OK, with Kevins invaluable help I now knnow I have a CZ52. I wonder how those expert guys at the new local tacticool/zombie apocolypse/specal forces wannabe store didn't know that it was not a MAkarov.... I don't pretend to know my Eastern Bloc guns, but I also don't wear milsurp uniforms and badges and such to work every day and have a pile of military types of weapons all over my walls at really high prices because according to me they are all the cats meow in the latest zombie and commie killin gear <G>
Oh well, at least I have a firearm that I can switch back to an interesting caliber or safely fire as a 9mm if I can get it to feed. I am only in it $150 so no great loss regardless of how it all turns out. If I can make it feed, should bring $250 cash at a gun show as a basice inexpensive 9mm handgun. If I cannot make it feed I will buy a 7.62MAK barrel and new magazine and shoot it as what it was born to be.
I have a cz52 and they don't look anything like a makarov. Interesting enough, i have a friend in spokane that i think has a tok coverted to 9mm, i think you could buy the barrels for them.
They is a wide variety of pressure levels for that 7.62 ammo, it is not all the same, particularly for the machine gun stuff. Well advised to know what ammo you are running through it.
The firing pin thing is true, and the reason i bought spares when i bought the cz52. Big ungainly pistol, but they do shoot well.
I think B-West for some reason was that old company in tucson now out of business i believe. I have reloaded cast bullets, and jacketed bullets for the makarov, some others that chamber that makarov round, and haven't had any trouble. Starline makes brass for that.
