I recently picked up a surplus 7.62 X 25mm Yugoslavian tokarev from my local gun store. The price was very resonable and it is in pretty good condition. As you tokarev owners know the grips on these things are less than perfect. I have large hands so the thickness of the panels is not really a problem, they do make a very thin gun fatter but the worst is the profile. The stock grips feel like I am holding on to a 2 x 4. The pictures below are of the first set of prototype grips. I experimented with neodymium magnets to hold the the panels on. I like the look with no hardware showing but the magnets are too small to hold the grips on as securely as I would like. They don't rattle and they wouldn't just fall off but I can knock them off if I try hard enough. I'll have something closer to factory hardware fabricated for my production grips.
These panels cover about the same amount of the frame as the factory grips. I have been reading and it looks like the import safety ruins the trigger pull on some guns. Mine seems to be fine but lots of people remove the safety for shooting. I am planning on making some extended panels that will cover the safety hole in the frame. It's a little ugly to have an open hole in the frame and dust could get on the sear and hammer that is right there.
I would be very interested to hear from M57 owners about their experiences with these guns. I haven't had a chance to take mine to the range but it seems like a very well made gun. I would also appreciate any feed back on what people would like as far as grips goes.
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| M57 Tokarev with stock grips. |
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| Prototype birdseye maple M57. |
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| The other side. |
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| Thickness and profile of prototype vs stock M57 grips. |
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Stock hardware and prototype magnet hardware. The magnets
are just not quite strong enough. |
I have two yugo tokarevs and I like them a lot. Trigger pull is heavy, but the accuracy is still good and I shot about 200 rounds of 1950's polish surplus ammo without any hickups...Grips are horrible though...Back in former Yugoslavia, where I am from people make very good wooden and rubber grips for them....Hopefully next year I will get few whenever I go for a visit....If you need any more info, I can send you some pics from custom made grips...
ReplyDeleteI would like to see these made with some checkering on them or maybe even a wrap around type with finger grooves.
ReplyDeleteTim,
ReplyDeleteI bought a very fine one of these Yugo tokarevs back when they were still available, and now I wish I would have bought a few more at the price I paid.
Honestly, I didn't buy it for it's collector value... I bought it because it was inexpensive and would thought it would be fun to plink with. After some time with it - call me strange but I really like it, and it's been growing on me. So far I've got about 500 rounds through it... and it's not had a hard malf yet. It does shoot high, though.
As far as the safety goes-
I did have some issues with it, initially and have considered removing it entirely. Something like that I wouldn't trust anyway. If it were my go-to gun FYI I'd ditch that safety- and carry in condition 3. Learn to rack the slide when presenting ala mosssad draw.
And, most importantly is to get a good holster built specifically for it.
Makes a world of difference.
Regards,
T-
will these grips fit an M70 which is the 9MM version of the type 57?
ReplyDeleteDave,
DeleteIt looks like there are a couple kinds of M70s made by Zastava. Could you send me a picture of your gun?
timperkes2@gmail.com
Tim
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Tim!
ReplyDeleteThank you kindly for the prototype photographs you have here. They will be useful in my attempt to make grips for my Zastava M70A (made in 2015) out of G10. Best,
Cala Caroja
calacaroja(at)gmail.com
Century has a new batch of Zastava M70A's. Get busy on the thin grips!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up.
ReplyDelete