WOW! Looks like my "genuine Kerensky" 1917 date Nagant--right down to the bakelite grips.
I'd love to find a set of the finely-checkered walnut grips as well, Monkey man!
Seems most of what has come upon our shores here in the Western Hemisphere in recent years has either had the late-war Bakelite panels...or what I like to call the "Karelian Birch" grips with their incredibly coarse checkering...
(Which to me look even WORSE than the bakelites)
The reliance of several nations (Tsarist Russia, the French 2nd Republic, Imperial Japan, Austria-Hungary, among others) on .32 calibre service handguns seems almost absurd to those of us living either Stateside, or in the former British Empire
(where it was .455's or .45 Colt, thank you very much!
)
But SOME of the service rounds preceeding the .32 calibres were rather mediocre to poor performers (11mm French Revolver, 9mm Japanese rimmed)
And in the cases of Russia and Austria--a combination of servicemen not really being able to get qualifying scores on a regular enough basis, combined with gripes about the "unneccesary bulk" of the Russian Model S&W's or the Model 1870 Rast & Gasser in 11mm Long (see preceeding picture with red background) ... led to adoption of cartridges one would ordinarily associate with pocket revolvers and the sort of stuff one's GF would have in her nightstand drawer
(I live in AZ. Numerous single women with handguns. IME, usually chambered in something smaller than 9x19 or .357, half the time .22's or .25's -- Though one GF of mine some years back had a .44 Special!)
If I were one of my great-uncles or such from Dad's side of the family back in WW1, methinks I would have gotten one of the "obsolescent" Model 1870 revolvers...
But since I'm re-enacting, much easier to get blanks to fit the oddly-gripped woefully underpowered Model 1898
---> Monkey man: Since you're in Barbados, and not reloading for your 1895 Nagant--one of my associates here in AZ has had fairly good luck with the Aguila brand .32 S&W Long in his revolver of identical make to ours. Food for thought so as not to exhaust supplies of the Fiocchi!
(I have a friend 2 towns over that ran me off a quantity of .32-20 full length resized and loaded to Nagant revolver specs...
)
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