SA-35 (Springfield High Power)

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SA-35 (Springfield High Power)

Post by Archer »

https://www.americanrifleman.org/conten ... R4Ck8VXVV8

I want one of these, note WANT not NEED, but they will NEVER be legal in the Peoples Communist Collective of California.

I do think Springfield should have made the thumb safety ambi, they wouldn't have had to go with the high shelf on the RHS of the gun. The grips look pretty close to Craig Spiegel's which were about the best 20 years ago when I got my first BHP. Leaving the magazine safety off and making it hollow point friendly with good sights is the right way to go. I'd have been ok with another tenth inch of beavertail but relieving the hammer a bit isn't a bad thing. I can't remember really getting bit with one but I've known people to complain of it.

Here are the reasons I don't NEED the SA-35:
Bought this one around 2000 or 2001 when FN announced they were going to phase them out
IMG_1368.JPG
Was given this one for helping a friend clean his entire gun collection before he sold it off. It needed a little TLC as someone had abused it and swapped parts with some crappy aftermarket items that were not fitted properly. I replaced the bright chrome slide stop with a Pachmyar, replaced the unsafe bright chrome thumb safety with a factory MKIII ambi safety, replaced the sear and hammer with a matched set from Cylinder and Slide, new Wolf Springs throughout and installed a set of Herrett grips. It still has rather small sights that somebody chromed, probably when the rest of the gun was done, but otherwise it's a heck of a shooter. The mag safety was missing when I got it and I have NOT replaced it.
IMG_2758.JPG
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Re: SA-35 (Springfield High Power)

Post by GasGuzzler »

Never owned a Springfield and likely never will. First thing I did when I got my 1911 was take the ambidextrous safety off and replaced it with GI parts. I wouldn't mind having an old one.
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Re: SA-35 (Springfield High Power)

Post by Ohio3Wheels »

BHP was my first center fire handgun. Bought it back in the fall of 1967. I had a set of micro sights installed and it still shoots great.

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Re: SA-35 (Springfield High Power)

Post by Reese-Mo »

Good ol' HP. I had.... a pre-war made, then German marked one, in about 95 percent original shape. It had the extractor thru the slide like a 1911 and German proof/Swastika on the right side of the frame and slide, but not on the barrel. The barrel was serial numbered, and so was the slide - inside.

Had a nice run-of-the mill HP, some 70's production gun that I ended up putting Millett front sight on, and modifying the notch on the rear sight to work with it. A nice shootin' gun.

And finally, I got a Cassi, Kalispell MT imported long slide HP, which had a phenomenal trigger and redesigned magazine safety. The mag safety was a sort of teeter/tooter affair and no parts dragged on anything like the standard mag-safety does. The rear sights were cheezy but functional stamped sheet metal, not the ladder sight of the the old artillery models.

And the ex got every last one of 'em. :cry:

I think the Springfield ones were made by Tisas in Turkey. Or at least some of them were. FM (
Fabricaciones Militares) in Argentina was producing HPs for the American market too. I had a nice FM FAL/LAR rifle with folding stock. She got that too. And the M1a and... and... oh well, she didn't get my soul!
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Re: SA-35 (Springfield High Power)

Post by HarryAlonzo »

Call me a blasphemous infidel, but why all the excitement over a re-introduced Hi-Power? Isn’t the CZ75 an improvement?
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Re: SA-35 (Springfield High Power)

Post by Reese-Mo »

Harry,
In short - Nope!

Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but even with extra girly parts, I'm sure the vast majority of males would prefer females as God designed them. Just something classic about the design.

And so it goes for the Browning(/Saive) designed Grand Puissance.

There is something elegant about the design. So few parts, so simple in design and execution thereof. And there's the ergonomics. The balance of the GP, the feel in the hand... like jazz, if I have to explain it, you wont understand (not you personally, but "yous" -everyone - as they say in NY). The natural point in un-aimed fire. And the ease of service. Its pretty hard to beat.

Is there mystique? I dunno, probably. Aura? I think so. A cult following? Eh... only if you attend weekly meetings of GP-Anonymous.....

Don't get me wrong, I was real real close to getting the CZ75 compact, but.... a little bird said to hold off, so I did.
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Re: SA-35 (Springfield High Power)

Post by Reese-Mo »

Harry,
In short - Nope!

Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but even if we came up with some extra girly parts, I'm sure the vast majority of males would prefer females as God designed them. Just something classic about the design.

And so it goes for the Browning(/Saive) designed Grand Puissance.

There is something elegant about the design. So few parts, so simple in design and execution thereof. And there's the ergonomics. The balance of the GP, the feel in the hand... like jazz, if I have to explain it, you wont understand (not you personally, but "yous" -everyone - as they say in NY). The natural point in un-aimed fire. And the ease of service. Its pretty hard to beat.

Is there mystique? I dunno, probably. Aura? I think so. A cult following? Eh... only if you attend weekly meetings of GP-Anonymous.....

Don't get me wrong, I was real real close to getting the CZ75 compact, but.... a little bird said to hold off, so I did.

I see the Springfield has the all important (according to American Rifleman) "beveled magazine well". Jeeze-Leweez, look at the magazine shape for pete's sake.
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Re: SA-35 (Springfield High Power)

Post by Archer »

"Isn't the CZ-75 an improvement?"

IMO it isn't a case of improvement. It is different. They are both good guns.
I waffle back and forth between the CZ-75 and the Browning HP designs as my favorite 9mm firearms. The Sig P228 probably comes in number 3. The BHP is a simpler, more slim, lighter weight design. The CZ fits my hand very well, shoots very well but the internal design has a higher part count, more small parts, mousetrap springs and the trigger stirrup can drag on the magazine body especially in dirty, sandy, gritty conditions.

The BHP was the first 9mm I ever shot and it was almost the last. A friend of mine kept talking up his BHP when I was in college. I had a 1911 Colt with U.S. Army markings around the half million serial mark. When we went to the range my 1911 functioned flawlessly. His BHP would not run three rounds in succession without stuttering. Come to find out there were two causes behind the issues. 1) Range reloads. He bought ammo at the range and picked up the cheap 'Marksman' labeled reloads the range was selling. That ammo was typical for the time consisting of the smallest amount of bullseye powder possible and a copper plated soft lead bullet. It was not unusual for the ammo to lack the power to actuate a gun in perfect condition. 2) He'd pulled the gun out of his gunsafe after having put it up there some time earlier slathered in Rig for long term protection. Rig was a pretty heavy grease. It wasn't quite like trying to fire a firearm slathered in cosmoline but it was thick enough to gum up the action of the gun. Later on another friend had a Sig P228 and let me shoot it and it was both accurate and flawless and imparted a respect for the 9mm that I had lacked up until that time. When my friend decided to sell his P228 years later I bought it. I bought my first 9mm because many of the guys I was working with were intimidated by the 1911 .45 and I figured I'd try them on the 9mm. I found that not only could they generally not shoot the 1911, the CZ-75 or the BHP MKIII they couldn't shoot the Ruger MKII Government with any accuracy or consistency either.

I don't quite recall right now which was my first purchased 9mm. I got the BHP and the CZ-75 pretty close to the same time. Might have got the CZ-75 first. A friend had one of the earlier models with the spur hammer and the rounded trigger guard. It had a few blemishes in the finish. He wanted more for it than I wanted to pay. I purchased a brand new CZ-75B along with a new Kadet conversion kit through my dealer for what he wanted for the pre-B gun. At the time the pre-Bs were considered preferable but not premium and the new guns were going for less than half what they typically run now and the Kadet kit was not expensive and we had no problems finding one. As the CZs have become more respected the prices have gone up and the Kadet kits have gotten hard to find and also more expensive.

I have two friends with the CZ-75 compacts and another who has a son with one. They all really like them. I have to say that I'm partial to the full sized gun. I may some time get a compact but then again I might just get another full size instead.
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Re: SA-35 (Springfield High Power)

Post by Archer »

Reese-Mo,
I was unaware of the previous Springfield Armory High Power. When I looked it up I found it was reported to be limited to a few prototypes made from %@*&$ parts.
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Re: SA-35 (Springfield High Power)

Post by Archer »

A few more general BHP history notes gleaned from several websites:

The Browning High power was adopted by the military forces for over 50 countries. It was adopted by police and law enforcement in at least some 93 countries. The gun has been licensed and unauthorized copies have been made all over the world. The design is one of the longest lasting nearly continuous production pistols out there for a reason.

Historically the BHP was probably the absolute best 9mm of WWII. The guns were used on every front and often by both sides. The Germans took over the factory and produced some 65K pistols for their own use without the magazine safeties. Canadian production was also lacking the mag safety quite often. The MKIII versions of the gun were stronger and fixed the issue some of the earlier guns had feeding hollow point ammunition. The Walther P-38/P-1 guns were ALWAYS ammo sensitive. NOT merely talking HP self defense ammo but extremely sensitive to both the over all length, maybe power level and possibly ogive shape of FMJ/Ball ammo. I have had two of the late model P-1s at the range with as many brands and types of ammo on hand as the two owners could get their hands on (and that includes about 20 years of buying ammo in my case) and we found that the only factory ammo we could count on them eating without hiccups was Winchester ball. Every other brand we tried (Federal, Remington, Fiocchi, PMC, S&B, CCI, etc.) gave us the craziest feed jams. Apparently the gun was extremely sensitive to how the round was seated in the magazine and if there was any 'slop' for the round to bounce around in the mag under recoil it was likely to come out wrong.

I am not particularly a plastic firearm fan but if you want a out of the box reliable in all conditions pistol it is very hard to beat a Glock 17 or Glock 19 once you change out the silly posterior plastic sights they've gone to.
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