Showa 19.5 Type 14 Photos
I
got this 19.5 dated Toriimatsu factory pistol in
April, 2004 from someone who had seen my display at the Easter weekend gun show
here in
The
arc scribed by the safety lever on the grip was rather worse than usual because
the pistol had been incorrectly assembled and the grips didn’t fit snugly on
the frame, causing greater friction when the safety lever was swung past three
o’clock (there is no reason to do this with the grips on, but almost all Type
14s have at least a bit of an arc on the top of the left grip panel.
The
markings in the top row identify the pistol as a product of Nagoya Arsenal
(first mark), of the second series (Japanese katakana ro, looks like a square in a
circle). The second row shows the date as Showa 19.5, i.e. May, 1944. The
symbol to the right of the five is an inspection mark used by the Toriimatsu factory.
The
reason it needed the aforementioned parts was that someone broke the tail off
the striker, then forced it part way in. That didn’t leave room for the spring
and striker spring guide to go in behind and they got lost. It took about two
minutes to tap the stuck striker out and replace it and the missing parts.
The
magazine spring has a crack about 40% of the distance across it. Always look at
this spring when buying a Type 14 that has one.
The
grips are numbered to the gun with the last four digits of the serial number,
as was usual at the Toriimatsu factory. If you look
at the top of the left grip panel (far left of the top one in the photo) you
see a dark edge. That part is an extremely thin tab that fits into a slot in
the frame to fix the grip to the pistol. It is extremely fragile and was broken
but present when I got it. Most of the broken part later fell off, but enough
remains to keep the grip firmly in place. This is another good thing to look
for when buying a pistol.
The
X on the lower left grip frame is a reject mark. The M stamped on the lower
right arm of the X indicates this was superceded by a later approval.
The rear sight notch is
not very well squared out in the lower right corner, as you can see here.
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to the Type 14 Photo Gallery: t14gallery.htm
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