We like to think of the Hi Power as the last design of John Moses Browning. Close, but no cigar. The one he was working on when he died had some things in common with the Hi Power we know today, but it was the FN engineer Dieudonne Saive who finished that design and saw it offered to the French Army.

The Browning prototype held 17 rounds, and you could disassemble it in a few seconds. What the French wanted was a lightweight and slightly more compact hi-cap 9mm, which is what Saive had made. The French rejected the design, but it was plenty good enough for others--even the German army when it occupied the FN plant in World War II. After the war, FN armed the free world with FAL rifles and Hi Power pistols. The pistols were everywhere.

We like to think of the Hi Power as a tough little gun like the 1911. Sorry, but it’s not, or at least it hasn’t been for a long time. Back when IPSC was getting off the ground, a bunch of us shot the Hi Power a lot, and we found it didn’t last. The FBI HRT tried it and found the same thing.

Generally, after 15,000 rounds or so it was done. “Done” as in barrels that were shot-out or beaten out of shape, slide-to-frame fits that were embarrassingly loose and various small parts that were simply falling off.

What it was, and still is, is the sexiest gun you can lay hands on. The grip shape, especially with custom grips (and not the FN “two-by-four” grips), is so seductive, so appealing, so comfortable, that it takes a Trappist monk not to smile while holding one.

The Hi Power has always been an “enthusiast’s gun,” a pistol you carried because it felt good, because it looks good and because no one else had one--not because you appreciated the thunderous impact of a 9mm bullet or wanted a ready supply of cheap surplus magazines. No, you got a Hi Power because you had to have it.

And now we can have them durable, too. The change came with the advent of the .40 S&W. Originally frames were forged and then machined. But to machine that much metal away from the forged lump of steel meant FN had to use, in the words of Bruce Gray, “the finest Velveeta steel.” It was either that or prematurely wear and break tools, which costs money.

The .40 prototypes didn’t last the 15,000 rounds we expected from the 9mms. The word I heard was it was more like 2,500 before the hand-built prototypes were just so much scrap steel. So FN changed from a forged to a cast frame. Casting allowed them to make the alloy tougher, a lot tougher--so much so that the guns now last a long time.

Enter Ted Yost (yost-bonitz.com, 408-804-1911). A custom gunsmith, he at one time ran the gunsmithy at Gunsite. There he learned a lot of things about how to keep guns running day after day. He also brought with him a sharp eye and a taste for clean lines and understated enhancements.

I recently came across this gun for sale, a .40 Hi Power with the Yost-Bonitz SRT package done to it. The owner was letting go of it at a bargain for some reason, and I figured if there was anything wrong with it Ted would be able to fix it. But Ted will not have to fix this pistol because, lucky for me, there’s nothing wrong with it.