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calendar   Tuesday - January 12, 2010

Finally For Sale

Boberg Engineering brings micro 9mm pistol to market



Production licensing is complete, pre-orders being accepted.

Length: 5.1”
Height: 4.2”
Width: 0.95”
Cartridge/Capacity: 9mm/9mm+P, 7+1
$849.



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This is just about a full size picture



I wrote about the Boberg Engineering pistol about a year ago. It’s a remarkable design and an extremely well made little firearm. It’s been in development and undergoing testing for a long time now. Three models were on the drawing boards; a compact, a sub-compact, and a micro. Boberg is bringing the sub-compact model to market first, called the XR9-S.

Big deal Drew. Everybody has a teensy weensy little mousegun for sale these days. What makes the XR9 special?

Hey, glad you asked.

For starters, the Boberg XR9-S is a very small pistol. It’s the size of a Berretta Tomcat, which is one of the tiniest semi-automatic pistols ever made.
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Except that the Tomcat uses the utterly anemic .32 ACP cartridge, whereas the XR9-S uses the 9mm Luger.


It’s a little bit bigger than the Ruger LCP
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and the LCP can only handle plain .380 ACP. It will break if you use +P ammo. The XR9-S is rated for 9mm +P.


It’s pretty much identical in size to the little 9mm jewel sold by Rohrbaugh
image
just as well made, $200 less, and uses a mechanism that gives lower perceived recoil.
More importantly, the XR9-S is about 25% more powerful using the exact same ammunition.

You want a concealed carry gun, a back-up gun, to be rock solid reliable, controllable, and as powerful as possible, and as small and light as possible. The XR9-S seems to give you everything.


At ranges of just a few feet, the .32 ACP is a very marginal cartridge for self defense. From a full length test barrel it fires a 77 grain .312” diameter bullet at about 800 feet per second. From the very short barrel of a Beretta Tomcat velocities are down in the 600fps range. It might be fine for “poppin a cap upside yo haid” but don’t count on it to shoot through a leather jacket, much less the torso of the guy wearing it. It just ain’t enough gun, but it’s better than no gun at all. Barely.

The .380 ACP just makes the grade as the minimal acceptable cartridge for self defense. The .380 can push a 90 grain .355” diameter bullet to around 850fps in the little Ruger LCP. It makes a bigger hole than the .32, a bigger noise, but isn’t a real confidence builder when you think in terms of stopping power. The +P version of the .380 can push a slightly heavier bullet slightly faster - 100 grains at 1000fps - and while that’s a significant increase in power, it’s still far behind the old time standard .38 Special, which is an Ok self defense cartridge when used with soft cast lead bullets. The classic .38 Special load is a 158 grain .357” lead bullet at 900fps. More modern loads use a 125 grain jacketed hollowpoint at about 1000fps, for 25% more power than the .380 +P can manage. But the .38 Special is a revolver cartridge, and it is much longer than any cartridge for a semi-auto.

When used with the proper kinds of expanding bullets, the 9mm Luger ( aka 9mm Parabellum, aka 9x19 ) is a very good self defense cartridge. From a standard barrel the 9mm can push a .355” 124 grain bullet at about 1250fps, so it’s half again more potent than the .38 Special round, roughly twice as potent as the .380 +P, and probably 4 times as potent as the diminutive .32 ACP. The +P versions of the 9mm are hotter still, coming quite close to the performance of what passes for .357 Magnum ammunition these days. The .357 Magnum is another revolver-only round, and while unquestionably usable for self defense, is often more cartridge than many people can handle. The bullets also tend to shoot through the bad guys and the walls behind them, the cars behind them, and so on. It’s too much gun, but makes a fantastic flame thrower and flash-bang grenade in a stubby revolver. [ it’s loud as hell and the muzzle flash is furious! So is the recoil. Ouch. ]

So the 9mm/9mm+P is a very good balance point. Sure, so is the .40S&W and the .45ACP, but they both require thicker pistols, so you’re trading stopping power for “imprinting”; it’s often harder to conceal a thicker pistol under your clothes. And you get less shots from a magazine of a given size because the cartridges are larger in diameter. You can’t fit as many in the same space.

The Boberg XR9-S uses the 9mm round, regular or +P, so it has enough punch to do the job. As long as you use the right kind of ammo.


It’s a nifty design too, which is where that extra power comes from. 25% more than other 9mm pistols of similar size, plus less recoil. And believe me, the recoil of a 9mm in a mousegun is something to be concerned about. These little guns are very lively. The kick isn’t that hard, but it’s very fast, and the tiny little guns often jump a couple of feet up when you fire them. Less recoil means less movement, which means you can get back on target for the next shot a little bit faster. And that eyeblink of time matters when it’s you vs him.

The XR9-S uses a rotating breech locking mechanism. Recoil causes the barrel to turn a quarter turn around and actually unscrew itself from the locking lugs. Once unlocked the recoil pushes the cartridge back against the slide and then the slide ... slides. We’re only talking about a few milliseconds here, but a rotating breech unlocks slower than a cam locked breech like the 1911 .45 automatic pistol uses. So, just like firing an M1 carbine, the recoil is slowed down enough to be delivered in two parts. Bang, clunk. Bang, clunk feels less than the “bangslam” you get from the 1911, or a Glock, or any blowback (unlocked breech) 9mm. Actually, I’m not sure there are any blowback 9’s. It’s too hot a cartridge for that kind of action. Whatever, the XR9-S has less recoil than other designs. And that’s great.

But 25% more power? That’s a pretty big claim. Tests back this up though, and it’s because of the design of pistol. The Boberg guns use a feeding mechanism very similar to the ones used on machine guns. Instead of a magazine mounted below and behind the back of the barrel, and a mechanism that grabs a new round and slams it forward into the breech on closing (which is how just about every semi-auto pistol works), Bobergs grab the new round when the old one is being ejected. They have a reliable little puller gizmo inside that lifts and cradles the next shot out of the magazine, pulls it backwards and then up as the slide completes it’s movement, and then slips it into battery when the slide closes. You see, in a Boberg the magazine is under the barrel, but not behind it. This means that for a given size pistol, the barrel in a Boberg is about 1.25” longer than in a regular gun. That extra bit of bang tube gives the bullet more room to speed up, and the result is higher muzzle velocity. Bullet energy is based on the square of the velocity, so a little more speed gets you a lot more power. This is why Boberg brought the sub-compact pistol to market first. It’s just as powerful as everyone else’s compact pistol. In theory, the best barrel length for a 9mm is about 16-18”. That’s a rifle. Anything longer than that, and friction starts to slow the bullet. Anything shorter and you’re not getting - literally! - the best bang for your buck. Just about every pistol ever made has a sub-optimal barrel on it, so longer is better. Being able to fit a mid-size barrel to a tiny pistol is a great idea, especially when the result is still a tiny pistol.

As soon as I can save up the cash I’m buying one of these puppies. 8 shots of 9mm +P HPs will do the job, and then some. In a pistol that almost hides in the palm of your hand.

Read all about it at the Boberg homepage.

I can see only 3 possible downsides for this gun.

The first is that the backstrap to trigger length might be a bit too much for people with really small hands. I don’t have the measurements so I can’t say. The gun will fit most guys, but if you are a petite woman you might want to stick with the Ruger LCP. The LCPs are also very inexpensive, so buy two. One for each hand, then learn how to shoot that way. If you ever need to use them, empty both at your target. Then run, because he just might be very mad.

The second is the cost. The XR9-S is not cheap. It is not a throw away gun like the LCP. It costs more than a Kel-Tec and about the same as a Kahr. Quality always costs. If you admire fine firearms, then this really isn’t an issue.

The third, and possibly damning issue is the old pig-in-a-poke. Boberg is still in startup. The very first production run is just beginning. If you buy now you will be buying blind, shelling out big green for a gun you have never put your hands or eyes on. For me, I’d do this in a heartbeat. I know that the company has been doing R&D on these things for years, and I know that the quality of the first production run guns will make or break the company. I have confidence that the first run guns are going to be utterly perfect before they get out the door. I own a first generation Kimber 1911 Gold Match. To hell with that “cold dead fingers” nonsense - I’m going to be buried with that one. Ain’t never ever never letting it go. And if Boberg goes under, in a decade those pistols are going to be nearly priceless to collectors.

Ok, one more “negative”: this is not a pistol for stupid people. There will be a non-intuitive learning curve: you have to rack the slide TWICE to make sure the gun is unloaded. The old “pull the slide back and lock it open, look in the chamber, then drop the magazine” method used to empty a regular semi-automatic pistol will result in a loaded XR9-S. Better learn to drop the magazine first, then rack the slide. Then rack it again, just to be sure.




UPDATE: I got an email from Arne Boberg. He says it will be just a little while longer, so don’t call in your orders just yet.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 01/12/2010 at 12:45 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •  
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