This is the SUR 2004 subcompact pistol, positively one of the cheapest blank guns we've stocked to date.
Despite what this low price might attribute - this pistol has a number of little features that make it worthwhile for consideration.
Key Features;
- Polymer frame, lightweight
- Cocking serrations both at the rear and front of the slide
- Lightweight blowback spring
- Features a functional safety feature integrated into a lever, the same of which can be toggled to allow field strippling, same as on the BLOW MINI 9
- Features a traditional automatic pistol slide catch, rare for a subcompact blank gun!
- Full trigger blade, which is easier to toggle / more ergonomic
- Magazine release at the base of the handle, behind the buttplate, barely requires effort to depress. Magazine jumps out as well.
- No fingergrooves, but the magazine buttplate has a pronounced shoe shape that catches one's ring finger, allowing for a more secure hold
- Hammer is thoroughly serrated, allowing for better thumb-traction
This is certainly a nifty little gun that weighs in next to nothing. The safety, when toggled, blocks the trigger from being able to interact w/ the sear. Also nice thing about that same lever is that, if it does accidentally slip into the field strip position, the trigger still cannot be actuated. The slide however, when field stripping the gun, does require a bit of effort to hitch off the frame rails at the rear, although we suspect that this will 'break in' with time. The interior of the gun is akin to most other cheapie blank guns once stripped - you have your Blowback spring, blowback guide rod, the rod retainer and of course, the slide.
To our surprise, the magazine spring on this pistol is quite stiff - akin to what you'd find on the RETAY P114 (which is stiffer than the BLOW MINI 9). That being said, the five rounds this magazine loads up, therefore will require a little effort, but well worth it - it is forgiving if you loaded up a sixth round in the magazine and need to manually extract it out as the magazine won't seat proper up the magwell and retain in this case.
Nevertheless, when dry-cycling this gun, you'll be surprised to find how distantly your cartridges eject out due to the aforementioned. Extraction from the breech / battery position occurs quite seamless, even brand new out of the box, although you'll need to lubricate the extractor lever on occasion and ward against dirt compounding there, as you'll eventually find even brand new blank cartridges w/ an unburred rim, experiencing extracting problems. The breech hole however, when loading a cartridge in, can eject that same cartridge simply by holding the slide open and pointing the pistol upward. Nice and easy.
As mentioned above, this pistol has a dedicated slide catch action that sets this pistol apart from the RETAY P114, the BLOW MINI 9, EKOL BOTAN, etc. It makes life easier when dealing w/ feeding and extraction malfunctions. It also has a triple set of debossed button shapes in horizontal array to assist w/ traction. The added cocking serrations to the front of the slide will certainly help when checking if the gun is loaded / if a round is in battery, instead of needing to use the rear cocking serrations for this.
The handle otherwise does not feature finger grooves / slots, although it does feature a horizontal grid pattern down the front and backstrap of the handle for added traction. As mentioned, the tab at the butt-end of the handle requires little pushing effort to cause the magazine to jump free from the mag well, though in 9/10 cases when subconsciously doing this, the buttplate will bump against your finger and not come out all the way.
When racking the slide on this gun, you don't have that metal-on-metal contact sound, which some people prefer and others, find distasteful / annoying.
The barrel end as shown, has a cheapie blowback enabler threaded into the barrel, and to use a flare tip attachment, you'll likely need to temporarily need to thread this device out, before you're able to dicharge flares. You'll just need to manually rack the slide each time.
Otherwise, our opinion of this pistol is surprisingly positive. The slide catch included here along w/ the stiff magazine spring, makes this pistol for the price, a good candidate for those in the market for a subcompact blank gun.
Also, did we mention that you can feed your rounds from the magazine on this pistol by releasing the slide hold-open after inserting a magazine w/ atleast a single blank cartridge in, and this right out of the box? Alot of subcompact pistols, due to their small blowback springs, cannot do that w/out first being broken in or w/ a little DREMMEL tlc. Worth keeping in mind!
