Fouling Shots
Cloning the Stevens Single-Shot Pistol
column By: Art Merrill | September, 26
Among gun shows, the one held maybe twice each year in Cottonwood, Arizona, is my favorite. It isn’t large compared to gun shows in Phoenix or Tucson or even the one hosted at the ice-skating rink built for a failed hockey team business venture in my town, and now owned by a car dealership, and that’s one of its appeals.
The Cottonwood gun show’s venue is the Verde Valley Fairgrounds, which is mostly a dirt parking lot. After parking (which is free), gun show goers wend their way between the small animal exhibit building and the paddocks for horses and cows. Then past the small mom & pop kitchen where the mom bakes her own outrageously huge cinnamon buns and the pop grills cheeseburgers, both of which they sell at reasonable-for-a-gun-show prices.
Stop at the double doors of the larger exhibit hall to safely unload your carry gun, pay your ten-dollar entrance fee, and get your hand stamped so that you don’t have to pay again when you come back on Sunday. Stepping inside, you see floorspace about the size of a high school gymnasium covered with folding tables strewn with guns, old and new, and all the accouterments that accompany them, as well as a few tables where ladies sell their own handmade jewelry, soaps and sewing. Men bring their families to this gun show, where wives depart their husbands’ elbows to pause at the ladies’ tables, and the children, from stroller-size to middle schoolers to teenagers, are well-behaved and respectful, and the latter are delighted to be able to (safely) handle so many firearms.
Rusty, an acquaintance who knows of my interest in the unusual and who has been trying and failing to sell me a gun for too much for several years, had his own table set up across the hall from my table. He came over to our table to show me a single-shot pistol with a tip-up barrel; long story shortened, after some hemming and hawing, I finally gave Rusty his full asking price, and he returned to his own table, victorious at last.
The pistol is the Hawes Favorite, a knock-off of the Stevens tip-up (break action) Offhand Target Model 35 single-shot pistol, also called the Favorite, dating back to the turn of the twentieth century. Made in West Berlin, West Germany, during the Cold War from about 1968 to 1976, the Hawes Firearms Company of Los Angeles, California, imported and marketed the little single shots along with a line of revolvers. My 1972 Gun Digest lists the Hawes Favorite at $35.95 ($280 in 2025 dollars). The Blue Book of Gun Values does not list its present value, but says J.P. Sauer & Sohn (today Sig Sauer) in Eckernförde, Germany, manufactured firearms for Hawes. Yet the stamp on this pistol clearly reads “MADE IN WEST BERLIN,” which is 200 miles from Eckernforde, so something is amiss. I have not succeeded in verifying J.P. Sauer & Sohn or anyone else as the manufacturer by cross-referencing to other credible sources.
Clearly not a high-quality pistol, it also isn’t totally cheap and cheesy, either. Yes, it’s composed mostly of inexpensive, non-ferrous metals and plastic grips, yet it nonetheless seems well-made and smartly engineered to contain the power of its intended cartridges – the 22 Short, Long and Long Rifle. While it appears outwardly that the barrel’s pivot screw and the tiny breech locking mechanism alone bear the brunt of cartridge discharge forces – 24,000 pounds per square inch (psi) for the 22 Long Rifle – there are mortises on each side of the frame to engage tenons on the aluminum breech block, making for lockup that is plenty beefy enough.
I’m not sure which is the first attention-getter: the chromed frame, the yellow plastic grips or the almost-incongruous eight-inch barrel. That barrel is actually composed of an aluminum shroud surrounding a steel liner, the aluminum still wearing about 90 percent of the paint that I reckon is supposed to suggest bluing. Whatever metal the chrome is
plating, it doesn’t draw a magnet, suggesting a cheaper alloy underneath. For that matter, maybe the chrome plating isn’t real chrome, either. The checkered yellow grips are “faux ivory” if you’re selling the pistol, but plastic if you’re buying it. Hawes Favorites also has grips of wood, black plastic and brown plastic “faux wood” (if you’re selling it).
The grip feels small even to my medium-sized hand and is obviously contoured for shooting one-handed. Though designed as a target shooting pistol in the likeness of an 1800’s parlor gun, the small grip makes it a bit unwieldy to correctly place the pad of the trigger finger on the trigger for more accurate shooting.
Sights are unusual for a handgun. The rear sight is a semi-buckhorn style drift adjustable for windage and underneath it, a tiny fore-and-aft slider to adjust elevation. The fixed front sight visually resembles an old-time Beech sight or Lyman 17A globe with a standing bead-on-a-post insert. The sight combination is what we would expect to find on a rifle contemporaneous with an original 1908-ish Stevens Offhand Target Model 35.
It seems to me this pistol’s frame-mounted firing pin should be spring-loaded to the rearward position to prevent the extractor from damaging it when opening/closing the action, but it doesn’t work that way, so to prevent said damage, one must remember to place the hammer on half-cock when opening or closing the action. The hammer, driven by a flat mainspring, could today be promoted as “childproof” in that it takes considerable effort to cock. Breaking at 31⁄2 pounds, the trigger pull weight is nothing to complain about.
Though rated for 22 Long Rifle, I’m content to shoot less powerful, primer-driven Aguila Super Colibris in the pistol, as well as 22 Shorts. Pistol and cartridges will readily tumble tin cans at 30 feet with the front sight bead settled in the rear sight notch.
An original Stevens Favorite Offhand Target Model 35 fetches about twice that of a Hawes clone and more, for minty specimens, and I see other Hawes (some identical to this one) auctioned or sold online for $200 to $300. I’m happy enough with the unusual little pistol, and Rusty is pleased to finally sell me a gun at his asking price. I even had enough left to buy the wife some silver-and-turquoise jewelry from the ladies’ table.
Yep, Cottonwood is a good gun show.