Something different

C

Classic12

New member
Last year I saw an ad for a weird home made pistol. It seems a gentleman named Philip Sola in Zurich, Switzerland, decided in 1970 to build his own semi automatic handgun chambered in .357 Magnum with a lateral toggle slide. Price was abt $ 3200

The seller recommended against firing this prototype

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I've never seen anything like it either. That gentleman was sure thinking outside the box. I mean to conceive of, and actually create such a pistol....
 
Interesting, but nothing new or novel. As "bn12" said, it's just a sideways Luger.
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And how is a "sideways Luger" NOT novel? One certainly doesn't see them everywhere, or often.

Clearly the action is more then a bit "Luger" inspired, but there are features not direct Luger copies, or "just" a Luger turned 90 degrees.

The toggle action design is quite efficient, and when properly constructed, the "knee" is locked, strong enough to handle rifle pressures.

I believe the first gun to use the toggle was the Maxim gun. (yes, the first "real" machine gun) Borchardt took Maxim's toggle, turned it over and made a pistol out of it. Luger took Borchardt's pistol and made it better, and became one of the iconic firearms of all time.

Turning a Luger action on its side, scaling it to fit a .357 Mag round, creating the mag to feed that round, and getting it to work is no trivial task.

Making a "home made prototype" is not a trivial matter, either. And in 1970!
I can see why the seller recommends not firing it, its a one of a kind, handmade prototype, with no proven history of being safe, and of course, if you break something tis broke for good, and its value goes down.

Neat gun, good to see I'm not the only one who has considered using the Luger toggle concept for something other than 9mm. ;)

I've never gotten beyond pipe dreams and a few sketches with my versions, good to see someone actually built a (working ?) prototype.
 
Adolf Furrer in Switzerland was hung up on the lateral toggle breech. An assault rifle that was not adopted and a LMG that was.

Looks like Furrer and Sola were just determined to squeeze everything they could out of the system.
 
"I believe the first gun to use the toggle was the Maxim gun. (yes, the first "real" machine gun) Borchardt took Maxim's toggle, turned it over and made a pistol out of it. Luger took Borchardt's pistol and made it better, and became one of the iconic firearms of all time."

You have proved my point. I did not say the job/work was "trivial", I said it was "nothing new or novel", which you have shown above.
 
Very unique IMHO. It looks like the action would be awkward to manipulate as the grab points for the toggle appear small compared to the normal P08 action.
 
Thank you for sharing! I have never seen anything like that. I actually did a short post about it on my website because it's really neat and I like to write about unique firearms technology.

Try as I might, I could find very little other info about it (including any live links to reported auctions on it) so if anybody has more info I'd be interested in it.
 
I think its neat, thanks for sharing it with us. It seems like an interesting setup, the rear sight would use some work though.
 
People were pretty capable way back in 1970- we sent people to the moon before that!
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I know, I watched it. My comment "and in 1970" wasn't about what we were capable of, it was about what we were interested in at the time..

1970 saw the introduction of the .44 Auto Mag pistol and cartridge. Very few people even considered the idea of a magnum class semi auto pistol at the time. And nobody got one to the market shooting a rimmed magnum revolver round, until the Desert Eagle in 1984. (.357, with the .44 Mag about 5 years later.) While only a very limited commercial success, the Auto Mag proved the magnum semi auto was a possible thing, and opened up thought in that area.

As to the rear sight needing a little work, it does, but cut it some slack, its a prototype after all. As the test bed of concept, it needs some sights, but refinements (like good adjustable sights) aren't needed until you get past the point of "lets make this idea work", and get to the point of "we're going to build them to sell" And, sometimes not even then. Desert Eagles came with drift only rear sights as standard. While I haven't looked at any new ones lately, I think they still do.

I am curious why he put the toggle on its side, rather than on top, like the Luger. He may have had a specific reason, or he may have done it just to see if he could. Likely we'll never know.

The forward part of the toggle is pure Luger, but it looks like the action is sprung differently than the Luger, and quite probably other internal parts are different, as well.

It would be interesting to see the magazine as well, and to know if it actually worked, or not. Another thing we'll probably never know.
 
Looks to me like it is gas operated - that would not just be a "sideways Luger" action. I like it, very interesting - wonder how it shoots?
 
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