Harrington Products CZ-52 Firing Pins, Rollers and Extractors

An Overview of CZ-52 Markings

• Left side of frame — serial number plus a code for factory.
  • Code rid indicates military manufacture, as shown here.
  • Civilian arms were marked Česká Zbrojovka Strakonice (or possibly the acronym ČZS).

• Right side of frame
  • Above trigger guard: Czechoslovakian Army acceptance mark of two crossed swords plus last two digits of year of manufacture. The Czech Army used crossed Roman swords as its symbol since their independence from Austria in 1919. The Czech Republic Army uses this symbol to this day on everything down to uniform buttons.
  • If the pistol underwent arsenal refurbishment, a circle or oval with VOP or VOR to indicate the miliary repair service organization.

• Bottom of frame between trigger guard and muzzle — typical place for marks by importer.
• Barrel, visible through port in slide
  • Serial number.
  • Letter T inside a circle, a military testing mark.
• Frame, around the magazine well — some small stamped letters, digits, or symbols may appear here, possibly rather indistinct, maybe to indicate a specific worker or stage in a process.

• Top of slide
  • Serial number
  • Possibly some small punch marks on the top, forward of the ejection port. There are rumors, apparently with no basis, that any punch marks indicate the result of some accuracy test. See below for a letter from the deputy director of the armory — those marks seem to be meaningless, or at least to have nothing to do with any accuracy test!

About Those Punch Marks or "Accuracy Dots"....

In 1989 R.J. Berger published the book Know Your Czechoslovakian Pistols (Blacksmith Corp, Library of Congress Catalog Number 89018451), in which he claimed:

However, a discussion on Tuco's Forum on 2-3 June 1998 presented the following e-mail from the Deputy Director of the privatized Czech arsenal. The director's name was redacted in the original. The following was in response to a question about these punch marks indicating results of an accuracy test. Note that it makes no mention of such a test:

What's the meaning of the "OTK" marking on CZ-52 accessories?

The short answer: it means that the item was manufactured to military specifications. In Czech, and coincidentally in Russian, OTK is like American MIL-STD. At right you see an example of it inside the lid of a case for a cleaning kit for a Soviet Mosin-Nagant rifle.

In more detail...

The handy reference Словарь Сокращений Русского Языка ("Slovar' Sokrashcheniy Russkovo Yazyka" or "Dictionary of Abbreviations of the Russian Language") lists two abbreviations for Russian "OTK". Those three letters happen to be the same in the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russian and the Latin alphabet used in Czech and English.

At least in Russian, a Slavic language fairly similar to Czech, "OTK" can refer to the following two acronyms, the second of which seems far more relevant here:

• Общественный Товарищеский Контроль
  Obshchestvenniy Tovarishcheskiy Kontrol'
  Public Comradely Control (definitely a Communist-era term!)
• Отдел Технического Контроля
  Otdyel Tekhnicheskovo Kontrolya
  Department of Technical Control

Working backward with the aid of an English-Czech pocket dictionary and an overview of Czech declension of nouns and adjectives, the phrase "Department of Technical Control" would be something like "Oddĕliní Technického Kontrolovatu" in Czech — OTK.

Here is another example, from a "Kozak 6" holster bearing the Czech Army mark of crossed swords. "OTK FRANEK" — "Franek" may be the name or location of the factory that produced this holster with carrying spaces for a spare magazine, a cleaning rod, and a lanyard.