LifeSizePotato: The Dardick is really a gun designed around its cartridge. David Dardick, an inventor from New York (born 1911, incidentally), daydreamed the idea for an open chamber gun in the late 1940s. With the help of Mel Johnson, designer of another odd duck, the Johnson rifle, he devised the unique triangular rounds (trounds) that are perhaps the most memorable feature of the pistol. To prove the tround concept, they needed a gun to go with it, to give it credibility and lend to its acceptance in the military and with police forces. Ideally, David hoped trounds would end up as the ammo of choice for high rate-of-fire machine guns.
The pistol was announced to the public in 1954, with patents already pending. Work continued on the design throughout the 50s, and production finally started to little fanfare in 1959, with a nice shiny patent stamped on the side.
There were two models of Dardicks for sale to the public: the Model 1100 and the Model 1500. The guns held 11 and 15 .38-caliber trounds in the magazine, respectively. A Model 2000 was also proposed as a prototype, but it never made it to production. The relatively high magazine capacity was another feature the tround design brought to the table. As such, it was marketed heavily to the police as high-capacity, fast-action handgun. The 2000 was supposed to have a loading clip, but I don’t think they ended up being offered for sale.
Another touted benefit of the open chamber and tround system: the gun could be loaded while being fired. Dardick was looking out for cops engaged in heavy firefights, I think, who needed to reload 2 and 3 trounds at a time to stay in the fight. How this is an improvement over the 3 seconds it takes to throw a new mag into a semi-auto, I don't know.
The 1500 had a 6” barrel standard, and the 1100 had a 3” barrel. 4” barrels were also available, and I bought one from Numrich because…well, why not? The second 6” barrel in the photo is chambered in 22lr, which I’ll discuss later.
A carbine kit was also sold, which made the gun into a 22lr rifle. I bid on one of these a couple years ago, before I even had a Dardick, because it popped up on Gunbroker and I knew I’d want one eventually. It sold for $130 after I foolishly stopped bidding. I have no idea what it means, but the Dardick Corporation was quite proud that the carbine was “approved by the US Treasury Department.”
The 1500 came in a relatively nice, heavy cardboard box. Included was a box of trounds, a 22lr barrel, and, from what I’ve heard, a set of 22lr adapters, although mine didn’t have any. I imagine some paperwork was also included, also missing from mine. (I do have some reproductions I ordered, though.)
By 1960, one year after its market debut, the Dardick Corporation was broke, and their remaining inventory sold to Numrich Gun Parts Corporation in 1962. It is said that only a total of 40-50 were ever made. The factory was never able to streamline production to maximize efficiency, quality control issues required a lot of man-hours to ensure proper functioning, and, not surprisingly, perhaps, there was no market demand to justify the dozen or so well-paid employees Dardick had enthusiastically hired. They were priced around $100, which was $25 more than the already expensive Colt Python, a gun that worked perfectly well. Honestly, I had no idea that so few were made until recently, and it's almost hard to believe with the all the money and energy sunk into the development. No wonder it took me so long to find one.
The heart of this gun is its unusual tround ammunition, which in Dardick’s mind was necessary for the open chamber design he envisioned.
The goal of his idea was to remove the reciprocal motion present in basically any other semi-auto gun. With one side of the chamber being open to accept new cartridges, the gun would feed laterally, reducing wear on parts and increasing the theoretical rate of fire. Rather than waiting for a bolt to recoil and then return to battery, the gun could be ready to fire as soon as the chamber is in place. The gun isn’t semi-auto, of course, so the only limitation is the speed with which the trigger is pulled.
However, traditional cylindrical cartridges wouldn’t feed in a gun with an open chamber wall. The chamber would still need to be supported on all sides to be reliable, and for a standard round to drop into place, it would have to be the full diameter of the cartridge, leaving a large area unsupported on one side. This is where the tround concept comes from.
The triangular shape serves a few purposes. One, it allows a rotating chamber to actually pick up the rounds, scooping them out of the magazine, rather than rolling off as a traditional cartridge might. Two, the shape gives it a natural settling position, consistent every shot. Three, it allows the cartridge to take up the entire volume of the chamber, giving it support on all sides to allow minimal deformation and easy extraction.
A common misconception about the trounds is that they were traditional 38 special cartridges crammed in a plastic sleeve. First off, 38 specials are too long to even fit in the gun. Second, they were actually custom made cases, eventually made from Celanese Fortiflex (a nylon polymer still in use today to make plastic garden buckets). Their components are: the Fortiflex case, a lead 38 special bullet, a Fortiflex wad to ensure proper engagement with the rifling, an amount of powder, a primer pocket, and, finally, a standard 38 special primer.
The cases were initially made from aluminum and brass, but it was found that they weren’t producing optimal accuracy and muzzle velocity. The nylon polymer was used because it actually deforms somewhat during firing, supposedly creating a seal at the mouth of the barrel, and providing full support inside the chamber. (This is according to the patent. I've found 3 separate patents for this gun, issued in different years, so I don't know what's what.)
Adapters were available in 22lr, to be used with the included 22lr barrel. These are exceptionally rare to find today, and I actually had my own adapter made with the help of some DIY goons and ShapeWays 3D printing service. I’ll get into all that later.
Numrich, after buying the parts inventory (including loads of trounds), experimented with other adapters for the gun, for calibers such as 9mm and 38 special wadcutter. The 9mm adapters worked, but they were worried about breaking the guns and the adapters weren’t made in great numbers. I don’t know how the 38 special adapters turned out, but I’m having some made and I’ll be sure to update.
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but I’ve never heard someone say this was a good looking gun. In fact, I often see it at the top of “Ugliest Guns Ever” lists online. I took photos mostly with the 4” barrel attached, to accentuate its goofiness. I really don’t know why Dardick designed it to look so bizarre. There was a prototype that looked even stranger, a gun that held 20 trounds. I read that the final 1500 and 110 0 models were actually released for sale after aesthetic and ergonomic improvements to the 2000, so I guess it could be worse…?
The aluminum frame is made of two shell pieces, held together with some hex bolts, basically just painted black. The finish would scratch pretty easily, it seems, so I try to be extra careful with it. The barrels are blued steel, though. The grips are a brown plastic.
The first time I saw a photo of one, I thought it was the stupidest looking gun I’d ever seen, but now I’d put it in the “lovably ugly” category.
Another odd factor in its appearance is that it’s pretty asymmetrical. The left side of the frame has a different shape, where the loading gate is. It’s kind of striking when you first hold it, actually. On the 1100 and 1500, the magazine loads on the left; on the 2000, the magazine had two columns, loading on both the left AND right. It may have been more symmetrical, I’m not sure.
Size wise, it’s pretty large, really. The grip is tall, and the upper part that houses the guts is wide. Here’s a photo of it with my Beretta 92. It is lighter than you might think, though. The inside is heavy steel, but the frame is a stamped Alcoa-brand aluminum shell, and it’s quite flimsy feeling. Honestly, I bet a perfectly functional outer shell could be reproduced pretty well with a modern hard polymer, like Olympic Arms did with their awful Whitney Wolverine reproduction.
The controls and overall ergonomics are just as wonky as you think they are. The gun is very top heavy, at least when empty. The grip angle is unusual, and the size of it is also a bit odd feeling. It doesn’t point as badly as I expected, surprisingly. In hand, it also feels pretty strange because there is almost no weight ahead of the frame. Just a few inches of that skinny steel barrel hanging there.
I alluded earlier that the rear sight is best described as “floppy.” It really just won’t stay in place. Maybe it’s worn out, but every time I pull the trigger, it falls back down.
Other than those few things, there really aren’t many controls on the gun.
The operation isn’t too hard to understand, really (once you see it working, at least!). The open sides of the revolving 3-chamber cylinder scoop trounds off the top of top of the magazine on the left side, turning clockwise. The cylinder moves only by pulling the trigger. It’s “in battery” at the 12 o’clock spot, and the top strap of the gun forms the third wall of the triangular chamber. The hammer drops from behind, pushing the attached firing pin through a small hole into the chamber and into the primer. Bullet exits, and you pull the trigger again to scoop up the next tround and simultaneously eject the spent tround casing out the right side of the gun. Again, this will be super clear once I make my review video sometime this week.
