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Tanaka in: `Terribly-Made Gun` Shocker!


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**[Quote of the day: "You can't polish a turd" biggrin.gif - A saying often imparted in the circles in which I work, being as they revolve largely around the evaluation of fitness for re-use of various materials and artifacts.]**

 

Note the use of the singular form in the title there, even though, technically, they have made several naff guns. Their problem in this area is a simple one of evolution; to get to a point of true greatness it is necessary to be, at various points in time before this, rather less than great, in today's terms at least.

So you start off with a turd, and by varying and increasing degrees of refinement you eventually end up with something that is worth polishing biggrin.gif

 

In a recent delivery of guns I had a Tanaka Browning Hi-Power, previously one of my favourite guns of all time (far less so now, and not actually because of the errors that this post is concerned with, as it happens) and although the HiPowers in particular have had a reputation for general naffness for a long time, I allowed myself to get high hopes for this one; how very foolish of me…

 

When you buy a Tanaka gun these days the one thing you can be assured of is that the materials and finish will be of the very highest standard. Now, because the HiPower is an older Tanaka gun but it was never available in Silver (or rather, I’ve never seen it in Silver before and had never noticed it’s presence on retailer sites over the past 4 years or so) I assumed (and we all know that whenever you assume something you make an *albatross* out of U and Me wink.gif ) that this was a revised edition, and would have been made and released according to Tanakas contemporary standards of excellence…

 

######s was it dry.gif

 

It takes a whole full fill of gas (having tried 134a & also Abbey Ultra I find both have the same issues here -) but only delivers about 15 shots, and half the time it actually forcibly ejects the magazine and the slide jams! Not ideal. It has been lubed to buggery and the autonomous-mag-ejection-capability-surprise feature (which is NOT advertised in their marketing campaign, I’m sure, despite it being a somewhat prevalent feature of the gun mad.gif ) has calmed down somewhat, but still it does happen every few mags, and it really p***es me off, I can tell you.

 

The slide release/takedown lever (one and the same thing on the HiPower) is made of very flimsy plastic, and locating and removing it feels like you are lobotomising the very core of the gun itself it is such a painful act. The slide is nicely finished, but the plastic itself is 3rd-grade tat that is very weak and cheap-feeling. Funny, cause the price didn’t feel very `cheap` when I felt the $1380 HKD come out of my account!! It muz b sum kind ov magickk!! dry.gif

 

The Magazine is nice. No complaints there, but it hardly holds any gas, and it ain’t exactly tiny. A 1911 mag is significantly smaller but mine all work rather well in this area, so ther is no excuse!

 

So what I object to is not that a manufacture has a history, and one that might appear mildly chequered in comparison to their performance, and the market in general, in todays terms. No, I object to a lazy re-release of am antiquated product that isn’t up to scratch in comparison to ANY manufacturer’s guns of today, and is rattled out at the same price of their high-end pistols; a price that can only be described as exorbitant.

 

So yeah, avoid this one unitl it finds its way to the bargain bins – something I doubt very much will ever actually happen, of course.

 

-

 

On the plus-side however, the SAA Detachable Cylinder (4.75” barrel) that came at the same time is fantastic, as one would expect from a modern tanaka release rolleyes.gif although the Wa-Shan TW Sawn-Off that also came with it has a dodgy right-hand trigger, just like the one I already had, so its off to the gunsmiths chappies at Ground Zero in a coupla weeks to see what they can do on them for me. Hopefully I’ll have a pair of sawn-offs ready for ultimate backup at the game in 5 weeks time biggrin.gif

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