Chuck is feeding the beast with his most recent post of a cutaway TT-33 Tokarev over at GunLab.If you’re like me, you just can’t get enough of cutaway firearms! Pictures are embedded below, but please click through to Chuck’s site to see more:

Top view showing the chamber, mainspring, and lockwork. Image source: gunlab.net

The lockwork is very 1911-inspired, but also visible is the spring contained inside the hammer, not present in Browning’s design. Image source: gunlab.net

Image source: gunlab.net

The TT-33 incorporates some basic improvements over the 1911 on which it is based, but was held back by its lack of reassuring safety mechanisms, making it a somewhat dangerous pistol. It did, however, fire the excellent 7.62×25 Tokarev round, which being a hotter 7.63 Mauser had excellent penetration characteristics at the expense of greater noise and blast.