What a great find!
Very interesting article giving modelgun background:
- "master gunfaker" is an interesting play on words, seems the press used same tricks back then!
- initial angle is that models are "counterfeits", "fakes" and "fraud". Made sense from US point of view, as there was no need to make such detailed models in the west at the time.
- there is a photo of Mr Nakata handling a 1911 model with a wooden stock (a la Mauser Broomhandle) and a silencer. The first such that I saw!
- Mr Nakata started 7 years before article, so in 1960 (!), and apparently made one-off (?) modelguns well before his later larger scale production.
- article writes about an accident with a modelgun conversion: a "mentally disturbed teenager with a grudge against a businesman" replaced Nakata Walther P38 barrel with a real one, manufactured a firing pin and obtained a bullet. Upon firing modelgun fell apart, but bullet hit victim. It was at this point where police warned Nakata, and he redesigned model to have a non-removeable barrel.
- there were numerous competitors making realistic-looking replicas,
- models were designed by Noboru Mutobe, who previously worked on Mitsubishi Zero fighters.
- he created them by going over old USA books and army manuals to recreate the design.
- master model was provided to subcontractors who mass-produced models.
- Mutobe planned to create 500 models of various firearms for display only (not for sale) as a collection to be later provided to a museum (Japan Defense Agency Arms Museum). Any ideas on what happened with that?
- creating of a master modelgun took about a month.
- it's mentioned modelguns are not available in USA, but can be obtained by contacting Mr Masami Tokoi, 28-3 Hongo I-chome, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
Very early history there!
Thu Jul 23, 2015 2:07 pm
