EAA Witness 10mm

[Seismic Sam]

Handgun Profile: EAA Witness 10mm

The first thing to note is that EAA is an American company, and they simply import this gun from its manufacturer, which is Fratelli Tanfoglio in Italy. If you go to the Tanfoglio website, you will see this company makes a very wide variety of pistols, and in a respectable number of calibers. 9mm, 38 Super, 10mm, 40 S&W, and 45 ACP are offered in a lot of models. Note, however, that not all of these are imported into the US by EAA.

If you are not familiar with the general Witness design, these are variants of the CZ pistols. That means they field strip exactly like a 9mm Browning High-Power, but the rails on the frame and slide are “reversed”. With the Browning, the rails on the slide face inward, and the rails on the frame face outwards. With all CZ’s, the rails on the frame face inwards, and the rails on the slide are facing outwards and can be clearly seen on the front of the slide.

As far as the Witness 10mm itself, the first surprising thing is the price. It’s $399 NIB, and in 2007 it was $349 NIB. Considering that you can blow a grand on a Kimber in the same caliber, this looks like a hell of a deal. Is it too good to be true? The short answer is “Not Really” but there are some things you have to pay attention to, and you may have to tune the gun up somewhat to get it fully functional. This doesn’t involve a lot of money, and some guns supposedly shoot perfect right out of the box, but some don’t.

The first matter is the recoil and hammer springs. This gun is set up for the lukewarm crap that some ammunition manufacturers sell as 10mm ammo, but really isn’t the original stuff. The original “factory spec” was ammo made by Norma for the Bren Ten, and it would put a 200 grain bullet out the barrel at 1200 FPS. The Norma ammo is long since gone, but DoubleTap does have that 200 @ 1200 load for sale. If you are going to fire full power 10mm loads out of this gun, you need to get a 22# recoil AND hammer spring from Wolff. (The Witness takes the short 1 1/4" hammer springs.) Putting in the hammer spring is a mild annoyance, but you only have to do it once. (Note: the DoubleTap ammo runs 1200 FPS out of a 5" barrel. You can expect to get about 1140 - 1150 FPS out of the 4.4" Witness barrel, according to my chrono.)

The second matter is the ejector pin, and on the Witness this pin is WAAAYYY too long for full power 10mm loads. With a full length ejector shooting outside, you may discover your brass is winding up one zip code to the right of where you are shooting. The empties may wind up 25' to the right of you. In addition to that, you will discover that there is a very distinct and fairly long “firing pin swipe” on the fired brass. This swipe is caused by the cartridge starting to cycle out of the gun while the firing pin is still touching the primer, and the length of the swipe IS PROPORTIONAL to the ejection distance. This is one way you can track how much progress you are making in shortening up the ejector pin. In addition, you want to shorten the pin with an upward facing angle on the pin, so the ejection goes more up and less out. With full power 10mm ammo, you may wind up shortening the pin by 50%.

Next, if you are having failure to feed issues, there are a couple of things that have to be done. First, get some JB Bore Paste (you should own some of this stuff anyway) and rub it into a felt bullet point of a Dremel tool. You can keep adding paste to the felt by just spinning it in the paste while you work. Polish the feed ramp and dehorn all the edges around the breechface and chamber. This will take a while, so you don’t have to worry about grinding too much away like you do with a grinding point.

The next thing to do is polish the inside of the mags, unless you have the silver match mags, which are fine as they are. The inside of the mag has a black phosphate coating that has a relatively high friction coefficient so when you have 14 - 15 rounds in it, the top one doesn’t pop off the stack very energetically. Take the mag apart, and replace the mag spring with a Wolff +10% spring. Next, get some crocus cloth or 600 grit sandpaper and polish the snot out of the inside of the mags, and then use Blue Armadillo wax on the inside of the mag bodies. This will make a lot of difference in the way the rounds pop off the stack. (A little moly paste on the mag spring won’t hurt either.)

There is one other very tricky point with 10mm ammo and hicap mags, and that is the straightness of the cases from rim all the way to the case mouth. With factory ammo, you should be able to lay 15 rounds down in a row, and all 15 rounds should be parallel to each other. As I have discovered, however, this won’t necessarily be the case with some handloaded ammo. As it turns out, RCBS carbide 10mm dies leave a small amount of unsized case at the base of the cartridge, so when you line up 15 rounds the bases are clearly wider than the case mouths. It’s only a difference of a few mils per case, but when you multiply that by 15, the net result can be the top round in the stack sitting “nose low”, which could cause a failure to feed. Lee carbide dies do not have this particular problem.

With those tweaks done if necessary, what you have is a very strong and functional handgun. Tanfoglio uses very high grades of gun steel, and the Witness can handle the full power Norma spec loads fine with the proper springs. In addition, the Wonderfinish on the Witness (if you get the gun with that finish) is heat treated and hard as hell, and almost impossible to drill or alter in any way. The trigger is a DA/SA, which makes it perfect for personal carry because you can carry with the hammer down, but still draw and rock and roll in an instant. The DA trigger pull is good, and the SA trigger pull is fair. The SA is a two step affair, and it takes a bit of getting used to in order to get to the second step and apply the proper amount of pressure. There were instructions on the internet at one point on how to do trigger jobs on this gun. They didn’t look at all difficult.

As far as ergonomics, this gun is probably one of the best in the world if your hands are the right size. It has a bit of a curved grip which “feels” absolutely great, and this curve on the backstrap also does a very nice job of conealing the line of the gun for CCW. The safety and slide stop are both easily accessible and useable with the right thumb, so control of the gun function is excellent.

As far as available firepower, this is one hell of a potent weapon. A 200 grain bullet going 1150 FPS works out to 580 ft-lbs. per shot, and there are some Glaser Blue rounds out there that reportedly go 1700+ and are close to 700 ft–lbs. per shot. With 15 rounds in the gun, that’s a staggering range of 8,800 ft lbs. to 10,500 ft-lbs. without having to reload. With that kind of firepower, you can make anything smaller than Godzilla go down reliably.

The trajectory of hot 10mm loads is incredibly flat, and if you have the steadiness and the eyes, you can make metal animals fall over at 100 yards with barely any holdover at all. Since I’m not a hunter, I won’t comment on the legality of this gun to take deer, but it’s been done and recommended in some cases and states.

If you really want to shoot this gun as much as you will want to, you need to handload. The powder of choice for the 10mm is Blue Dot, and with the proper amount you can work up a Norma equivalent load. With full power loads, you want at least .003" of taper crimp on the bullet.

Is this a gun worth owning, even if you have to fiddle around with it? In my mind, the answer is a clear “YES”. The DA/SA trigger and hicap mags set it apart and above any 1911 10mm, and it’s over $500 cheaper than a 10mm 1911. For $30 bucks worth of springs and a few hours of polishing and finishing, (if you even have to do it) that’s a hell of a bargain.

On the subject of recoil, I happen to believe that recoil is ONLY an issue with the most powerful gun you EVER shot, period. If you have only shot a 45 ACP, the 10mm will be a handful. If you shoot hot 44 mag loads on a regular basis, the 10mm is a walk in the park.

There are a couple of archival websites that have a lot of good information on the 10mm caliber, although they are dated, and do not cover the Witness pistol in detail.

[David]

I have the "Stock" model, which incorporates all of the tuning tasks you mentioned, and makes this a very nice, competitive shooter out of the box. The trigger is excellent with no creep or sponginess. I totally agree with you about the lesser-powered ammo people are selling these days. I bought a case of Federal for it that felt...well, neutered...at least compared to the real deal. For the same price, I got a case of PMC Bronze, which is 200 grains and puts out a hell of a bang. It's a solid, authoritative recoil, but not difficult at all to handle. I'd highly recommend that ammo over the Federal.

Now I'm looking to get the same gun in .38 Super!

[ree]

Sam. Is this your writing or a quote? Assuming it's yours, nice job; it was a good read. I want one now.

[Belgiboy]

I agree with ree, excellent article both in form and content.
The subject matter of taking a brand new gun and making it better right of the bat is something I haven't seen to much and you do it well.

[bighole]

Your instructions are great. I am new to this,, can you help with good instructions on how to replace the hammer spring?