Coming Soon...Wilson ADP (Advanced Design Pistol) in 9mm

It is smaller than the Springfield EMP

And smaller than an S&W J-frame

And pretty darn accurate from 21 feet

Colt Viper .38 Special and Springfield EMP Ammo Alert

Before I review the Colt Viper I want to offer a quick ammo alert to anyone who has purchased a Springfield EMP 9mm pistol. As you know from my earlier reviews I love this little pistol however, over the last couple of sessions it developed a problem of not firing when the trigger was pulled. During these sessions I was using Remington 115 gr. FMJ, Mag Tech 115 gr. FMJ and Sellier & Bellot in 115 and 124 gr. FMJ ammo. After cleaning it I turned it over the Mike Dudley the Gunsmith at the Impact Guns range. Mike gave it the once over and tweaked the springs and reported that he had put several magazines through the pistol with no misfires. However the problem prevailed and I brought it right back into Mike’s workroom. I went back to shooting my other handguns and a few minutes later Mike came into the range with the pistol and stated that there was a sliver of brass jammed into the firing pin hole. He had cleaned it out and reassembled the pistol. I loaded the magazine with the Sellier & Bellot 9mm ammo and fired the first round which slammed dead center into the target at 7 yards. However the next round only responded with a disappointing “click”. I ejected the round and gave it to Mike to examine and pulled the trigger again, “click” and “click” and “click”. I locked the slide back, dumped the magazine and turned the pistol over to Mike for his inspection. Another sliver of brass was clogging the firing pin hole. To make a long story short, the brass primers on the Sellier & Bellot ammo is so soft that the Springfield’s firing pin was puncturing it and ripping a sliver out. Mike explained that as the EMP was redesigned for the 9mm they shortened everything; in fact Springfield talks in their advertising about the “short action” they built for this pistol. As the firing pin and the rest of the action has been shortened they needed to put a correspondingly short but high tension spring in the action so that the firing pin could strike the primer with another force to make it fire. After cleaning the brass sliver out of the firing pin hole we fired 16 rounds of Winchester white box and 50 rounds of CCI Lawman 115 grain FMJ ammo with absolutely no problem---Whew! What a relief. I am very thankful that I am shooting at a range which has not only a competent gunsmith, but one who takes pride in his work and has a both a sense of curiosity and a keen interest in making them work. I am afraid that there are gunsmiths out there who would have said "That's all I can do, send it back to the factory". Fortunately Mike isn't one of those.
Sellier & Bellot ammo is produced in Czechoslovakia (home of the fantastic CZ 75 line of firearms) and has recently turned up in great quantities at both Cabelas and Impact guns. The price of ammo has recently risen in this area to $8.99 for a box of 9mm. The Sellier & Bellot is priced one buck less so I picked up several boxes. When I was firing it along with the Remington and Mag Tech ammo I shot the Sellier & Bellot first. Once the piece of brass primer was clogging the firing pin hole the failures to launch occurred with all of the other ammo. In fairness, I put 250 rounds of the Sellier & Bellot through my EAA Witness Match Elite with no problem. It is just not a good choice for the EMP or probably any other ultra-compact pistol with an enhanced short action.

(Round on the left is a CCI Lawman 115 grain FMJ cartridge. Round on the right is the Sellier & Bellot 9mm cartridge. Sellier and Bellot puts a red coating on the primer of all of their handgun ammunition. I am uncertain why they do this, but I can tell you that after shooting I am cleaning red paint off the face of the chamber.)

Colt Viper
The Viper is a handy lightweight revolver produced on Colt’s small/medium “D” frame. This is the same frame size as their legendary Detective Special snubnose .38 revolver. This specimen came, once again, from Cliff (of Cliff’s Guns, Safes, and Reloading) in Boise. This firearm was a part of an auction lot of police confiscations that Cliff procured at a Dealer’s Gun Show. This one is a minty example in 98% condition or better. Quite frankly there was no indication that the revolver had ever been fired. I am finding some conflicting information about the Viper dates of manufacture. The Blue Book of Gun Values states that it was only manufactured in 1977 however Krause Publications “Pistols of the World” says it was manufactured from 1977 to 1984. Regardless of whoever is correct, the Viper was not manufactured in great quantities. While the Viper was not a popular choice at the time, it was produced at a time when Colt was making very fine revolvers and the quality shows on this piece. The lock work is exact, precise, and very tight, the bluing is a deep, mirror finish and the total revolver fits my hand like a glove. The Viper was a reduced weight revolver employing a carbon steel cylinder and barrel mounted to an aluminum frame.
Although I don’t know exactly what caused the demise of the Viper I can make an educated guess at a few of the contributing factors:

1. In 1977 revolvers ruled the handgun roost. If you were a first time handgun buyer you probably left the gun shop with a revolver rather than a semi-automatic pistol. In those days semi-auto pistols were disdained by quite a few people as being inaccurate and unreliable. Although this should have worked in favor of the Viper it probably did not as the revolver rage at this time was for heavy framed stainless steel models not carbon steel finished in blue.
2. The other factor working against the Viper was probably the caliber. The preferred revolver caliber in 1977 to 1984 was the venerable .357 magnum. Not many people actually carried .357 magnum cartridges in their .357 magnum revolvers. The most commonly carried cartridge for your Smith & Wesson model 66 was the .38 Special +P 125 grain semi-jacketed hollowpoint. Police departments fed these rounds into their 66’s by the millions and whatever the police use is usually very popular with the general public. Unfortunately for the Viper, the folks at Colt were not keen on the use of +P ammo in their aluminum framed revolvers.

Fast forward to today when most states offer concealed carry rights and a lightweight revolver is considered a pretty handy tool. This is confirmed by the number of feather weight scandium/titanium revolvers in the Smith & Wesson line-up.

(24 rounds of Mag Tech 158 grain lead round nose ammuniton were fired at 7 yards)

The Viper is still pretty desirable when compared to the scandium revolvers currently catalogued by S&W today. The Viper is a small/medium framed handgun with a four-inch barrel. The four inch steel tube provides a longer sight radius and better recoil control over its 1.78 inch scandium competition built on Smith & Wesson’s small “J” frame. Smith does not make any lightweight medium “K” frame revolvers. The next size up is the medium-large “L” frame and, while they were able to squeeze a 7th round into the “L” frame’s cylinder it makes the “L” frame more difficult to conceal. The diameter of S&W’s “L” frame’s cylinder is 1.57 inches versus the 1.25 inches of the Colt “D” frame.
So what are the drawbacks to the Viper? First and foremost it is the restriction against +P ammo. Nonetheless, a well placed .38 Special 158 grain hollowpoint at the short distances of most civilian armed encounters is hardly anything to sneeze at.

(50 rounds of Sellier & Bellot 158 grain FMJ ammo were fired at 7 yards.)

The second consideration is the sights. The Viper sports fixed sights both front and rear with the front sight being of the very low ramped variety. While far from being target sights they are functional for its intended purpose as a short range defensive weapon.

(50 rounds of Mag Tech 158 grain LRN ammo fired at 7 yards)

End Result? It is a lightweight, fairly small revolver in a good caliber with better than reasonable accuracy. What’s not to like?

Retired FBI Agent’s Smith & Wesson Model 1076 10mm Pistol

Today we review a S&W Model 1076 10mm pistol. Cliff, who you have probably come to realize, is one of the local Boise gun dealers and consistently comes up with unusual firearms. Many of these have been family owned firearms and are being sold to raise cash or are estate weapons sold after the owner passes on. Cliff seems to do a good business in this realm and it is undoubtedly due to his service and fair business practices. Whether Cliff is buying the firearm outright or putting it up on consignment you always get a fair deal. I will miss Cliff dearly when we leave Boise in June…my wife will probably be very happy.
This used model 1076 falls into the estate category. As Cliff tells it, this was the service pistol of an FBI agent. When the FBI discontinued the use of the 10mm handguns agents were given the option of acquiring them as a personal purchase, as was done by this agent. Upon his retirement from the Bureau, the agent’s wife sent the pistol to Smith & Wesson to be engraved and fitted with wooden stocks. Although there was no accompanying documentation to verify this provenance I do not doubt the story. The 10mm line of Smith & Wesson pistols were only manufactured from 1990 to 2001 and the 1076 was discontinued in 1993 so it was not extremely popular, most likely due to its caliber. Therefore it would seem plausible that the retirement of a career FBI agent might merit the expense of the factory engraving.

(Target to the left was placed at 21 feet and fired at with 20 rounds of Cor Bon 165 grain Jacketed Hollowpoint Ammunition.)

The Smith & Wesson 1076 was one of the 10mm pistols in the S&W 1000 line-up, all of which were made of Stainless Steel. First up was the 1006 which had a 5 inch barrel and sported either fixed or adjustable sights. Then came the model 1066 which differed only in the fact that it utilized a 4.25 inch barrel and corresponding shorter slide. The 1076 was produced at the request of the FBI. It was identical to the 1066 except for the decocking lever which the FBI specified needed to be located on the left side of the frame rather than on the slide. This put the lever in a more ergocentric (I’m not sure but I may have just invented a new word) location where it is just in front of the shooter’s thumb. This probably helped the shooter remember to decock the pistol before holstering.

(Targets to the left were placed at 21 feet and shot with CCI Blazer 200 grain Total Metal Jacket Ammunition. The first target was shot with 20 rounds the second with 9.)

The FBI chose the 1076 after the infamous Miami shootout in April of 1986. If you don’t remember the specifics, there are several web sites that do a great job of relaying the incident. This is a good one http://www.thegunzone.com/11april86.html and google can help you find more. In a nutshell, the FBI’s robbery unit was in search of a 2 man team that had been on a grand robbery spree. When they caught up with them on a side street, the robbers were not going to go quietly. While the FBI vastly outnumbered them, the robbers were in possession of superior firepower. The agents were carrying the standard issue, which at the time was the Smith & Wesson model 459 loaded with Winchester Silvertip 115 grain 9mm hollowpoint ammunition. Some of the agents still carried their S&W model 13 revolvers loaded with 158 grain +P hollowpoint ammo. Unfortunately the bad guys were armed with .357 magnum revolvers, a 12 guage shotgun and a Ruger Mini-14 caliber .223 rifle. In the ensuing melee 2 of the agents were killed and the remainder were critically wounded. Post mortem autopsies found that the robbers had been hit many times with some of the shots hitting vital areas that should have ended the fight. The FBI came to the conclusion that they needed a more powerful cartridge.

(Target to the left was placed at 21 feet and shot with 18 rounds of American Eagle 180 grain full metal jacket ammunition.)

The search began and they examined different 9mm and .38 special loads. Many reports have it that they were about to settle on the .45 ACP (a battle proven choice) but decided on the new 10mm cartridge that had been developed by firearms expert and author Colonel Jeff Cooper and the Norma ammunition company. The original load for the 10mm was a 170 grain bullet unleashed at 1358 feet per second.

(Target to the left placed at 21 feet and shot with 20 rounds of Buffalo Bore 180 grain Gold Dot Jacketed Hollowpoint ammunition. The first magazine full of this ammo went to the lower left when the Point of Aim was the dead center. I changed the Point of Aim with the second magazine to the upper right corner of the cross section which provided the slightly low but well centered group. Buffalo Bore produces very hot and vey serious speciality ammunition. This load produced the most recoil of any tested and pretty well replicates the original Norma 10mm load. The Buffalo Bore load leaves the barrel at 1350 feet per second with 782 foot pounds of muzzle energy. Buffalo Bore ammo is favored by handgun hunters and if you go afield into the wilds of Idaho looking to bring down a Ram, Impala, or Chevy Malibu the Buffalo Bore ammunition is just the ticket.)

The Model 1076 is a very good pistol but the FBI’s 10mm program was doomed. First, they found that the original Norma load was very hard on their test pistols which were converted .45 ACP 1911s and many of the agents found the recoil to be uncontrollable. Second was the size of the pistol. This is a large pistol and again, many of the agents with smaller hands had a difficult time handling the handgun during the sustained firing of their qualification process. To measure this I placed to calipers on the 1076 and compared it to my Taurus P1911:
Taurus P1911 versus S&W 1076
Slide Width .93 of an inch versus 1 inch
Grip Width 1.10 inches versus 1.3 inches
Grip Depth 2 inches versus 2.25 inches
The differences may not seem much it is substantial when holding the 1076. Although the FBI could not do much about the size of the pistol they requested that the velocity of the bullet be reduced from 1358 feet per second to 980 FPS thus earning this reduced load the nickname of "FBI Lite".

(Target at the left shot at 21 feet with 20 rounds of Hornady 200 grain JHP/XTP ammunition.)

So What About This Pistol
This specimen is engraved on the sides and top of the frame and it is both very tasteful and expertly executed. The nice thing is that as the 1000 series of pistols were all stainless steel, there is no worry about wearing through the finish had this been a blued or nickel plated handgun. The sights are of the fixed Novak type 3 dot variety. The hammer is bobed and there is nice checkering on the front strap and the front of the trigger guard. The presentation Hogue grips are nice but bulky. I would love to find a set of slimmer, checkered replacement grips that is probably going to be difficult as the 1000 series was discontinued in 2001 and not made in great quantities.

Shooting Impressions

In shooting the 1076 I found no problem with recoil at all even when shooting the smokin' Buffalo Bore ammo. The pistol is obviously well designed to handle the hot 10mm ammunition. Overall the rounds tended to land a little low and to the left but this is more than acceptable combat accuracy.

(Targets to the left were placed at 50 feet with 23 rounds of CCI Blazer 200 grain TMJ ammo being fired at the first target and 30 rounds of 200 grain FMJ American Eagle ammo fired at th second.)