Second B Block Phosphate Radom

Congratulations on a complete and very interesting pistol! I have a very late war VIS mag that should be parkerized but doesn't appear to have had any finish whatsoever. The only stamping is a letter or number on the top edge of the toe.

ugafx4 said:

Mike, kind of interesting..... over on the luger forum Visniewski posted a pistol he just picked up. Second B, 7670 so 6 digits off. It is blued and has an early takedown lever. I guess who knows if these were even made consecutively?

Click to expand...

Everything I have learned recently is pretty conclusive that the late guns were not produced consecutively by serial numbers. One member posted two guns that had sequential serial numbers and one was a two lever gun and one was a three lever gun.

Radom provided "kits" westward and when and how they were completed apparently varied greatly late in the war. Not to mention SDP was trying to produce all the gun parts, with highly varying degree of success, so complete guns could untimately be assembled without Radom parts.

That is why Farb's gun could have been made later in the war than a second K gun. Hence the later slide stop and blue small parts. I have another second B with mostly phosphate parts but a serrated slide stop. Seems like most of the rules were tossed once Radom was evacuated and production, many pistols from Radom produced and evacuated "kits", it is really hard to nail down exactly what happened.

My table mate at SOS has some of the most odd and rare VIS examples I know of. How about bnz in both blue and phosphate examples, missing slide serrations, blank slides, second K blocks in blue and Phosphate, second C blocks in phosphate and many other rare examples. Many of these have been displayed in Tula and Greenville, SC. His choice was not to participate in the York undertaking.

This is not to mention Browning P35s serial number 1, 2, 3, prototypes, etc..

I will try to bring him to the K98k get together.

On grips in general, the press logo grips are about ten times harder to find than the later grooved grips in my experience.

Read Jan Still's forum on these, Bob has a Z block sequential numbers with 2 and 3 levers with different grips. Very complex guns and I am skeptical of anyone who knows all on these. There is no such thing as knowing all on these IMO. We still have unanswered questions.

Bring some to the K98 forum meeting at SOS. Bob is coming, per my recommendation and hopefully Charlie. These are two to the best guys on these in the US.

These are as interesting, or more so, than K98ks IMO but I am biased.

Very nice pistol. Nice find!

Nice lighting today for some phosphate goodness.

Cool photo. Nice trio.

I made a few adjustments to your photos contrast.

Yea thanks a ton, I need to get better editing software. Tad overexposed. I'll try and fix the BCD photos.

* Enjoyed the forum get together. Great to meet new friends!!
* Here are a couple of Pics of the consecutive "Z" Radoms I brought for show/tell.
Enjoy,
Bob

Thank you Bob for showing those amazing examples of late war production. Two sequential numbers but two completely different pistols is very informative of war era production. Great to see you again.