Soviet Mass Production was never known for it's outstanding quality control. Some of the new pistols on the market today are not much better either. Taurus and Smith & Wesson come to mind quickly for me.rhayes wrote:Thanks for all the input everyone! After taking it apart and looking at it for a while, I believe the actual cause of the apparent cant of the safety is a combination of dfunk and boomer's posts. I appears that a)the cutout in the rear of the slide is indeed misaligned, with the right side being milled slightly higher than the left and the whole cutout is slightly left of center (dfunk) and b)the mass production makes this particular pistol look slightly distorted (boomer). The flat face of the safety that is presented when the safety is off looks to be cut with a /very/ minor skew to the right which makes the apparent cant look even more pronounced. Tonight I may take a few pictures to illustrate this and post them in this thread for future reference.
I believe that I have satisfied myself that the thing is safe to shoot, so I'm going to go enjoy this beautiful spring day some more and put a few rounds down range. Thanks again and enjoy the weekend!
For the most part, the safety is left off by the users and only used as a decocker. I have removed 2 coils from the safety detent spring and polished the detent pin as well as the round surfaces of the safety as well. I have it to the point where I can just flick it on or off with my thumb.
I also personally polish every single part in a P 64 on a buffer and reblue them. Then I look for wear points and polish some more. The smoother you can get the surfaces the less friction there will be and less lubrication needed. These little gems are just so much fun to do that with and you get a great little CCW when you are done.
Boomer