TINCANBANDIT's Gunsmithing : Firearm Factory of the Month: Steel City Arms/Desert Industries

The story of Desert Industries and the company that preceded it, starts with the Gun Control Act of 1968.

The 1960s were a tumultuous time, the Vietnam War, racial tension, protests and several assassinations. This led the leftists in the United States Congress to propose and pass legislation that became the GCA of 1968. Among the prohibitions in the act was a ban on the importation of small "non-sporting" handguns.

This ban led to a flood of domestic gun makers filling the void left by the affordable guns that once came from Germany, Spain and Italy.

In the early 1980's a man by the name of Charles J. Bailey had the idea to manufacture a clone of the .22 caliber Walther TPH, which is the little brother to the Walther PPK, which was also banned from importation by the GCA.

In 1983 Bailey, a native of Pittsburgh, PA named his enterprise "Steel City Arms Company" and along with his partner Elaine Savage began the process of bringing the gun to market.

They named their creation the "Double Deuce", it was after all a .22.

The pistol was nearly identical in size and form to the Walther TPH. It weighed in at 18 ounces and was constructed of stainless steel.

The Double Deuce

The Walther TPH

From my research few guns were actually produced in Pittsburgh, it appears the company was looking for investors and pre-orders.

In 1986 they introduced another model entitled the "War Bird".

The War Bird was also made of stainless and was chambered in 9mm Luger.

Both pistols wore Rosewood grip panels.

For reasons unknown to this author the pair pulled up stakes and moved the operation to Las Vegas, a perfect place to make a gun called the "Double Deuce". They also reincorporated the company as Desert Industries.

While in Vegas the company developed a .25 ACP version called the "2 Bit Special" and had also thought of creating a blued steel version.

Side note: "two bits" is an old term for a quarter, back in the early days of America, a gold Spanish coin was called (as their dollar is now called) a Peso. These pesos were worth quite a bit, so they were often cut into eight pieces, each piece was known as a "peso of eight" which got anglicized into "pieces of eight". So one piece or bit of eight was worth 1/8 of a dollar and two bits were worth a quarter.

The guns were shipped in a cardboard box along with a locking zippered & padded case.

In Las Vegas they farmed out a lot of the machine work and the production costs were not containable, they had plenty of orders at the existing wholesale price, but they found it impossible to make profit, so in 1996 they closed the company down. The following year Charles Bailey passed away.

In the end less than 100 Double Deuce pistols were produced and perhaps 10 or so 2-Bit Special prototypes.

Serial numbers I have found range from 1609 to 1908, I am not sure what that means. I suppose the law doesn't say the numbers need be consecutive, just not repeated.

A list of Las Vegas machine shops turned up the location in Las Vegas where the guns were made, 4755 Nevso Drive