I used to think my Rohm RG-10 was the worst revolver I owned. Then I purchased a Clerke First and realized it should have been called the Clerke Last. When we talk about American-made Saturday Night Specials, the various Ring of Fire guns naturally come up. Raven, Jennings, Davis, Lorcin, etc. Clerke revolvers, though, are rarely mentioned, though it was certainly amongst ’em.
Clerke Technicorp was an American company, a spin-off of EIG Cutlery with a cyberpunk name. EIG primarily imported knives, but would also import cheap Italian and German starter guns. The starter guns must have inspired Saul Eig to get fully into the gun business.
Clerke Technicorp didn’t import handguns. They produced them in California. The Clerke First exists solely because of the 1968 Gun Control Act. The GCA did a lot of damage and one of its goals was to prevent the import of cheap handguns like the famed German Rohm guns.
The law established a point system that considered barrel length, weight, caliber, sights, and more. While the GCA wiped out the cheap imports, it didn’t eliminate the demand for cheap guns. Clerke Technicorp began producing revolvers to fill that hole in the market and they retailed for anywhere from $15 to $25 in the 1970s.
Corners Were Cut
To make a gun that cheap, they had to cut corners. This is no Colt Python. It’s butt-ugly in every way. To me, it looks like a cap gun that melted a little bit in the sun. Clerke built these things using tooling originally intended for starter pistols. Speaking of which, they also produced a starter pistol version.
Like most American Saturday Night Specials, the material primarily used in its construction was a zinc alloy. Clerke used a lot of zinc alloy.
This thing is thick. Really thick. Like Latina thick. The barrel appears to be a steel sleeve covered by a thick layer of zinc alloy. Compared to the Rohm revolvers, the Clerke First is dense and hefty. Heavier than a snub nose should be, especially a .22LR snubby. It weighs about a pound according to my kitchen scale.
The sights are part of the gun and non-adjustable. The front sight sits fairly tall and there’s a rear sight built into the topstrap. With that said, as I later found out, the sights are really just for looks. The only thing that I find attractive about this thing is the grips, and just barely.
The Clerke First revolvers were double-action guns in name, but much like the sights, I later found out that was just for looks too. The firing pin sits on the hammer and the cylinder swings out. To swing the cylinder out, you have to remove a pin up front. This process is seemingly impossible to do without flagging yourself.
Keep that pin because you’ll need it to punch out empties since there’s no ejection star or rod built into the cylinder. Reloading a revolver in a gunfight is always optimistic at best, but with the Clerke First, you’re better off using it as a melee weapon when it’s empty.
Clerke Confusion
As you pop out the cylinder, you get a little more down with the thickness. Look at all the space between the chambers and the thick zinc alloy that fills the gap. Clerke made these guns in .22LR and .32 S&W. Most references I found list the .22LR model as a six-shot wheelgun, but that’s not the case here. Mine has only five holes drilled.
I imagine that some Clerke First revolvers were made even cheaper than others, and they used the same lockwork for the .32 S&W and the .22LR. That meant less designing and casting and the ability to use the same frame and cylinder stop notches.
That desire to keep the guns as cheap as humanly possible explains why the areas around the barrel are so thick. They used the same casting, but varied the steel barrel sleeves between .22 LR and .32 S&W. I’d imagine the .32 version is slightly lighter than the .22 LR since more material was removed.
When the swap between five- and six-shot cylinders happened is unclear. Clerke Technicorp didn’t leave behind any extensive records regarding design changes, serial number catalogs, or really any useful information. I imagine the five-shots were the earlier incarnations. My only evidence is the deep maker markings, which are prevalent on earlier guns, and a four-digit serial number.
Shooting This Thing
I loaded up five rounds and carefully reinserted my ejection rod, ensuring the single ball pin detent locked it in place. As I pulled the double-action trigger, I couldn’t help but think it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
I expected the trigger pull to be much heavier, and then it broke. Well, the trigger broke, but the gun also broke somewhere, since it wouldn’t fire in double-action 99% of the time.
I probably got it to fire successfully in double-action less than five times. However, if I cocked the hammer for single-action, it went bang. It fired every round but one in single-action. The single-action trigger is crisp and light. Nothing special, but it’s fine.
Remember those sights? Well, they don’t work. First, because bright chrome alloy doesn’t contrast well, they’re hard to line up. However, don’t waste your time lining up the sights because the gun pretty much shoots where it wants to.
In attempting to group the gun, I’d see two or three rounds hit near where I aimed and the next two or three just went where they wanted. I got as close as five yards and still couldn’t successfully group the gun within a single cylinder. I checked the target, and it became obvious why.
The rounds were keyholing, meaning they weren’t stabilized in the air and were tumbling end over end. They hit broadside more than once. The Clerke First Revolver promises to make holes 50% bigger than other .22LRs.
Tumbling rounds are terrible for accuracy and even worse for terminal performance. What causes this? Lots of things. Bad rifling or timing issues are my guesses.
Wait, It Gets Worse
The gun is genuinely uncomfortable to shoot. The blast from the area between the cylinder and barrel is aggressive, coating my hand with hot gas and powder. I went through 100 rounds and my thumb was black.
The cylinder has so much play in it and the gun’s made so cheaply that I’m betting the rounds are hitting the forcing cone a bit as they go down the barrel. I’m most certainly catching some lead shavings.
The Clerke Worst
I’m not really disappointed, mainly because my expectations were so low to begin with. In fact, it amuses me more that this gun truly sucks as much as it does. It’s not just a cheap, ugly revolver that’s accurate enough and reliable enough for its price point. The Clerke First is genuinely terrible, and much like the classic Samurai Cop, it’s so bad it’s funny.