Michael Zeleny: Larvatus Prodeo
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larvatus prodeo - sig p210 http://larvatus.livejournal.com/33732.html larvatus Log out 0 1997 You are viewing your journal Sea Home Post to journal Friends Page Account View Recent Comments Manage Entries Calendar FAQ larvatus prodeo - sig p210 [Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info] July 1st, 2005 07:34 pm [Link] sig p210 1 of 19 30 Jan 2012 9:49 PM larvatus prodeo - sig p210 http://larvatus.livejournal.com/33732.html SIG: Schweizerische Industrie-Gesellschaft 2 of 19 30 Jan 2012 9:49 PM larvatus prodeo - sig p210 http://larvatus.livejournal.com/33732.html The SIG P210 pistol was created in 1947 by Schweizerische Industrie-Gesellschaft, also known by the acronym SIG. Founded in 1853 as a train car manufacturing plant in Neuhausen am Rheinfall by Friedrich Peyer, Conrad Neher, and Heinrich Moser, SIG started making small arms in 1860. Three years later, master locksmith Johann Ulrich Hämmerli established his company in Lenzburg to fulfill the Swiss army order for rifle barrel manufacture. Serving the Swiss passion for bullseye shooting, Hämmerli became a world-class maker of target firearms for 50-meter pistol and 300-meter rifle competition. In 1921 Ulrich’s son Rudolf took over the family business. After Rudolf’s death in 1947, Hämmerli was sold and converted into a joint stock company. Meanwhile, SIG fulfilled numerous Swiss government and private orders for military small arms and their commercial counterparts. Its designs for the delayed blowback Sturmgewehre 57 and gas-operated Sturmgewehre 90 were adopted as Swiss military rifles. Their commercial derivatives in the SIG 510 and 550 series are regarded as the finest weapons of their type ever made. As its firearms business expanded, SIG took over Hämmerli in 1973. Between 1973 and 1979, they jointly developed various products. Their flagship model was the service-grade SIG P210, a locked-breech single action semiautomatic pistol that refined the classic Browning pattern in its successive embodiments in the U.S. M1911, Soviet TT-1930, Belgian GP35, and French 1935 pistol designs. The P240, a version the P210 adapted to formal target shooting disciplines, was issued in three user-interchangeable calibers, .38 S&W wadcutter, .32 S&W Long, and .22 Long Rifle. The SIG-Hämmerli product line also included a family of rimfire target handguns such as semiautomatic 208, 211, 212, 214, and 215 pistols developed on the basis of the Walter Olympia design, along with single shot Free Pistol 150, 160, and 162. In the early Seventies, SIG designed and developed a pistol that could be easily and cheaply mass produced with modern technology. In order to save on the production costs, they entered into collaboration with the German firm of J.P. Sauer & Son. Reestablished in Eckernfoerde in the state of Schleswig-Holstein near the Danish border, from its original location in Suhl in Thuringia, and specializing in sporting rifles and shotguns, Sauer made no sidearms since the end of World War II until the first of the SIG-Sauer pistols, the P220. Developed for the armed forces and adopted in 1975 by the Swiss army and the Japanese self defense forces, the P220 was made to measure up against the SIG P210 at 25 meters. It was not meant to do so at the longer ranges, where the P210 excels. The P220 and its Sauer-made successors have been deemed good enough for government work by numerous agencies around the world, while the P210 persisted as a civilian luxury. In 1997, the firearms division of SIG was restructured and renamed SIG Arms Hämmerli AG. It was downsized in 2000, upon the expiration of government contracts for the manufacture of the Swiss assault rifle, when SIG transformed its firearm production facilities into a distribution center. On 30 November 2000 the corporate parent SIG divested itself of SIG Arms. Since then, SIG has rebranded itself as an industrial holding company best known for its beverage packaging products. Two German investors, Michael Lüke and Thomas Ortmeier, purchased the arms section of SIG Neuhausen. This sale did not include the trademark thitherto applied to the SIG firearms. In its wake, Hämmerli reacquired a measure of independence, reverting to their original name, Hämmerli AG. In July of 2003 it relocated to Neuhausen and merged with the arms manufacture operated by Lüke and Ortmeier, then known as SAN Swiss Arms AG. Both companies now have the same owners and managing director, but claim to operate autonomously. Hämmerli continues to collaborate with Sauer, e.g. by supplying its aluminum stock supporting the Sauer barreled action of the 205 System. SIGARMS, Inc. began in 1985 in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, as the U.S importer of SIG and SIG-Sauer handguns, including the SIG P210, the SIG-Sauer P220, and the pocket pistol, the SIG-Sauer P230. Two years later, SIGARMS moved to Herndon, Virginia, and introduced the SIG-Sauer P225 in 9mm, followed by the P226 and P228 in 9mm. By 1990, SIGARMS began stateside manufacture of handgun components, In 1992 it moved to its present location in Exeter, New Hampshire, and began the production of the P229 in .40 S&W in 1992. As of 2005, none of 3 of 19 30 Jan 2012 9:49 PM larvatus prodeo - sig p210 http://larvatus.livejournal.com/33732.html the firearms it imports or manufactures bears the distinctive oval trademark of SIG. Their connection with Schweizerische Industrie-Gesellschaft is by now merely historical. Excellence in mechanical engineering often comes through the tedium of refining an invention of a great pioneer. As proven by their divestment from gunmaking, SIG never made a lasting commitment to the art. Their products responded to the profit motive in the service of military procurement. But their accomplishment speaks for itself. John Moses Browning John Moses Browning is credited with some of the most significant inventions in small arms. Prominent among them is the tilting barrel short recoil breech lock of the M1911, arguably the best means of retarding the cycling of a self-loading action of sidearms chambered for high pressure ammunition. The P210 is built around the same action. It differs from the M1911 in details that take its design to a logical conclusion. Browning was born on January 23, 1855. He began his career as a gunmaker in 1879 by designing and manufacturing a breech loading single shot rifle in a company started jointly with his brothers in their native Ogden, Utah shortly after the death of their father. In 1883, Winchester Repeating Arms Company purchased the rights for its production. Browning’s subsequent collaborations with Winchester included the first successful repeating shotgun, the lever action Model 1887; the popular .22 caliber pump action rifle, Model 1890; the exposed hammer pump action shotgun, Model 1897, equally capable of harvesting game birds in the field and sweeping up the battlefield as the “trench broom”; the first repeater rifle to accommodate smokeless powder cartridges fed from a tubular magazine, the lever action Model 1894; and Teddy Roosevelt’s “big medicine”, and another lever action rifle equipped with a box magazine designed for the .405 Winchester Center Fire (WCF) cartridge loaded with jacketed spitzer bullets, the Model 1895. These 4 of 19 30 Jan 2012 9:49 PM larvatus prodeo - sig p210 http://larvatus.livejournal.com/33732.html manually operated actions defined the benchmarks for lever and pump operated long guns, much as the contemporaneous designs produced between 1884 and 1898 in Germany by Peter Paul Mauser continue to define the state of the art for the manual turnbolt rifle action. Whereas metallic centerfire cartridges had been introduced in 1873 with the 44-40 Winchester, their original loadings were ill suited for repeating firearms because of fouling produced by black powder. This changed in 1886, when French chemical engineer Paul Vieille invented smokeless powder that was safer, as well as faster- and cleaner-burning. Responding to this innovation, Browning sought to perfect the self-loading action in small arms. His association with Winchester’s competitor Colt Firearms led to the production of low-powered semiautomatic pistols of his design, chambered mainly in the modestly powered caliber .32 ACP, an abbreviation standing for Automatic Colt Pistol, and operating on the blowback principle. Browning’s collaboration with Colt also gave rise to the Model 1895 machine gun nicknamed the “potato digger” for its action lever kicking up ground dirt in operation, the remarkably successful gas-operated Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) of 1917, and a number of semiautomatic pistols. On April 20, 1897 Browning received a patent for a self-loading short recoil-operated automatic pistol with a locked breech. Colt and Browning used this patent as the basis for the 1900 series pistols, chambered in the new caliber .38 ACP. Their design incorporated the breech block of the pistol into a slide that contained its barrel. The pistol’s barrel was locked to the slide in battery, by means of ribs cut in the barrel and fitting into the matching grooves cut into the slide. Two swinging toggle links attached to the front and rear of the barrel and pinned to the frame caused the barrel to drop free of the slide, as they moved rearwards under recoil. This initial motion disengaged the action lock, freeing the breech to open for ejecting the spent casing of the fired round. The next round would then be pushed upwards out of the detachable box magazine by the spring acting on the magazine follower, to slip under the spring tensioned extractor hook on its way to ride the loading ramp into the chamber of the barrel, propelled by the combustion energy stored in the recoil spring.