hi-Power. However, notice something interesting. If the class includes some sort of competition where you make the students shoot against each in an eliminations fashion, in short order you're going to get down to four - it always seems to be four - guys up there slugging it out for first place. The guy with Browning Hi-Power will always be one of them. In this country, as opposed to the rest of the world, the Hi-Power is a connoisseur's weapon. I've heard it said (and there is a certain amount of truth to this), "Once you've tried everything else, looking for the best, what you wind up with is a Browning Hi-Power." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mistral404 Posted August 23, 2003 Share Posted August 23, 2003 My first exposure to a HP was in Beirut. I was visiting a friend and notice that a great majority of side arms were HPs. Then I got a chance to chat with a bunch of Brits. They all swore by them. After I got out of the service the HP was the second handgun I purchased. The first was a S&W Model 27 with a six inch barrel for my dad. A couple months later I found one for myself. Sold the S&W for college titution but still own that HP. I purchased the second one, in a shop in Omaha. There are still a couple of HPs at Tues. Night Steel. But SV and STI seem to really dominate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ErikW Posted August 23, 2003 Share Posted August 23, 2003 Tell us how it was back in the olden days, uncle Patrick.... did the BHP shooters make Major (what was the PF back then, 170?) or did they take their lumps with Minor? I love the BHP design almost as much as the CZ-75 design. I don't know if they ever managed to put some good, clean sights on it though. I suspect a couple reasons why they aren't so popular are the single action trigger (cocked and locked, oh no!) and 13 round capacity. I really think there are people out there who would rather by a Beretta just for the two extra rounds. Oh yeah, they are kind of pricey. IIRC, it was (is?) the standard sidearm of the S.A.S. and they even used it as a primary weapon (before MP5s?). And it was real popular in Israel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlktheduk Posted August 23, 2003 Share Posted August 23, 2003 Erik, don't forget the magazine safety that usually won't allow a magazine to drop free (unless it's one of the new magazines with the mouse trap spring on the base pad ) But....the Browning does feel good in the hand, and points very well indeed (at least in my paw) A very good pistol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patrick Sweeney Posted August 24, 2003 Author Share Posted August 24, 2003 I'll tell you how it was, you young whippersnapper.. ..We were using the most god-awful collection of cobbled-together guns, surplus mags, sometimes nasty surplus hardball or reloads put together on single stage presses. Just having a reliable gun was a serious advantage. The guy who kicked serious butt in our club, Dan McDonald, had a Star reloader. He had practice ammo like there was no tomorrow compared to the rest of us. Hi Power shooters shot Minor, and got A hits, which on the old Option target was the size of a manhole cover. A 13 round mag was a decided advantage against seven-shot casually accurate .45's Some of the small variables that allowed our host and TGO to dominate (besides great skill and thoughtful study) were: Their guns worked. Their guns were accurate. They practiced. Back in the early 1980's that was enough to take you quite far, even without the skill and study. And everyone who shot a P-35 had the magazine disconnector removed by their second match. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spook Posted August 24, 2003 Share Posted August 24, 2003 LMAO, Patrick, you're puttin' some things in perspective here... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew_Mink Posted August 25, 2003 Share Posted August 25, 2003 Hi Patrick, we met and talked a few times at 3 gun Nats and FGN, don't know if you recall. Anyway, hardly nobody around Arkansas even knows what they are. I know of 2 guys that shoot them in IDPA, one is quite good with it, and he even beat me on a Texas Star side match once upon a not too distant past. Anybody that knows me well also knows that I love my Glocks. A very close 2nd on my fave list are the BHP's. I've got a couple and they are wonderful little guns. I've got one in the middle of a build-up which will become my wife's carry gun. She also found that she really liked them. I really don't do to much to them except a C&S trigger reduction kit, mag 'safety' removal, bevel the mag opening, and bob the hammer about 1/4" which eliminates the dreaded hammer bite. That's all I do to my shooter BHP's, I've also got some that are just plain jane, but they hurt to shoot. Duane said it best, they are a connoisseur's weapon, a gentleman's sidearm. They carry good too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tightloop Posted August 25, 2003 Share Posted August 25, 2003 I have had a couple of full out HP's. Neither with the beavertail and my hands are big, so the sharp left edge of the protrusion stuck me in the web of the hand. They are beautiful pistols. But, they are in 9mm, and will crack a slide in less than 2K rounds if you try to make major PF with one. Even with a first class trigger job, they still have some creep, and you must get an after market bbl, cause they have no bushing, and lots of them are not fit tight enough to make a 25 yd head shot. If the 1911 is the Queen of autoloaders, the P35 surely must be the Princess. Novaks does a super job on them, but they were hard to customize due to the serial number in the middle of the front strap and the thin nature of the front strap caused problems checkering it more coursely than 30lpi, and all you could do is break the edge on the mag well , no way to put on a well or swage the existing hole. All that said and done, they are great looking pistols when done up right by someone like C&S or Novaks and with a set of Speigel grips. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GRW Posted August 25, 2003 Share Posted August 25, 2003 This is my Hi-Power from Ted Yost, it’s a real beauty. The trigger is outstanding, even though it still has that long take-up and reset. One big obstacle that has been difficult for me to over come is executing quick reloads. The magazine is rectangular with sharp edges that reach out and grab the mag. opening. You have to have perfect alignment to pull off a quick reload. Ahh, practice, practice, practice.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duane Thomas Posted August 25, 2003 Share Posted August 25, 2003 I've owned four Hi-Powers over the years. Two of them were Bulgarian Arcus-94s. Those guns actually have enough of a grip tang I can fire them without the gun eating me alive. The two "real" i.e. FN Hi-Powers OTOH were both customized, one by Cylinder & Slide, the other by Novak's. I once went to a training class with the C&S Hi-Power where I had to put 800 rounds through it in a single day. By the end of the day I had a hole in the web of my hand about half the size of a dime. Not a lot of fun. It wasn't the hammer spur that was getting me, but the base of the hammer crushed flesh between itself and the frame. After that, the gun went back to C&S for a very nice welded-on beavertail. The Novak gun had the underside of the hammer scalloped out, so the part of the hammer that normally savaged me simply wasn't there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patrick Sweeney Posted August 25, 2003 Author Share Posted August 25, 2003 Wayne Novak does a beautiful job of clearing off the curve of the hammer so it doesn't bite. Dan McDonald taught me gunsmithing, and he said: "You have one chance to checker a Browning. If you knarf it, it's off to the welders." With a pair of Navidrex grips its the best out there. Ken Hackathorn kept pushing it for a long time in articles, but I haven't seen much lately. Then again, I don't read much of Ken lately, either. And yes, the slides crack at Major. Apparently the British SAS used to use 9mm proof loads as regular ammo (the "two-zed" load) because they loved the BHP, couldn't use hollowpoints, and had nothing else. So, if the .40 is so much stouter, why don't their slides crack? Just asking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Posted August 25, 2003 Share Posted August 25, 2003 Yesterday I shot my first ever USPSA club match with my 9mm BHP. Boy was that fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duane Thomas Posted August 25, 2003 Share Posted August 25, 2003 So, if the .40 is so much stouter, why don't their slides crack? Just asking. Examine the .40 Hi-Power. You'll note the slide is much taller, wider and heavier than the 9mm slide, thus to slow down the dreaded .40 caliber slide velocity. Really, it's like a Hi-Power frame running a 1911 slide. Also, the gun has such a stiff recoil spring you could press it into service if your truck's shock absorber breaks. As for the 9mms' slides cracking, Bruce Gray once said to me, "No matter what you do to it, no matter where it's made, the Hi-Power is a 15,000 round gun." For most people that's a lot of shooting. For us, it's not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zak Smith Posted August 25, 2003 Share Posted August 25, 2003 Does the 15,000 figure apply to the contemporary MKIII's? I had thought they beefed them up a little when they changed to the MKIII? -z Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duane Thomas Posted August 25, 2003 Share Posted August 25, 2003 No, they made no "beefing up" changes to the slide. You may be thinking of the fact that on .40 BHPs, FN has gone to a cast frame instead of a forging because, during their pre-production testing, they found that forged frames couldn't stand up to .40 recoil over the long term. They found the cast frames more deeply heat treatable, and therefore they could make them more durable. When the .40 Hi-Power first came out I interviewed the engineer at Browning who, working with a design team in Belgim, was in charge of the .40 Hi-Power program. At that time - and admittedly this was a a few years ago - he mentioned there was at least a serious possibility that in the near future all BHP frames, including the 9mms, would switch over to castings. Unfortunately - obviously - this is going to do nothing to cure the 9mm slide cracking problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Les Snyder Posted August 25, 2003 Share Posted August 25, 2003 Patrick... glad that you mentioned Dan McDonald's name... he shot with us in Fla for a couple of months in the early days.... he had the first straight trigger on a 1911 that I'd seen, and I've been using one since then (checkered with 30 lpi)... my P35 was only "combat" accurate until I chamber reamed it...making the case head flush with the hood extension... by lowering the rails, I was able to get a pretty consistent trigger pull... never tried to checker the thin front strap, used a vibrating engraving tool to very lightly stipple the front and rear strap.... added a BMX Bomar that matched the front on factory adjustable model.... when I slugged the barrel, it came out .357 and not .355/.356 and always seemed to like 9mm bullets that had at least a caliber driving band....I could shoot Bianchi plates at 50y with it.....I hurt it trying to make major....a lot of VihtaVuory and a heavy bullet, so decided that it was a little frail to take the beating the the USPSA sport would place on it.... Several of the RSA and Rhodesian shooters stayed with a friend (World Shoot 86 was in Orlando,Fla) and they shot some of the local club matches.... first guy to go supine scared the hell out of me as an RO...but one related the story that his "granny" always carried a High Power under a napkin on her silver serving tray when she served tea..... regards Les Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zak Smith Posted August 25, 2003 Share Posted August 25, 2003 According to the information on fnhipower.com, the frames have been cast since around 1994. Here's what I was referring to with respect to slide changes: http://www.fnhipower.com/modules.php?name=...article&artid=2 Also, the thin spots at the front corners of the mag well, are not quite as thin on the cast receivers. The newer receivers look like they have a small piece missing from the right-rear slide rail, when compared to old receivers. I was told that on the .40 guns this piece would break off after a while, no matter how hard the receiver. But since it didn't effect functioning, the factory simply machines it off during manufacture of all the receivers now! The slide on the Hi-Power got some minor dimensional changes in the early 1990s to improve durability (compare ejection port shapes). During a phone call to the FN factory in 1994, I was told that an improved heat-treatment of the slide was introduced during the Summer or Fall of 1993. The manufacture year of a slide made during the 1990s is indicated by a hexagon with a single digit inside, stamped on the center rail underneath the slide (where the top cartridge in the mag rubs), near the rear. The hexagon is always missing at least one side- the number of missing sides indicates the quarter of the year that the slide was made. After the first quarter, the hexagon is stamped along the edge of the sear-lever cutout in the slide, to create more "missing" sides. Thus, a hexagon stamped in the fourth quarter may be pretty hard to find because most of it is over the edge of the sear-lever cutout, in order to give the effect of 4 "missing" sides on the hex. Any slide made in the 1990s with a digit of "4" or higher inside the hex should be the new heat-treatment. So should one with a "3", if it has four sides missing. A gunsmith who has Rockwell-tested some slides told me that the "old" slides typically test around 20, the new ones run around 40. There is no source listed for this information, though. -z Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patrick Sweeney Posted August 26, 2003 Author Share Posted August 26, 2003 Dan was a great shooter and a great guy. He built the best guns, period, and would build any comp you wanted. However, if you asked, he'd build the most effective he knew, and he had a windowsill full of prototypes he'd built and tried. He started the straight trigger, he was building coned comps for years before I ever heard anyone else making one, and when he got his first Super he did not design stages to take advantage of the capacity. Like our host, he got started in PPC, so head shots didn't scare him at all. Woe to the newbie course designer who thought he could close the gap by making shots tight or far, and take away Dan's speed advantage. He would have been awesome with a hi-cap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MBaneACP Posted August 27, 2003 Share Posted August 27, 2003 I've got two BHPs, a .40 from Wayne Novak and a 9mm from C&S. I shoot the 9 in IDPA ESP (good enough to win ESP locally) and occasionally, when I'm looking for self-abuse, the .40 in L-10. Yeah, the slide does chew away at the inside of my strong hand thumb...there's sort of a permanent line there now. Still, I love the guns to death. They carry well, shoot well, are fiercely accurate and fit my hands perfectly. I once blew one up (a GP competition model) trying to make major in 9mm. Cracked the slde neat as you please. I was thinking recently about taking another run at it, since a glut of 17 and 20 round mags from SA and Argentina just hit the market and my friends tell me they actually work pretty good. My idea was take a .40, which has an extra locking lug and more mass in the slide, and have Bar-Sto do a 9mm barrel for it (which Irv Stone says they actually get a lot of requests for). I then (wisely perhaps) decided that I have too much on my plate as it is. My favorite BHP match story, from the ancient days Patrick is waxing poetic about, was a match where one stage was shot out of the back of a moving pick-up truck, with eight of the old option targets hidden throughout the underbrush around a u-shaped circuit. I recall getting off 60+ rounds from my BHP, coming close to winning the stage outright. What the heck. Bullets are cheap. I'm going to use the 9 at the IDPA Nationals, where we'll be filming an episode of my show titled "I'm With Walt." Enough said. MB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patrick Sweeney Posted August 28, 2003 Author Share Posted August 28, 2003 Ah yes, the old "hail of bullets" approach. It was quite popular in the old days. (You youngsters don't know how good it is today.) I lost a rifle pin match in 1980-81 or so to the H-O-B. The format was: run downrange and set 15 pins on posts. Then run back, load your rifle and knock them down. I posted a damn decent time with my match-conditioned Garand, 16 shots for 15 pins. The winner used a Universal Carbine, wire stock, 4x cheapo scope on a side mount and 45 rounds. 9mm BHP shooters back then could do much the same, ensuring a high percentage of A hits. Why do you think we came up with no-shoots? A 9mm Major built on a BHP 40 slide and frame sounds interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Les Snyder Posted August 28, 2003 Share Posted August 28, 2003 Michael B... the negative to the "coonskin" hat pictue is around and may be purchased for an undisclosed amount of money... Les Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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