Bought a little Jennings!

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Prof Young

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You'd think my Bauer experience would have been enough of the small pistol world for a while. Well, local auction had a really nice looking Jennings in 22LR and I was the winning bid. (Don't ask, I paid a bit too much for it.) Will get to pick it up on Thursday. Will let you know how it goes.
Life is good.
Prof Young
 
I bought a Jennings22LR in the 80s, it's the WORST gun I ever bought. The metal is very soft, the springs are made of really inferior materials. I learn my lesson and never ever buy any off brand names just to save a few dollars. That was bad.

When buying a gun, you really need to read which brand is popular where people have a lot of experience with, don't just look at the price. Stay with known brands like S&W, Colt, Glock, Sig, Ruger etc. Those are well proven in the quality.

My wife bought a Charter Arm snubby, she literally shot that thing to the ground. I work of guns, I opened it up, the SA notch was worn out to the point it's dangerous. She bought it new, she must not put over 1000 rounds. The wearing on the metal is astonishing.....just to save like $50. We got rid of the Charter Arm.

Maybe your Jennings is better now after 30 years. But I would never touch it with a 10' pole. Metal is important in guns, not all "steel" are equal. Because of my bad experience with Jennings and Charter Arm, I never dare to look at Taurus when they first came out at the time. As long as I can find what I want in the name brands, I am not going to take the chance.
 
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I remember my buddies and I were shooting my Jennings back in the 80's, and one of them was a bit cocky. I tried to warn him he was holding it wrong as he readied his first shot with the CCI Stingers, but he snarled at me to shut up, so I did. ;)
He fired, slide came back and ripped into his thumb, drew serious blood, he started jumping around swearing. The rest of us got a good laugh!!:D
One of the few times the gun didn't jam. It was fairly accurate for plinking though at 10 yards. I sold it pretty quick.
 
Ha, I managed to find the beat up frame of my Jennings, because it has the serial #, I don't want to dump it in the garby can. I dumped the slide and others long time ago already. This is a picture of the frame I actually tested for how strong it is. It's not magnetic, BUT it's not aluminum allow because it's bendable as show, I can squeeze it way out of shape as shown in the red arrow.

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I don't remember how I squeeze this, maybe on a vise but I doubt it as I don't have a workshop at the time like now. But it's soft. I have a broken Beretta with alloy frame, it's NOT like this. Look at how I managed to squeeze the part that held the barrel flat!!! This is bad.

I don't quite remember for sure I shot the gun, I must have or else I won't open it and work on it like this to find out how bad the material is made of. I don't have the recoil spring anymore, but I remember it was quite weak and easily out of shape. It's bad metal.



EDIT: I just used a pair of pliers and broke off a big piece, I must be using only a pair of pliers to bend the frame, that's sad

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Prof Young,,,Enjoy your gun, it might be just the ticket for you, for what you want to use it for.

Alan,,,,,what is your point?
 
OneFreeTexan said:
Prof Young,,,Enjoy your gun, it might be just the ticket for you, for what you want to use it for.

Alan,,,,,what is your point?
Click to expand...

Bad quality material. Not worth the money.

Gun made of good material, even if it jams, it's worth the effort to fix it. With material like this, it's not even worth the effort. Don 't you want to know the quality of the material the gun is made of?
 
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Jennings/Bryco..same/same. Read where the 9mm and .380 are dangerous and can come apart when fired. Also heard the .22 and .25 were ok for $$.

Received a .380 to demil long time ago; kept bbl for plunk test.
 
I inherited (and still possess) have a p-25 and I too was planning to destroy the poor operating piece of crap. But someone gave me the advice to keep it and work on it. You can't screw up a gun you are going to destroy. I had no fear of grinding and polishing.

It's still a useless .25, but I can usually shoot 100 rounds without any issues.
 
that's why I posted about the quality of the metal, it's dangerous. I won't try their bigger calibers if the metal is like what I saw with the 22.

I vaguely remember I went shooting and it was jamming left and right. That's the reason I opened it up and see what I can do. Everything is wrong about that Jennings.

I think if OP committed to buy it, just chuck is as a lost, sell it back out even at a lose. Move on.

Just look at all the responses, yet to have a kind words about the Jennings.

There are cheap good guns. I have 3 Beretta 950BS, I shot one to the ground after over 1000 rounds( hey, for such mini pistols, that's good). I put about 2000 rounds between the 3, I have only one dead primer with one brand I used. With the Brazer aluminum, occasionally the shell failed to eject, that was cure by polishing the chamber a little. It's a very reliable small gun and it's not expensive. I still have two perfectly working one. I can still put back the third one if I want, but it just had too many rounds, it broke the recoil spring, it's time to retire.
 
If you are wearing out Charters and Berettas in 1000 rounds, you must be doing something wrong.
The Jennings guns are made of die-cast zinc or zamak-a zinc/aluminum alloy. It's usually OK. for low powered guns. The parts that are stressed are steel.
 
Congratulations on your purchase. My best buddy bought a new Jennings back in the day. All I will say is that he learned by his mistake. ;)
 
Yeah I know but . . .

Well, I appreciate all the warnings. It has mixed reviews on youtube. Some videos show the thing firing again and again and again with no problems. Others are similar to the warnings above. This one appears to be nearly new.

We'll see . . .

Life is good.
Prof You
 
Bill DeShivs said:
If you are wearing out Charters and Berettas in 1000 rounds, you must be doing something wrong.
The Jennings guns are made of die-cast zinc or zamak-a zinc/aluminum alloy. It's usually OK. for low powered guns. The parts that are stressed are steel.
Click to expand...

We clean and lube the gun every week when shooting twice a week. Things break, even as beefy as the Ruger Mark II, I have broke the mainspring housing after about 7000 rounds. I had to buy the part lately and fixed it. I know I can fix the Beretta 950BS, but being so small, I rather buy a new one than to keep fixing it.

I read in the 80s even the Sig P226 cracked the frame in the military qualifying after a few thousands rounds. That's why they chose the Beretta 92F. Things break, it's a lot of stress on the metal firing the rounds.

Most frames are made by milling from a block, not die cast. I have a suspicion is zinc alloy, that's why it's so soft and easily being worn down.

I have no explanation about why the steel of Charter Arm was so bad. I do a little gun smithing, I smoothed out the DA trigger for all my S&W revolvers and my Colt Trouper. I was going to do that on the Charter Arm. When I opened it up, I discovered it was really worn out. It's a SS gun, it almost feels like it used wrong combinations of SS parts that rub each other off. This is a well known problem of SS parts if the metal don't match.

Things starting to break after a few thousand rounds, people that shot 10K+ round do have to change out parts, things do go wrong. I will NOT trust a gun that has over 5000round as something might break any time. For target shooting, it doesn't matter, but if my life depends on it, I'd keep it under 1000 rounds to just breaking in and qualifying the gun.
 
Alan you should save that for a gun amnesty buy back. You might get $150 in your pocket and get rid of that trash.
 
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