Showa 15.12 Type 14 Photos

I bought this gun on April 14, 2004 from a friend. It was made in Showa 15.12 (December, 1940) at the Kokubunji Factory of Chuo Kogyo, the successor to the Nambu Rifle Manufacturing Company. Such pistols are often called “Nagoya Nambus”. In front of the serial number they have the symbols of Nagoya Arsenal, under whose supervision they were made, and then the first character of Nambu, the symbol of Chuo Kogyo. It is a very nice looking pistol overall, but it has at least four easily visible problems. Three can be seen from this side. Can you spot them?

Here’s the left side, where you can spot the fourth thing.

OK, now let’s see how you did. First, the pistol has been re-blued, as can be seen from the type of bluing, the pits that didn’t polish out, and the very smooth edges of the markings, some of which are actually a bit faint (e.g. the inspection marking below the 2 in the date 15.12). Second, the rearmost gripping ring on the cocking knob has been dented. Both these problems are more visible in the close-up below. Third, the grips are mismatched. The right grip has the proper 17 grooves for a Nagoya Nambu from the Kokubunji factory of that date. The left grip has 24 grooves, which was typical of the Toriimatsu factory of Nagoya Arsenal. Fourth, the magazine retention spring is broken (see below). How many did you catch? All four and you qualify as a genuine “Nambu nut”!

When I got the gun the magazine retention spring had been taped over. However, this made it impossible to get the magazine out.

On removing the tape you can see the razor-sharp edge left by the broken spring. These springs seemed to fatigue, crack and break fairly often, so if you are buying a Type 14 it is a good point to inspect in detail. To replace it you have to remove and then replace two rivets, which can be seen on the front of the grip strap in this picture.

The gun is not all bad, though. Besides being in excellent mechanical condition, all the numbers match including the magazine.

Here you can see that several of the parts, such as the trigger and the magazine latch (round thing to the left of the trigger in the photo) retain their original strawing (golden colour from heat treating).

In October, 2005 I finally got around to installing a new retention spring with the help of my husband, Stephen. I also replaced the incorrect left grip with a correct 17-groove one. Here is the gun after these repairs were done. Since the bore is good and the numbers all match, I will probably use this one as my “shooter” for the ballistic tests I want to conduct next summer (2006). It is a bit hard to disassemble, though, as the trigger guard fits really tight and has to be tapped down with a plastic hammer.

Here is the left side, showing the 17-groove grip I put on.

Here is a close-up of the new retention spring we put on. It was made by Don Schlickman (see the “Parts” section for a link to Don’s price list for his reproduction parts).

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Last updated: October 9, 2005. All contents are copyright Teri unless otherwise specified and may not be used elsewhere in any form without prior permission.