I had bought 2 new Detonics 451's ser numbers 7 and 8. Had preordered them from the factory months before production. Sold them a few years later. (Anyone have these by any chance?)

Never did forget that there was no ammo nor cases available when the guns arrived & had to make my own cases out of cut down 30.06 cases. Forgot the length of the new 451 case, but will never forget the hot load specs in the manual.....

11 grains of Unique and a 180 grain Hornandy Hollowpoint 45 cal bullet for a muzzel velocity of over 1300 fps out of a 3 1/2 inch Detonics 451 barrel in their smallest handgun configuration........forgot the model. It held 6 in the clip and one in the chamber. Never shot either of those matched pair, consecutively numbered 7 and 8 Detonics, but carried both on me cocked and locked with one in the chamber for a few years everyplace I went. (Didn't want to ruin their collector value by shooting them, but figured if shit happened up close like it does in big cities, 1st shot on target usually wins and I wanted
my 1st shot to keep em down, thus my reasoning to buy those 451's. Figured between the 2 of them, at least one should not jam for a second shot and with 2
of them, one for each hand, i'd get 2 shots for sure, one out of each, in case of an emergency. Small though they were, they were too thick and hard to conceal. Taurus came out with a 44 mag snubnose dirt cheap and I sold my expensive detonics to a collector for $1100 each. Probably still has that batch of handloads I made in each gun case with each gun.......smiles.
Seems like The 451 cases made out of 30.06 brass were only about 0.020" longer than normal 45 acp cases if I remember right. Don't count on this last measurement....it's likely wrong, but it is defineately real close as it surprised me how little difference there was between the length of 451 brass and 45 acp brass when I was making the 451 brass. (BTW ...I used a 45 acp die to load the 451 cases and it worked great......just had to compensate for the tiny difference in length during setup with a micrometer. Easy as pie! No need to buy 451 dies as 45 acp dies work great and are a lot cheaper.) ;-)

Hope this helped someone out there. BTW ...What do you folks think those 2 Detonics are worth nowadays if they were kept as a consecutively numbered 7 and 8, pair? Just curious.....

Regards
Wizards
wizards at charter dot net