Shooting A Tokarev M57 for .09 /round!!!

By: George Finegold Click author's name for more of his/her articles

I recently purchased a Tokarev M57. These guns were made in many different European countries, and the one I have was made in Yugoslavia. It came with 2 magazines, a leather holster and a cleaning rod. I bought it on GunBroker.com. There were several listed there but after researching the gun thoroughly, I decided that the ones made in Yugo were of better quality and made to a higher standard. The gun uses 7.62 x .25 ammo - which is somewhat the equivalent to a .357 as far as power.

These guns are obviously not new so buying one on-line seemed a bit chancy. I found a seller that advertised "hand-picked" and so I paid a bit of a premium, but hoped I would get a gun in relatively good condition. When it arrived at the FFL and I picked it up, to my surprise, the gun was in excellent condition! (The FFL actually wanted to buy it from me at the price I paid).

Now to the real point of this article. I received my weekly catalog from The Sportsmans Guide prior to looking into the gun. I came upon their ad for 7.62 x .25 "CORROSABLE" ammo selling for .09/round! WOW!!! I thought to myself that here we are in a situation where you can't even buy ammo - and when you do a 9mm, for example, is selling for .35 - .40/round. So what about this corrosable thing? Well it turns out that it refers to the primer. I learned that when using corrosable ammo all you have to do is CLERAN YOUR GUN. DUH!

So now I buy 1200 rounds of the ammo - this is before I buy the gun! I than proceed to do my research and end up with what I consider to be one of the finest guns in my collection. The ammo is not reloadable, so I don't have to worry about recovering my spent casings at the range - and I have to tell you that it's a real relief not to.

The gun is a real prize. To clean it, the slide comes right off and the entire trigger mechanism comes out as a complete intact unit. I use an ammonia based solution on the barrel, and clean the rest of the gun normally. I've already did a little gunsmithing on it and have a trigger pull of about 4 lbs and CRISP!

The "Tok" bears a resemblance to the 1903 Colt .380 Pocket Automatic, though it feels like a 1911 in your hands. The pistol is a single action, recoil operated Browning design - which has the barrel and slide temporarily locked together for a fraction of an inch during rearward travel.
This allows the bullet to exit the barrel and reduce pressure before the casing is ejected. The gun is fed by an eight round magazine. The cartridge has an average muzzle velocity of 1300 ft./sec. and has about 440 ft.-lbf of energy. It does have an unusually loud report and a very bright muzzle flash which definitely surprises onlookers. The gun is still in use by some Police and Special Forces units in Russia and China as it has superior penetration power as compared to now popular 9mm.

Oh - I forgot - I paid $295 for the gun. If you consider that it uses cartridges similar to a .357 or a 9mm - after shooting off a couple of thousand rounds at .09 instead of .40/round, the gun is almost "free".