Noma Air Pistol

Noma Air Pistol.

With thanks to John G for these pics. Just two examples of this Czech pistol are known. There follows the original sale pics.

John says:

"I recently picked up this neat little pocket power house, all the way from the Czech Republic via Germany. Something of a mystery as only two examples are known, yet the serial numbers suggest that more than 1500 must have been produced. Apart from the name NOMA there are no markings to help identify the manufacturer, but I think we can safely say that the pistol was produced in Czechoslovakia as both examples were found in that country. It is an obvious copy of the Webley system, and most probably dates from the 1950’s.

"When I received it the rear sight was missing, but apart from that it was in pretty good condition, and cocked and fired OK. However, it couldn’t push a pellet out of the barrel until I found that the breech seal was missing, but when a replacement was made it worked fine. Natural curiosity made me dismantle it, mainly to see to what extent it copied the original Webley design, and I was surprised by the attention to detail in its construction for what was probably a relatively low end of the market gun.

"With the exception of the trigger guard, which is made of pressed steel, all the metal parts are fully up to Webley standards, and there must have been a high degree of hand fitting. Even the trigger guard is fixed to the walnut stock by a machine screw that engages with the long stock securing bolt, rather than by a wood screw that most manufacturers would have opted for. As can be seen from this picture of the disassembled gun, no less than 9 components are stamped with the same assembly number 48. This number has no obvious connection with the Gun’s serial number 1535, which is stamped on the left hand side of the frame.

"As I had a good photo of the rear sight from the other known example, I was able to make a reasonably accurate replica. This consists simply of a vertically sliding blade which wraps around the barrel receiver block, similar to that found on the Webley Tempest.

"When the pistol had been reassembled and suitably oiled and greased I was able to check it out for performance. The most obvious thing I noticed was that the spring, despite being full size, was quite weak , resulting in the cocking effort being very light – noticeably lighter even than a Webley Junior. The rifled barrel was also more 4.4 mm than 4.5 mm, so most pellets were very tight in the bore and had to be resized to get good results. With resized pellets the pistol was great fun to plink with, thanks to the comfortable grip, the light overall weight, and the easy cocking effort.

"All in all a nice solid pistol, and it made a nice addition to my small collection of Webley look-alikes."