Blue Steel and Walnut.



Photo:  High Standard 1947 H-D Military .22LR 4 1/2" barrel.



Photo:  Interesting magazine treatment.  Feeds and fires Federal AutoMatch 40RN, WW T22 40RN, and CCI 45RN Suppressor.  Federal Gold Medal Match 711B 40RN 1080fps feeds but too weak to operate action all the time.



Photo:  Stamped words, no electric engraving pencil.  Some one really treated it nicely for 71 years.  The walnut grips are original and not banged, chipped, or dented.  It does show some carry bluing loss.



Photo:  Adjustable rear sight, sort of.  It does in fact adjust for windage and elevation, albeit sort of oddly.  It seems the unmolested rear sight is worth about what the rest of the gun is.  When the base is released in the dovetail, it can slide left or right.  AND.  The sight itself rotates to tilt from vertical to rearward reducing its height but making the notch itself smaller visually.  Resetting the screws locks the windage and stops the notch axle from further rotation.



Photo:  It shoots fairly well, especially considering it was cold and raining for two hours.  Several 25 yard groups were fired to try to organize a sight that changes elevation and windage both every time the retaining screw(s) are released.  There are four 10 shot groups on the 25 yard target in the center.  Its about right, but not exactly, but I need a better ammo.  Federal AutoMatch is not all that consistent.

All in all an interesting gun.  The grip angle is so perfect.  If you stick your arm out, the sights are on.  On a 4" plate at 15 yards, before I got used to the trigger, I fired a round with out any sight picture at all and hit the plate.

A caution:  There are a couple of take down tricks or potential disasters.  Without following an original manual and the exact right sequence, a lot of them were ruined permanently.  A good rule is to never push a button or rotate a lever on a gun unless you know what it does.

I do wonder how long all these expensive plastic frames will last.  Several solvents for cleaning now say they will not ruin "Glock" plastic frames.  I think that means there are some that do.  I'll check back in 2088.  Or not.

A beautiful classic to be sure. I will take even a somewhat rough looking old Colt woodsman challenger high standard or S&W revolver to any modern made .22 every day of the week. My newest .22 plinker is a S&W 422 which was discontinued about 20 years ago.

Plastic probably lasts quite a bit longer.

My USP is over 20 and seems to be aging fine.

I have a minty one   I have never shot in 4 decades that I’ve had it

LSA, while somewhat off topic and not pertaining to .22 pistols, I do have an interesting observation about cleaners and poly frames that your post jogged loose in my foggy memory.

Way back when, in the early 1990's, I had just started as a part timer with the PD I work for. The Chief was rabidly anti-gun and the only thing he hated worse than guns was cleaning them after qualifications. He was so rabidly anti-gun that he actually told me that, if he had his way, we wouldn't be carrying firearms and would be like the police in Great Britain, no guns at all. Since he hated guns so badly, he came up with the bright idea of using brake cleaner to clean guns. Simply lock open the action, spray it out, spray in some lube and done in about 5 minutes. All well and good for him and a couple of his buddies- they carried Dept issued 3rd Gen S&W autos, full sized, all stainless steel 5906s.

Quite a few of the guys were carrying personally owned Glock 17s. One of these decided that, if the Chief could use the brake cleaner on his gun, then he could too. He came to qualifications one day, locked the slide open on his G17 (which he notably hadn't cleaned since qualifications about 6 months earlier), sprayed it out, sprayed some WD40 in it and proceeded to shoot. Qualifications in those days were VERY fast paced, with a fairly high round count. I was shooting beside him and, as the stages progressed, he kept complaining (to me, not to anyone official) that something was wrong with his gun, that the trigger was getting harder and harder to pull. Before long, notably after a long break, the trigger wouldn't pull at all. Our armorer was able to lock open the slide and take out the firing pin assembly (because you couldn't pull the trigger to drop the firing pin to field strip it) and, lo and behold, the trigger was melted to the frame. After doing some checking, it was discovered that the brake cleaner must have softened the polymer enough that, when constantly shooting, it was gummy but couldn't melt together because of the movement. When we took our extended break, the poly trigger and frame finally melted themselves together to the point that the trigger wouldn't budge when pulled. The gun went back to Glock and was repaired (I was only a lowly part timer then, so I don't know if Glock simply punched out the old trigger and touched up the frame or if they replaced the frame) and the Officer carried it up till the time he retired in 2014 or 2015. Needless to say, brake cleaner was specifically NOT approved for gun cleaning after that.

Honestly, with the prevalence of poly framed guns nowadays, I think that most, if not all, dedicated gun cleaners are poly safe. However, it is a cautionary tale about using non-gun products on guns. Not all may be poly safe, which isn't something you usually have to worry about with old school metal guns. Sure, harsh cleaners may remove finishes, but it is kinda hard for something in a can to damage the actual steel. I have read accounts about cleaners like Simple Green damaging aluminum frames, but not steel. Just thought it was an interesting tale about poly frames.

Bub75

100 rounds of CCI Standard Velocity fed fired ejected perfectly with the H-D Military AND the original 71 year old magazine.

Two new from TripleK magazines totally failed to feed.     Completely failed.

The first several rounds fed right into the BOTTOM sharp corner on the frame feed ramp angle and stuck.

The next several hit the bottom, deformed the tip, entered the chamber wrong, smeared the bullet full diameter area so it could not enter the chamber, and held the slide open.  Over and over.

The LAST round fed and fired.

The problem was obvious.  The follower angle does not lift the bullet nose.  The rims engage at the rear and the front flops down and stays down.  One round or the whole stack.  They aim way too low leaving the magazine.

CS says return them.  No way to fix.

TripleK seems to be the only vendor other than original magazines at a fortune each??????

Getting close to almost 50 years of plastic handguns and they are doing fine. I think with continued research of new materials it will only improve.

The plastic may hold up for many years, but the beauty and quality of an old High Standard will always shine.

TripleK did in fact refund the cost of two mags.  Good on them.  Shame didn't work.

Found a second early original mag in as good a condition as the gun's original mag and gun.  Time to quit.

Totally agree on blue steel and wood.  They just feel right.

Aint that the truth! But once you know, its very simple to field strip it.

Your H-D Military looks like mine would have in 1946.  Mine doesn't look like yours these days tho.  No finish at all.

It does prefer standard .22 ammo.  Don't use CCI Stingers in it.  I learned the hard way about that and only broke the hammer strut.

Sorry to hear about the Triple Ks. I picked up a couple years back for my HS Sport King 107 and they've run great right out of the box, so far no need to tweak the feed lips.
Not as heavy as the factory mag but at the time they were half what a new production 'factory' mag was running. Good for range use.

Back when times were tight and I wasn't shooting I let most of my collection go, but never the High Standard.

The biggest problem with the older series High Standards is the magazine.  These guns are extremely reliable if you have the correct original magazines, but they are difficult to find and typically cost over $70 when found.  Any of the newer production mags are about impossible to get to work properly.  Attempting to tweak the magazine lips on later production ones doesn't usually do much good.  The procedures  for tuning magazines you will find apply to the later Supermatic pistols that don't really have feed ramps.  The HD military models do have feed ramps.

I'm impressed you got a high standard magazine to feed that many different types of ammo

All mine are in different bags labeled for what ammo they are for.  It's a pain when I mix one up

Picked one up today.

I learned to shoot with my dad's hi standard.

Unfortunately when I was a teenager, I forgot it on the roof of a car.   It took a tumble at 55 mph.  

I saw this at my lgs.   Dads birthday is coming up in a few months.   I can finally replace the one I ruined 30 years ago.

Attached File

Ouch!  Hard on the bluing.

Looks like a very nice HS.

Back in a prior century before retiring, I used my dad’s “older” car at his farm to practice vehicle exit with a 870 riot gun.   Carefully put a folded movers blanket over the hood.  Fired away with slugs.

Shattered the windshield on a full size four door sedan.

Things happen.

Nice you found one.  

I grew up shooting High Standard HD Militaries.

What a gem of a pistol. Funny that was considered a working man's dream gun is now a collector's item.

My now 68 year old Colt challenger is in the same category- mine is pretty rough finish wise but is more reliable and accurate than most of the modern pistols I see at the range. I will take something from the 50’s early 60’s any time over modern stuff.

Has to be non-chlorinated brake cleaner!!!!! Otherwise it eats the hell out of anything plastic, not just guns. Probably rubber too, I've not read about that.