Ahead of their time: the sad saga of Devel.

Full-powered, small-framed handguns save lives; they're small enough to pack instead of leave in a glovebox, and powerful enough to drop somebody. Little big guns are also a fairly recent invention: up until the late 70s, if you wanted a gun the size of a PPK, it was a PPK, complete with its questionable chambering--.380 if you were lucky, .32 otherwise.

And then came the Charlie Kelsey-founded Devel Corporation, close on the heels of ASP. Unlike ASP, which limited itself to shortening Smith & Wesson 9mm autos, Devel went on to create compact Colt M1911s, a more refined "chopped" S&W auto, and some seriously reworked Browning Hi-Powers--all innovations seen in the product lines of the major gun companies some 20 years later.

But back to ASP. Their chop'n'bob conversion of the S&W Model 39--allegedly created at the request of some seriously dangerous and highly secretive people--consisted of shortening the gun's barrel/slide and frame, and adding the unusual "Guttersnipe" sight. Clear grip panels let you count rounds in the mag, and a black Teflon finish completed one of the earliest full-power compact pistols, which played to rave reviews. Impressed by what he'd heard, Charlie Kelsey, a Formula One race car driver and mechanical-engineer-turned-gunsmith, sent a pistol to ASP for the conversion, and got back nothing. After two years of waiting he sued, and in the process became convinced he could build a better gun himself. He called his attempt "Devel," which is an old Scottish word for delivering a sudden or severe blow.

First Attempts

Following in the footsteps of ASP, Devel began with, and is best known for, combat conversions of the Smith & Wesson M39 and its high-cap cousin the M59. The idea of making a big gun little, however, is far simpler than the execution. Shortening the butt of an auto is the easy part: you shorten the mainspring and lose some ammo capacity, but there's not much else going on down there. Lopping inches off a barrel and slide is where it gets complicated--especially with the Browning-type tilting barrel of the Smiths and Colts. While the front of the barrel is stationary, the rear locks up into the slide when it's forward, and drops down when the slide comes back. A shorter slide means less room to do that, a sharper unlocking angle for the barrel and less reliability. Besides, that inch you cut off the slide was part of the weight keeping the gun locked during firing.

The Devel crew started by replacing S&W's screw-in barrel bushing system with a fixed one, and milling the end of the barrel into a ball-like shape, which let the barrel pivot up and down freely. After that, the butt of the gun was cut down, a new backstrap was fabricated and the hammer bobbed. In some cases, a steel roller was inset into the frame's feed ramp, which kept the top cartridge in the magazine in place during recoil, eliminating a push-feed problem that had long plagued the Smith autos. The gun that came out of Devel as a Basic Combat Conversion, shortened and electroless nickeled, looked like it grew that size, but still packed a punch. It was the equivalent of dumping a 351 Windsor into a Ford Pinto.

The full house Devel Smiths, however, were far less unassuming than the shy Basic cutdowns, whose identity was only given away by red oval "Devel" logos set into the stock wooden grips. The full house version had the same little red oval proudly set into maroon micarta grips with a lucite window--here the ASP influence raised its head--so you could count rounds. Characteristically ahead of their time, Devel laser cut the sides of the magazines, so the cartridges would be visible. Additionally, the slide was lightened by long, racy grooves milled down the sides and top, and a graceful-yet-utilitarian hook was added to the triggerguard; some triggerguards were also narrowed, an old revolver trick that gets your finger on the trigger a split-second faster.

New Ideas

Though Devel's Smith conversions were a dramatic improvement on the ASP, it was still building on somebody else's idea. Kelsey, itching to go his own way, felt the 1911 was a more promising platform for custom gunsmithing, and in due time, two more conversion packages came forth from Devel's Cleveland headquarters: the Gammon and the Socius.

The Gammon was a full-size comp gun, whose name was a gaming term meaning to take all of your opponent's pieces while losing none of your own. In those days before compensated pistols were passe, these were works of art, with long, flowing lines, articulated (pivoting) triggers, heavy, excessively ported comps, and weighty tungsten guide rods that kept recoil down to a whispering pat.

The Socius--"Companion," in Greek--was Charlie's name for a chopped-down 1911 with a short three-and-change-inch barrel, and a grip cut off dead parallel to the slide. Shortening the receiver at that angle took

off the part of the gun most likely to poke out from wherever you're hiding it, while leaving the back of the butt intact; thus, the gun was both easy to hide and easy to hold.

What also made the Socius controllable was the famous "Devel hook" triggerguard. The finger-forward hold, while useful, can be problematic: even squared triggerguards tend to leave your finger somewhere south during recoil. The design of the Devel hook, however, was aggressive enough to work every time. Although an option on all Devels, it was probably most effective with the increased recoil of the little .45.

As for shortening the barrel and slide of the Socius, Kelsey went even further than on the Smiths, completely disposing of the M1911's barrel bushing. Instead, the now-familiar "coned" muzzle was used to align the barrel. The added weight slowed unlocking, and the barrel's decreasing diameter meant it could unlock at whatever angle it desired. Although Bill Wilson used the coned barrel first on comp guns, Charlie believed he was the first to use it on short guns--a questionable claim, considering its 1975 appearance in the Detonics Combat Master.

Options Galore

A typical full house Socius came with a coned Bar-Sto barrel (frequently in .38 Super), hooked triggerguard, handmade beavertail and maroon micarta grips. A few came with a proprietary firing pin safety, and some even had tritium night sights--which, while common today, were pretty heady stuff in the early 1980s.

Many other options were available for both the gamey Gammon and the fighting Socius, such as a thumb safety that stayed on when you racked the slide, an interchangeable front sight, steel feed ramp inserts for the frame and eight-round magazines. There was a bar-type magazine release for those with small hands, such as Charlie himself, and a boldly-swaged magwell--an especially difficult modification for guns whose front-strap were already thinned by checkering.

Also, not content with the .45 ACP or .38 Super, Kelsey began working on his own cartridge, essentially a rimless .38 Super. A short stock of shell casings was made by Fiocchi, and custom barrel gurus Bar-Sto manufactured barrels to the new specs. Charlie called his creation the "9mm Devel." The rest of the world now calls it the 9x23 Winchester.

P35 Double-Cross

The Browning P35 Hi-Power, long known as a professional's pistol, received less attention than the Colts and Smiths, largely because it was the last pistol Devel got around to modifying. Charlie's personal P35 had a thumb safety modified to remain on while the slide was cycled; he even went so far as to weld up the safety notches in the slide. This, along with a streamlined slidestop and a hammer contoured to the rear of the slide, made for an extremely clean-looking pistol. The prototype "x" stamped in the slide, however, showed that the true innovation was on the inside.

At the time, certain high-speed elements of the FBI made frequent use of Hi Powers, and a certain agent-who will here remain nameless-asked Charlie to create a firing pin safety for the gun. In short order, Wil Hauptoff, who then worked at Devel, had a deceptively simple solution: the slide-mounted sear lever was widened at the rear to block the firing pin, adding no drag to the trigger pull. It was simple, safe and brilliant. A gun with the new safety was sent to the agent in strictest confidence, and Charlie arranged to meet with Browning to sell the idea.

One can imagine Charlie's sinking feeling when he got his meeting with Browning, only to discover they already had the safety: the FBI agent had given them the gun. Thus died one of Devel's greatest hopes for a lucrative royalty agreement--and steady income.

Tough Times

Flannery O'Connor wrote that everything that rises must converge. So with Devel: their eight-round 1911 magazines refused to function, and the company bled cash buying them back. The follower design was sold to Chip McCormick, who had better success; he still sells it under the "Shooting Star" name. Smith & Wesson ordered a single pistol from Devel, and 1983 saw the appearance of their compact 459. Although Colt had turned down the design of the Socius, 1985 saw some of its features surface on their Officer's ACP, mixed with the influence of Randall's LeMay .45. As for Devel's Hi-Power safety, if you have a MKIII Browning, you can look at the underside of your slide and see it there.

For these, and other, less obvious reasons, it wasn't long before Devel folded. In a wry twist, the last Devel made was a tuned S&W 459--Charlie's defiant way of telling Smith & Wesson they still could have made a better pistol than they had. With this parting shot, Devel went into bankruptcy, and its assets were seized in 1984.

In the later years when I met him, Charlie was understandably reticent to talk about Devel. Nonetheless, his struggling bullet company, Leved--Devel backwards, he pointed out--still used the familiar red oval logo, and Devel was re-incorporated and trademarked at his address. Having learned his lesson, Charlie was very quiet about what else he was working on; he mentioned a cartridge named the .450 Devel, for which he had casings and a Savage Striker pistol made. He repeatedly insisted the M1911 is obsolete, a statement he coupled with vague references to gas-operated pistols, one of which, incidentally, is currently patented in his name.

Sadly, we'll never know what he would have done with any of these projects: Charlie Kelsey was murdered in March of 2003. The investigation into his death continues to this day. What a waste.

Pistols and memorabilia courtesy of the Wayne Novak collection. Novak is a leading authority on all things Devel, and is spearheading a book project on the ill-fated company. He can be reached at (304) 485-9295 or wayne@nowiksights.com.

Article Details

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Author:	Clough, Jeremy D.
Publication:	American Handgunner
Date:	Nov 1, 2004
Words:	1797
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