Making One: From Parts, From Scratch, and the Law of a New Old Pistol

9.1 What exists

No firing reproduction of any Ruby-type is made today, and no parts kit of one was found for sale in the research for this dive. What a builder can get is old pistols, whole or broken, and used parts that, as Vol 6 sets out, fit their own maker’s pistol and often no other.¹

That leaves two paths, as in every build volume in this hub: from parts, which for a Ruby-type means restoring an original, and from scratch. The Ruby is a good subject for the second. It is Browning’s simplest production pistol made simpler: a fixed barrel, a one-piece slide with the breechblock in it, a concealed hammer, a single sear, one safety lever and a single-column magazine (Vol 4). The Eibar shops made it with the machine tools of 1915 and hand fitting. What makes it hard to make well is the same thing that made the originals dangerous: the lockwork and the safety carry everything, and the sources describe them least.

9.2 The law of making one

The Borchardt C-93 dive’s Vol 9 sets out the federal and Michigan law of making a pistol for personal use, with ATF’s answers and the statutes quoted; it applies here unchanged. In summary:

• A licence is not needed to make a firearm solely for personal use; making for sale needs one. ATF’s answer is quoted in full there.²
• A new Ruby-type is a firearm, not an antique and not a curio. It fires conventional centrefire ammunition that is made today (Vol 7), so the antique-replica clause cannot apply, and 27 CFR 478.11 excludes replicas from curio status in terms: “not including replicas thereof”.³
• A pistol that doubles is a machine gun under 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b), which an individual may not lawfully make (18 U.S.C. § 922(o)); see the disconnector, below.⁴
• An all-steel pistol meets the detectability rule of 18 U.S.C. § 922(p) without effort. A printed polymer frame would raise it; this path does not use one.
• Michigan. The licence and sales-record scheme is built around a transfer, and how a maker licenses a self-made pistol is not stated in the statute; the Borchardt dive recommends putting the question to the Michigan State Police in writing, or holding a concealed pistol licence. It also records Senate Bills 331 and 332 of 2025, which would require serial numbers on all firearms and components; they had passed the Senate and sat in a House committee as of 18 October 2026, and should be checked again before a build starts.²

9.3 Which part is the frame?

Federal regulation defines a handgun’s frame by what it houses. 27 CFR 478.12(a)(1): “The term ‘frame’ means the part of a handgun, or variants thereof, that provides housing or a structure for the component (i.e., sear or equivalent) designed to hold back the hammer, striker, bolt, or similar primary energized component prior to initiation of the firing sequence”.⁵

In a Ruby-type the hammer and sear are both in the frame, behind the magazine well, and the slide only covers the hammer (Vol 4; Browning’s claim 15: “a hammer mounted in a recess in the frame”).⁶ On the regulation’s words the frame is the regulated part, the obvious answer this time, unlike the Borchardt’s (whose sear rides in the receiver). The frame is the part to treat as the firearm from the first cut that makes it one: its serial, its record, and the disposal of a spoiled attempt.

9.4 Path A: from parts, which means restoration

A Ruby-type cannot in practice be built from a parts kit, because no kit exists and loose parts are maker-specific. Path A is therefore the restoration of an original: taking a pistol whose frame survives and making it whole and safe with parts from the same maker, parts from another pistol fitted by hand, and parts made new.

Restoring an existing pistol is repair. The frame keeps its own serial and history, and nothing is “made” in the regulatory sense, so long as the result fires one shot per trigger pull. The restoration is the Vol 6 checklist carried to completion: firing pin, rebound spring, extractor and its spring, sear, hammer and their springs, the safety lever’s nose and the slide’s stripping notch, and a magazine fitted as in Vol 7. Each of those is a small part a lathe and a mill can make (Path B, below). What should not be restored is a barrel with a bulge or crack, or a frame or slide cracked at the rails; those parts are replaced, and replacing the frame is no longer restoration but making a new firearm.

A restorer should not try to make a pistol “correct” for a maker or a contract it never belonged to (see markings, below).

9.5 Path B: from scratch

A from-scratch Ruby-type is a better project than a from-scratch Borchardt or Mannlicher for one reason: the parts are few and mostly prismatic. A frame, a slide, a barrel, a hammer, a sear, a trigger and its bar, a safety lever, a magazine catch, a firing pin, an extractor, a recoil spring and guide, the mainspring and small springs, grips, and a magazine. There is no toggle, no strut, no stripper-clip guide and no locking at all.

The choice that comes before metal is which pistol to copy. There is no single “Ruby” to copy; there are dozens, and they differ (Vol 5). The sensible course is to copy one specific original that can be measured, part by part, rather than to average several or to design from photographs. Where the original is ambiguous (the disconnector, below), the builder must design, and must say so in his own records.

9.6 Where the dimensions come from

• The chamber and bore come from SAAMI: the “32 Automatic (32 Auto)” chamber drawing, with headspace at the rim, .045 to .055 in, a groove diameter of .311 in and a bore of .304 in (Vol 7).⁷ A .32 ACP chamber reamer and headspace gauges are standard tooling.
• The barrel’s ribs and the frame’s grooves, the slide’s bore and the spring seat take their arrangement from Browning’s patent (Vol 4) and their sizes from the pistol being copied.⁶
• Everything else comes from the pistol being copied. No maker’s drawing of any Ruby-type was located, and none is quoted in any source read here.
• The magazine comes from the original magazine if the pistol has one; otherwise from the magazine well and breechblock face, as in Vol 7.

9.7 The build, group by group

Frame. Bar stock, milled. The features in order of importance: the slide rails (Browning’s patent has the slide’s “longitudinal ribs” interlocking “with corresponding grooves in the sides of the frame”); the transverse segmental grooves in the top that take the barrel’s ribs; the clearance cut that lets the ribs turn out; the longitudinal seat for the recoil spring below the barrel, open at the top in front for the slide’s abutment; the magazine well; the hammer and sear pockets and their pin holes; the safety lever’s bore; the heel catch’s pocket.⁶ The magazine well is a long, narrow, square-cornered pocket best cut from both ends or by broaching; on a small mill it is the slowest feature.

Slide. Bar stock, milled and drilled. The bore for the barrel, a close fit (Browning: the slide “fitting closely on the barrel to hold it in engagement with the frame”); the breech face; the firing-pin channel (Browning bored it from the front and closed it with a bushing so that “the rear end of the breech-slide” stayed solid; an unsigned collector text says Ruby makers drilled from the rear and plugged the hole); the extractor slot; the ejection port; the front abutment that enters the spring seat; the hammer recess at the rear; the stripping notch for the safety.⁶⁸

Barrel. A .32-calibre rifled blank, turned and chambered. The transverse segmental ribs under the breech end are most easily turned as full collars and then milled away to leave segments below; the muzzle collar’s longitudinal grooves (the grip for turning the barrel, Vol 4) are milled. The ribs carry the full recoil load of every shot into the frame through the barrel, though in a blowback that load is small; their fit in the frame grooves is still what keeps the barrel from walking.

Lockwork. Hammer, sear, trigger, trigger bar and disconnector, safety lever. Copy the original’s geometry exactly where it works, and design new where it does not. These are the parts whose engagement surfaces must be hardened and stoned (below).

Springs. Decide leaf or coil before cutting the frame (Vol 6): Browning’s V mainspring and combined sear-trigger leaf spring need their seats in the grip; coil springs need bores.⁶ Coil springs are the easier to buy or wind; leaf springs are the ones to copy if the original has them.

Firing pin and extractor. Turned and milled, with a rebound spring; Browning’s was two-piece to allow insertion through the bushing.⁶ The firing pin’s retraction is the single most important safety property in the gun (Vol 6: “runaway” fire).⁹

Magazine. Vol 7. A folded and joined tube of spring-temper sheet; formed lips; follower; spring; floorplate. The press brake makes the folds. The lab catalogue lists no TIG or spot welder, so the seam is brazed, riveted, or sent out.¹⁰

9.8 The disconnector: the part no source describes

A Ruby-type must fire once per pull of the trigger. The French instruction states the requirement (“let the trigger come forward after each shot”) and not the means.¹¹ Neither Browning’s patent text read for this dive nor any Ruby source describes how the trigger bar is disengaged from the sear while the slide is out of battery.

So the builder must design it, and the design is a legal requirement as well as a safety one: a pistol that “shoots … automatically more than one shot … by a single function of the trigger” is a machine gun.⁴ The Borchardt dive’s Vol 9 summarises United States v. Olofson, in which a malfunction was no defence where the extra shots came from a “regular self-acting mechanism”.² A common arrangement in pistols of this class is a bar or lever that the moving slide pushes down or aside, breaking the trigger bar’s connection to the sear until the slide is fully home; the original pistol, examined closely, will show what its maker did. Whatever the design, it is tested exhaustively with an empty chamber and dummy rounds, by hand and by slamming the slide, before any live round is loaded, and a build that ever doubles is stopped and fixed before it fires again.

9.9 Heat treatment

The originals failed where they were soft: sears bent, notches peened, firing pins broke (Vol 6).⁹¹² A new pistol should not repeat that. The parts that need hardening and tempering are the sear and its engagement on the hammer, the safety lever’s nose and the slide’s stripping notch, the firing pin, the extractor, and the springs. Frame and slide want toughness more than hardness, and are commonly made from a prehardened alloy steel.

The hub’s lab catalogue records no heat-treat oven: the powder-coat oven is “not for heat treating”. Hardening and tempering go out to a heat-treat shop, or are done in a kiln bought or borrowed for the job.¹⁰ No hardness figure for any Ruby-type part was found in the sources, and none is given here; the builder chooses a steel and a treatment and records what he chose.

9.10 What each machine is for

From the hub’s lab catalogue (_shared/lab_capability.md):¹⁰

Table 1 — What each machine is for

Job	Machine
Barrel turning, ribs as collars, chambering, firing pin, recoil-spring guide	HiTorque 7x16 mini lathe
Frame and slide profiles, rails, grooves, pockets, magazine well	HiTorque 3990 mini mill with DRO; Carbide 3D Nomad 3 for small parts
Grip panels (wood or hard rubber patterns), fixtures	Shapeoko 3 XXL router; printers for fit-check patterns
Magazine tube folds	press brake
Engraving the builder’s own markings	CO2 or diode laser (on a finished part, not on a hardened surface that matters)
Hardening and tempering	outside heat-treat shop or a kiln

The magazine well in a full-size frame is at the edge of what a mini mill does comfortably; it may be a job for a broach or an outside shop.

9.11 Proving and first firing

The United States has no compulsory proof house. SAAMI’s proof loads for the .32 Automatic run from 27,500 to 30,500 psi (transducer), against a service maximum average of 20,500 psi.⁷ A builder without access to proof cartridges should at least: check headspace with GO and NO-GO gauges; fire the first rounds remotely, one at a time, with standard-pressure FMJ; inspect the barrel, slide rails, breech face and firing-pin channel after each of the first few; measure the barrel’s outside diameter at the chamber before and after; and only then fire a magazine.

9.12 Markings: do not make a fake

Do not stamp a new pistol with a maker’s legend (GABILONDOS Y URRESTI, MARTIAN, ALKARTASUNA), a French code in an oval, acceptance stars, a holster stud presented as French, or a Finnish property mark. A new Ruby-type stamped as an original is a fake waiting for a buyer, and these marks are exactly what the market pays for (Vol 8). Mark it with the builder’s own name and a serial, in a place and at a depth that meet 27 CFR 478.92 if it ever passes through a licensee’s hands; the Borchardt dive’s Vol 9 explains why marking it first is practical.²

9.13 What could not be established

• Any maker’s drawing or dimensioned description of any Ruby-type part.
• How the original disconnectors work.
• Hardness or material of any original part.
• Current sources of .32 ACP barrel blanks and reamers (standard trade items; not checked for this dive).

References

Footnotes

1. Jaeger Platoon, “Revolvers & Pistols part 3: 7,65 mm Pistol M/19 ‘Spanish’”, http://www.jaegerplatoon.net/PISTOLS3.htm, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩

2. The hub’s Borchardt C-93 dive, Vol 9, “The law of making a C-93 today” and “Michigan and the self-made pistol”, /actual-firearms/pistols/borchardt-c93/vol-9/, read 2026-10-19, and the sources it cites (ATF Q&A on making for personal use; 18 U.S.C. §§ 921, 922; 26 U.S.C. § 5845; United States v. Olofson; 27 CFR 478.92; Michigan SB 331 and 332 of 2025). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. 27 CFR 478.11, “Curios or relics”, eCFR, https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-27/chapter-II/subchapter-B/part-478/subpart-B/section-478.11, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩

4. 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b), Cornell Legal Information Institute, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/5845, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩ ↩²

5. 27 CFR 478.12(a)(1), eCFR, https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-27/chapter-II/subchapter-B/part-478/subpart-B/section-478.12, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩

6. John M. Browning, “Automatic firearm”, US Patent 747,585, filed 3 April 1902, granted 22 December 1903, https://patents.google.com/patent/US747585, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

7. ANSI/SAAMI Z299.3-2022, approved 13 December 2022, “32 Automatic” drawing and proof table, https://saami.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/SAAMI-Z299.3-2022-Centerfire-Pistol-Revolver-Approved-12-13-2022.pdf, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩ ↩²

8. Unsigned collector text on the Ruby pistol, Tir Sportif Chabris, https://tirsportifchabris.fr/blog/vue-eclatee-pistolet-ruby, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩

9. Sam S., “TFB Armorer’s Bench: Commentary on The 1915 Spanish Ruby Pistol”, The Firearm Blog, 27 August 2023, https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2023/08/27/tfb-armorers-bench-commentary-1915-spanish-ruby-pistol/, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩ ↩²

10. The hub’s lab catalogue, Firearms/_shared/lab_capability.md (started 2026-10-18), read 2026-10-19. ↩ ↩² ↩³

11. French Army instruction on the 7.65 mm automatic pistols in service, as transcribed by Tir Sportif Chabris, https://tirsportifchabris.fr/blog/pistolet-ruby-7-65-demontage, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩

12. Ian McCollum, “Serbian/Yugoslav Ruby Pistol”, Forgotten Weapons, 2 March 2022, reader comments, https://www.forgottenweapons.com/serbian-yugoslav-ruby-pistol/, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩