Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Info on Pistolet automatique Kapitain Alka 7.65 - 32auto

I realize there were several makers of the pistol. This is Chrome with the angled S stamped on the left rear. Serial # 5428. Should put it before the Ruby. Maker is Alkartasuna, Alkar or Kapitain but can not find the exact info or a picture. 7 shot not the 9. Thank you [img]http:// http://s428.photobucket.com/user/ewheaton1/media/20161115_194506_zps1lyqpblk.jpg.html?sort=3&o=6[/img]

[img]http:// http://s428.photobucket.com/user/ewheaton1/media/20161115_194712_zpsp6exda8u.jpg.html?sort=3&o=4[/img]

Can't tell you anything about the pistol but I at least helped you with the pictures.

Very much appreciated Snake

There are two distinct types of what we refer to as the Ruby pistols. Copies of the 1903 Browning and copies of the 1910 browning. The pistol pictured is a 1903 style pistol, an Eibar-Ruby pistol. Eibar Spain is a gun making mecca today and has been for several centuries. Toward the end of the 19th century, the gun making industry of Eibar patterned itself after the "gun trades" Birmingham England. The entire city supports a number of gun labels. Barrel makers, stock makers, lock makers, engravers, everything that was found in Birmingham and London in the heyday of fine guns.

When World War I broke out there wasn't much demand for sporting arms but France was desperate for handguns. So large numbers of the out-workers who worked in the gun trade industry, turned to manufacturing copies of the browning 1903 and 1910 pistols to feed the demand. This is why you see dozens of different manufacture names for essentially the same pistol.

The serial number ranges are not necessarily concurrent. The ones that are concurrent have to do with contracts that went to France. Even after World War I many of those makers continued to make the Ruby style pistol.

There is no single repository for makers and serial numbers to determine the actual date of manufacture.

Guessing pre-war

The Alkar name was granted as a trademark on 11 August 1914. In 1914, Alkartasuna began production of a 6.35mm pistol with a loaded chamber indicator on top, marked on the left side of the slide: 6.35 MODEL AUTOMATIC PISTOL / 1914 ALKAR PATENT. “Total production of the first 6.35 mm model was 4 ,072 before production was halted and shifted due to the start of the First World War.” Alkartasuna became a subcontractor making the “Ruby” pistol during World War I, eventually producing approximately 20,000 seven-shot pistols and 50,000 nine -shot pistols. Within a few years the Alkartasuna company held a similar status to that of Esperanza y Unceta--both were regarded as bulwarks of the local economy.

‘In August 1915, the firm registered the PANAMA trademark (#25441) in which the word “Panama” was arched over Alkar’s readily recognizable “angular S.”’ Adair relates that the “angular S” trademark is a representation of the Panama Canal, which opened in 1914, but he further states that neither the Panama name nor the Panama trademark which they registered were ever used by Alkartasuna.

Old Basque pistols are fascinating.