Very interesting "Borchardt"
 

Greeetings,
Take a look at this new item added to the Cherry gun site. Ron, you should enjoy this.

Mike
http://www.cherrys.com/handguns.htm

http://www.cherrys.com/stokpics/23023bro_4.jpg

I do enjoy it! I have been in constant contact with the owner and have done considerable research regarding this Borchardt. It is indeed an historical piece and the only thing wrong with it is that it is about ten times more than I can afford (maybe a little more than ten times :)). It is a wonderful piece. If you have John Walter's book "The Luger Book" look on pages 71 and 72.

Wow! Is this the gun that was left on FN conference room table by Borchardt himself?

I can accumulate money for it in the next 20 years, I have time. Will the gun wait for me.....

====

Why would a "white" gun has a few blued parts?

Alvin,
That is the very gun. FN eventually gave the gun to John Browning and it has been in the family ever since.
I have no idea why the breech block and rear toggle are blued...could be they are replacements for damaged parts since this was a demonstration gun. Just guessing. The flat covers on the rear of the gun are spring steel that are fire blued/hardened so they originally would not have been in the white.

This one sounds having clear provenance.

Back a while ago, I saw the pictures of a Broomhandle Small Ring prototype (a "1912" like gun) in another forum. The gun was known even from Belford days (1960s). No gun blue, no serial number either. I was very surprised to hear it has some blue inside the frame (!!) Owner was not happy when I raised question mark, so I stopped there.

Looks like no theory works except provenance in the prototype world.

Actually, this is not a prototype gun. It is one of the earliest known production pieces. An earlier production piece, #19, was sold at auction to Doug Smith not too long ago. I had to eat a lot of crow on that one, because up until that time I was of the mistaken impression that the production pieces were numbered sequentially after the prototype and pre-production pieces so I thought #19 should have been a pre-production model. Not so. Prototype, pre-production and production all had their own serial number sequence (in the case of the prototypes there really was no sequence as one is numbered 00 and others have no serial number). Never too old to learn I guess and never too proud to admit a mistake.

Thanks Ron!

Hello Ron. Long time since our last msg.
Do you have anything more to add about the borchardt pre-production/prototypes gun? Since our last conversation, did you find another pre production gun? Regards.

(Emiliano from Brazil)