TargetTalk

Found this pic on the net, but no info.

Looks like someone's pet project?

Anyone ever seen it before?

AFAIK, it's a one-off, French, built by Patrick Biebuyck.

Tycho wrote:AFAIK, it's a one-off, French, built by Patrick Biebuyck.

Thanks, do you know anything about it?

The action looks like a tilting barrel and maybe it has an electronic trigger?

Nope, sorry. What I know comes frm a French forum, and even those guys don't know any details, or didn't write about them.

I don't know anything about this pistol either, so take this for what it's worth. It looks like a side lever action, probably a modified Martini type. I can't think of any other reason for the plate sticking out from under the shooter's thumb. I don't believe a break-barrel is consistent with extreme precision especially since the front end of the gun looks like it is built from aluminum. If I were building a gun, the moving/mating parts would be steel.

I found something here: http://www.letirsportif.com/t4331-pistolet-libre# It is suggested that the trigger is electro-mechanical. I can't find any other images of it.

Maybe it isn't a prototype per se - it looks more like a test bed. Perhaps someone fluent in French could contact M. Biebuyck and get some more info.

Roger

I always felt that the only reason for all that stuff around the barrel must be that it is some kind of rotating mechanism, kind of like that FP that Portuguese guy built, where the whole barrel rotates sideways out of the grip, and the chamber ist basically inside the hand. That big hinge out there must be good for something, or it's there just to confuse the competitors...

As for the Portuguese free pistol I've read a test (many years ago, possibly in the '90s) on the french magazine "les cahiers du pistolier et du carabinier". That pistol (named 'Nerol' as far as I remember) had a rotating percussion and (maybe) a rotating trigger tongue action. The problem with that pistol was the extremely low barrel, and related difficulties to 'group' together the shots.

Somewhere I've seen similar free pistols, Russian perhaps.

BTW, somebody pointed out to me the first electronic (rectius: electro-mechanical) FP. It was the French pistol 'Grolleau' (Gérard Grolleau)

http://tirmontbeliard.free.fr/armes/stmt2.html

scerir wrote: It was the French pistol 'Grolleau' (Gérard Grolleau)

Erratum. Gérard Crolleau and not Gérard Grolleau. But 'Grolleau' is the name of the pistol.

Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder - but even as a FP-fan: brrrr...

Need a coffee, urgent...

scerir wrote:Somewhere I've seen similar free pistols, Russian perhaps.

You can find some details from Anatoli Poddubny's article (Russian coach) http://www.shooting-ua.com/arm-books/arm_book_82.htm. He talk about Nerog and TOZ-35-EE (ExtremEdition).