Some Belgian elegance showed up today!



A Nicolas Pieper Pistolet Automatique Modele 1920D. “D” for Demontant, of course.

So, aside from just a cool design for a vest pocket style auto, the maker has some cool history.

Nicolas Pieper was the middle son of Henri Pieper, a very prominent arms maker and businessman in Liege in the late 1800s. “prominent” as in owned the largest arms factory, while at the same time being one of the founders, and then Managing Director of a little outfit called Fabrique National… When he passed away, Nicolas Pieper took over as director of the family business Société Anonyme des Établissements Pieper, working with his two brothers.

The company made arms, bicycles, and then branched out into automobiles, and things went well enough until 1905, at which point, the company was in bad shape financially, and Nicolas got the boot from his brothers. He set out on his own, with a new company devoted to the manufacture of compact automatic pistols.

This version is the final development of his general design, after this model, he produced a pistol looking far more similar to the typical vest pocket automatic, with recoil spring located under the barrel.

As for this little guy, the cool part (in my humble opinion) is the takedown method. The D for Demontant refers to the way you disassemble the pistol. The lever above the trigger is rotated down, which then releases the entire upper half of the pistol to be lifted off. The slide then pulls free to the rear, and you can unscrew the recoil spring guide from the front.

Some of the earlier models were described as Basculant, on these, the lever released the upper half to rotate down for disassembly. Nicolas also licensed this version to Steyr, resulting in the Steyr 1909 pistols in both .25 and .32.

Bill R

What's the circled part?



Trigger/sear linkage?

As best I can tell from online research, yes should be the exposed portion of the bar that goes back to the sear.

Although I haven’t gotten it all the way apart yet. As we can tell from the appearance, it still needs a good deep clean!

Bill R

Compared to the relative elegance of the rest of the pistol, it looks seriously crude. I would assume the grip panel holds and guides it.

That's an interesting one that I've not seen before. Beautiful picture of it too!

That is very cool.
I can't even imagine the history that pistol has had..

quote:

Originally posted by 1lowlife:
That is very cool.
I can't even imagine the history that pistol has had..

Clearly one that has not included any actual cleaning!

This is one of the grungiest pistols I’ve had apart in a loooong while!

Bill R

had one of these for a minute,

picked up in an estate and sold to a customer that collectes odd 25 autos

https://unblinkingeye.com/Guns/Mann/mann.html


probably shoulda kept it for shitz/giggles,

A little cool though, history.

I just love seeing your photos. Excellent as always.