A Browning HiPower Project

About ten years ago I bought a 40 S&W Practical HiPower at a gun show, as it was too cheap to pass up. I really wanted a 9mm because that was the more classic caliber. I got the idea to strip off the baked on finish slide finish and engrave it with the Browning Renaissance pattern (the frame is hard chromed and thus I couldn’t engrave that part).

A Kansas friend convinced me that I should sell it to him. I always regret letting guns go, so determined to keep an eye out for another.

When one came into a favorite Anchorage gun shop it cost me double what my first one did! Since Browning’s finish was so thick as to cover rough base metal, it took me five hours to remove it and some of the lettering, then polish. The pattern was taken from a 9mm Renaissance grade, but modified slightly to fit the larger 40 S&W size slide. I single point engraved the detail instead of using a liner like Browning does, which takes more time, but I think looks much better.

The Browning Renaissance engraving of course, was done in the FN factory in Belgium. The leaves and scroll in the pattern are fairly large. I’m sure if you cut that pattern day after day you could really do an amazing amount per hour. I could tell I was beginning to pick up speed as I went along. It’s not particularly attractive to me, but it is correct if one wants to emulate a factory engraving. One of these days I want to do a Citori over/under with the old Midas Superposed pattern because as I started learning about firearms that was the ultimate level of shotgun I ever saw pictured.

I carried the boot knife included in the picture while I was working for AT&SF. We weren’t allowed to carry firearms, so I took it along. A field man switching boxcars in Wichita at night could find himself in some dark, lonesome, and potentially dangerous places.