Quite some time ago I advertised, here on the forum, for help to find an Hudson Tokarev.
It did not take long, for several members, to come up with good suggestions – MANY thanks for that
Now one of them was followed and after a most helpful effort from a member of the forum I became the happy owner of this nice pre owned modelgun.
As I had a specific idea behind the TT-33, I had a bit of work to do before I was satisfied and I did promise several forum members to post pictures when I was finished – So here I am its payback time from me.
Let start out with a picture “out of the box”
My ambition with the TT-33 was to revive some of my old scale modeling skills and paint and polish the black model to a nice blued, but also worn shine. Since the goal was mode appearance than the feel of a gun, I was OK with the Hudson (and cartridges looking more like the real mauser cart.) compares to the WaShan HW models. On top of these plans, what I found was a well worn slide that had difficulty in holding back the slide after emptying a magazine.
So refurbishing was needed, but with my plans for painting I was OK with that – in the same operation I might as well, remove the HUDSON stamping on the frame !
So off we go – disassembly.
A few words of caution from my side if you enter into something like this
• These old models seem relatively brittle in the material. I did not break anything, but was truly a bit scared at times.
• Previous owners have most likely used the thing and I they have been “kind” to the mechanics also lubricated. The challenging thing is you don’t know. So I you want to paint – cleaning, thorough cleaning is essential.
• These polishing metal coatings, are to be sprayed for the best result and since they are polishable can be a bit sticky even after weeks of drying. So if you plan to shoot your model I recommend a thin cost of varnish as last operation.
My first challenge was naturally the rebuild of the slide stop function. After a good period of consideration I pulled out the Dremel and made a groove, deeper and longer than the original wear pattern.
Next I glued in a string of brass, and then covered the remaining traces with a strong putty (and filled the Hudson stamping too).
This opened the way for polishing and cleaning with detergent to be ready for a base coat of steel color.
After polishing and a good long period of drying parts a ready for the “blue” coat.
One thing I decided to challenge my self by, was to polish more where the gun would be worn after decades of used and leave “deeper” areas closer to the original deep blue color.
First it was time to get rid of the matt grey blue by giving it a good rub with an old fashion cotton diper (no not Pampers – the real cotton thing)
Next vigorous polishing on areas where a gun might be expected to experience mechanical contact, wear against holsters or just being rubbed time and time again.
I was not really pleased with the degree of wear I was able to achieve (might have waited a little too long before starting polishing) so I had to turn to my favourite polishing paste. - Toothpaste !
I did have an ambition to polish the cartridges, case only but I had to abandon that idea. I proved VERY difficult to hold the cartridge only by the “bullet part” so I polished it all.
Last thing I have not yet done is a finishing coat of varnish to seal the polishable coating.
Once again many thanks to the forum members that offered and practically helped me in making this addition to my collection.
Sun Dec 09, 2012 6:18 pm
but maybe we can have a test series if you guys feed back you expirience. So far mine survived only 2 firing sessions 
(comming to empty magazine) but quite some cycles of manual testing