Unidentified 7.65 Auto Pistol made in Spain

[shooterami]

Crew, I need help in identifying a 7.65 pistol marked Automatic Pistol 7.65 on the left side of the slide; smaller stamped marking ALDAZABAL. The handle of the receiver marked on the very bottom says "SPAIN", there is only one screw holding the grip handles. From what I've researched it may be a little brother of the RUBY. I've had it since 69' but never really cared about it. With all the talk over gun control it has my interest up in finding out about it. I have taken many pictures if any of you are interested in helping me.

 

[tahunua001]

sure we'd love to help, another name for 7.65 is 32ACP(even though it was a browning invention not colt) or 32 auto. pictures would help a lot. unless it's 7.65 luger then it's a whole other confusing ballgame.

 

[Jim Watson]

ALDAZABAL was one of the 46 Spanish makers producing Ruby pistols for the French during WWI and commercially for a while afterward. General Franco rationalized the Spanish firearms industry into a few brands and wiped out most of those minor makes.

I fear you know all there is to be known about the little gun.

 

[James K]

Permit me to add that those pistols were generally made of poor materials, often little better than cast iron, and with poor workmanship, although external finish was often quite good.

Value is low and most dealers won't take them in because there are no repair parts and they cannot be warranted on sale.

If the gun works, you can shoot it as long as it continues to work, but I recommend not spending any money on it if it breaks.

(If we get to where the government is searching homes and confiscating old Spanish pistols, things have already gone way beyond the SHTF point.)

Jim

 

[shooterami]

Reponse to question

thank you the responses, I will try to figure out how to get the pictures loaded and send them, thanks again.

 

[PetahW]

It IS a "RUBY" (pattern) pistol, only one of several sizes/shapes referred to as a "RUBY" pistol - made in Eibar, Spain before the Spanish Civil War by Aldazabal, Leturiondo & CIA (sic), and is basically a blow-back Spanish copy of a Browning patent.



.

 

[shooterami]

7.65 cal Automatic Pistol

Thank you all for the responses and input. As I said I've had this thing for almost 45 years and haven't cared about it, until recently...and I'm going to let you guess why...
Anyway, for the next question: where can I get a magazine?

 

[NickySantoro]

There are often small dimensional variations in what are referred to generically as Spanish .32s. Your best bet might be to take the pistol to some gun shows, look for someone selling mags, then test fit them.

 

[shooterami]

Finding magazines for my jewell of a 7.65cal pistol

Thanks for the clues for finding a magazine(s), I'll try that and report back on the result.

VR

Shooterami

 

[Two Old Dogs]

Try www.triplek.com. They list several types of magazines for Ruby pistols including the Aldazabal. Also try wwwsarcoinc.com, who alsolists rukby magazines and has a chart of the various manufacturers. Further, try www.ammoclip.com, wlho lists Ruby type magazines avaliable by original manufacturer.

 

[RJay]

Available from which original manufacturer?? The original " Ruby, which was a copy of a Star made firearm " was manufactured by Gabilondo, AKA Llama, which used a 9 cartridge magazine. After WWI, the guns manufactured by the sub-contracts would be more correctly called Eibar guns, but unfortunately folks like to call all of them Ruby's. During the WWI era all the Ruby contract pistols were supposed to conform to the same set of engineering drawings. However it was impossible to maintain any type of quality control over so many mom and pop sub-contractors, as a result the magazines often would not work , even between guns made by the same contractor. The French Army made the contractors number the magazines to each gun. Now, warp speed to the present era, magazines offered by the various parts supplies are generic type magazines, designed to more or less work in most of the Browning type Eibar guns. The result is that some of the magazines will work in some of the guns, in others, they will be too loose, too tight or fail to feed. Nature of the Beast. If you order a magazine for a Eibar type gun and it fits and works, go immediately out and buy a lottery ticket Heck, parts will not even interchange between two like guns from the same maker without file work. JMHO and I have others PS: As far as I know there are no original manufactures of hand guns left in Spain, Star, LLama and Astra are no long among the living. I believe one or two of the names were shiped to South America but they are no longer " the original " of anything.

 

[James K]

Just FWIW, the Spanish gun industry was for a long time literally a "cottage industry." Here is how it worked, and probably still does in some places in Spain:

A "factory" turned out cast or (sometimes) forged parts. Then Pedro picked up a bunch of the parts and took them home. He had a gauge and a set of files. He (and his wife and his kids) filed those rough parts until they fit the gauge. Then he took the parts back, got paid, and got another bunch of parts to work on.

At the factory, a fitter took Pedro's parts and parts from other workers, and got busy with his own files to put the parts together to make a gun. When he had the soft parts fitted and working (sort of), he numbered the parts and sent them off to be case hardened, tempered, and blued as necessary. When he or another assembler got the parts back, he made sure the numbers matched so the fitted parts were all together. Guns were normally made in batches of a hundred or so, and those numbers are called "batch" numbers or "assembly" numbers. If a serial number was put on, it might or might not have a relationship the batch number, depending on how organized the factory was.

So it is pretty obvious that finding "drop in" parts for those guns will not be easy. One of the problems cropped up when a part broke on a Spanish gun, even good quality shotguns. The factory spares were not the parts Pedro worked on, they were the rough castings or forgings the factory started with. Now American gunsmiths can file and fit as well as the Spanish, they just charge a lot more for doing it. So an American gun owner who was used to drop-in parts from Remington or Winchester for a few dollars, found himself with a choice of paying hundreds of dollars for the equivalent part for his "bargain" Spanish shotgun or making a decorator out of it. Caveat emptor, or something like that.

Jim