The 1908 Steyr Pieper Pistol

by Ed Buffaloe

1908 Steyr Pieper.  Top:  7.65mm (.32 caliber) Bottom:  6.35mm (.25 caliber).

Werndl gathered around him the most talented designers and engineers in Austria, particularly the railroad engineer Ferdinand Mannlicher, whose designs helped make OWG into the most important small arms manufacturer in Europe.  Josef Werndl died in 1889, but the company he founded lived on.  In 1894 the company diversified into bicycle production, and in 1918 began producing automobiles.  In 1923, the company became Steyr-werke AG, and in 1928 merged with the Austro-Daimler-Puchwerke AG to become Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG.  The company was and still is often referred to simply as Steyr for brevity’s sake and because Steyr is the most prominent name on the guns it manufactures.

1908 Steyr 6.35mm.

The

1908 Steyr 7.65mm with breech open.

1908 Steyr Pieper pistol was based on a design by Jean Warnant and Nicolas Pieper.  Warnant was granted various patents on the tilting barrel design from 1905 through 1907 in Belgium, Britain, and Switzerland, and sold his patents to Pieper.  Pieper in turn also filed numerous patents from 1906 onward.  Pieper licensed Steyr to manufacture the pistol in 1908.  The Steyr version differed in external details from the gun Pieper manufactured in Belgium (particularly in the more pronounced angle of the grip) but was virtually identical mechanically, though Pieper also manufactured versions with a fixed barrel.  The 1908 Steyr Pieper is sometimes referred to as the Model of 1909, because production did not begin until 1909.  It is also sometimes referred to as the Steyr OWG 1908 or 1909.

The 1908 Steyr Pieper is an extractorless blowback design with a drop barrel.  The recoil spring is mounted over the barrel, in the fashion of the FN Browning of 1900, and the guide rod for the spring has a hook on its rear which engages the reciprocating breech bolt when the barrel is latched down.  There is a release lever for the barrel on the left side of the gun.  A separate breech bolt receiver is mounted atop the rear of the frame and is secured by two transverse screws on the 7.65mm version, or by a single screw on the 6.35mm version.  The breech bolt moves freely in the receiver, but cannot be blown out of it to the rear.  As the breech bolt moves rearward, it cocks the hammer, and on the 7.65mm version the cocked hammer forces a small pin out the rear of the frame to serve as a cocked hammer indicator.  According to W.H.B. Smith, the extreme light weight of the reciprocating bolt gave the 1908 Steyr a relatively heavy recoil.

Early Grip Late Grip Serrations

Early grips of both calibers were checkered hard rubber marked with the OWG initials in an oval cartouche, beneath which was the STEYR name.  Later grips were checkered hard rubber with only the circular STEYR logo.  The 7.65mm pistols produced between 1909 and 1914 had fine slanted serrations on the breech bolt.  Those made between 1921 and 1933 had fine vertical serrations on the breech bolt.  Those made from 1934 to the end of production (possibly in 1939) had a redesigned receiver and much heavier breech bolt, more nearly resembling a slide, which had coarse vertical serrations.  I have been unable to examine one of these late guns in person to offer more detail on its functioning.  The serrations on the 6.35mm pistol were not changed.

A unique feature of Steyr Pieper is that it was designed to be fired in single-shot mode, while keeping a full magazine in reserve should it be necessary to fire multiple rounds.  There are two detents on the back of the magazine.  One holds the magazine a few millimeters lower than normal in the magazine well, so that the returning breech bolt cannot chamber the uppermost round in the magazine.  However, a new round can be quickly inserted in the chamber by pressing the release lever and tipping the barrel down.  With the barrel open, the breech bolt is disconnected from the recoil spring and can be pulled back easily to cock the hammer and then pushed forward again to return the barrel to firing position.  The other magazine detent holds the magazine fully engaged in the grip of the gun for semi-automatic fire, and a quick tap with the heel of the palm is all that is necessary to move the magazine from one detent to the other.  This feature sounds great, but doesn’t actually work very well.

The magazine release is difficult to operate.  It levers the magazine down, but the magazine inevitably catches on the second detent, and one has to hold the spring-loaded release down with one hand while pulling on the rear-facing magazine lip with the other to remove it.  The magazine is strangely designed, with a long lip to the rear rather than the front, giving poor leverage for removal.  I struggled with magazine removal on both guns, particularly the .25.

The extractor-less design was no doubt simple to manufacture, but has the disadvantage that, should the primer not ignite when the hammer falls, the cartridge will inevitably be deeply seated in the chamber by the firing pin and can only be removed by tipping the barrel down and prying it out with a knife or screwdriver, or poking it out from the opposite direction.  If one should forget that there is no extractor and work the action with a round still seated in the chamber, it will only serve up another cartridge from the magazine and cause an even worse jam.  All of the above scenarios occured while I was test firing these two pistols.

Both of these old guns had problems with not igniting primers, which of course caused cartridges to get stuck in the chamber and enabled me to quickly acquaint myself with the design flaws of the Steyr Pieper.

The receiver was easily extracted from the frame of the 6.35mm version by removing the screw at the rear of the gun--the receiver and breech bolt assembly can be lifted out, and the breech bolt can be removed through the front of the receiver.  I thoroughly cleaned, polished, and lubricated all the parts in the receiver and frame of the 6.35mm Steyr.  However, I was unable to get the gun to ignite primers reliably.  I can only assume that the hammer spring is weak.

There are two screws in the 7.65mm Steyr Pieper, and I was unable to extract the forward one.  So I soaked the entire gun in gasoline until the gasoline turned black, then carefully blew it dry with compressed air. I then applied Militec Oil to every surface of the gun.  I let the Militec soak into and bond with the metal for a while before I wiped the gun down with a soft cloth.  Then I lubricated the internal mechanisms with Hoppe’s 9 Moly Oil.  The old Steyr seemed to work fine after that, with the exception that it has a weak magazine spring and would misfeed on the last couple of rounds.  But it shot a 2 inch group at 10 yards--not bad for an almost 100 year-old gun.

Copyright 2009 by Ed Buffaloe.  All rights reserved.

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