George Kellgren has always been one of the more creative forces in gun design. Sure, some of the designs are a bit silly, but he’s also been quick to adopt new technologies. He jumped on the polymer frame firearm early. He didn’t beat HK or Glock, but in 1984, the predecessor to the TEC-9, the KG-9, used a polymer frame. Prior to KelTec, he founded a company known as Grendel, and Grendel is where we see a lot of Kellgren’s ideas come to life. For example, the Grendel P-12 and the early P-10 series.
Enter Grendel
Early on, KelTec gained recognition for its series of affordable, double-action-only, polymer-frame concealed carry pistols. Notably, the PF-9 and PF-11 became the flagships of KelTec. The PF-9, in particular, was a trailblazer as one of the earliest single-stack 9mm handguns on the market. These were not Kellgren’s first forays into polymer-frame DAO guns. The Grendel P-10 and P-12, which preceded them, were the precursors to these game-changing designs.
With the Grendel P-10, Kellgren designed a double-action-only .380 ACP pistol with a fixed magazine. The gun was loaded via stripper clips through the top. As you’d expect, this wasn’t a popular gun in the 1980s and early 1990s. He created a sequel called the P-12. The P-12 featured a removable 11-round magazine. With one in the chamber, it held 12 rounds.
I’ve never seen a P-10 in person, but I acquired a dirt-cheap P-12. In fact, the P-12 I purchased had a broken magazine, and the price for a replacement off eBay was half as much as the gun itself. Kellgren’s choice of the name Grendel was likely just a play on the last four letters of his name, but it’s an appropriate name.
The P-12 – An Ugly One
Much like the fabled Grendel of old, the P-12 is butt ugly. Using Zytel for the grip was new for the time, and while it seems to hold up, there needs to be more to keep the gun from looking cheap. In general, they cut costs in tons of ways. The sights are milled as part of the slide. The magazine feels fragile with its thin plastic design.
The gun lacks a traditional American magazine release. We also don’t have your typical European release. The release is not technically heel-mounted but acts as a heel-mounted magazine release. Instead, the magazine release is a lever that sits inside the grip. The grip completely hides it and it doesn’t extend below the grip.
The only other control we have is the slide release. It’s oddly large for such a small gun. The large shelf is easy to hit to send the slide back home. Up front, we have a massive trigger guard that still offers you barely any room for your actual trigger finger. The size allows for a very long double-action trigger pull.
Grendel and the P-12
In the era of the P-12, the typical low-profile handgun was a snubnose revolver. That’s the market Grendel chased. Early marketing brochures compared the Grendel P-12 to a revolver. It compared the double action design as similar to a revolver but offering twice the ammo.
They leaned on the polymer frame and lightweight design as well as photos of it beside a revolver, aiming to show its compact design while completely ignoring how much wider the P-12 is than a typical revolver. The gun weighs only 13 ounces unloaded and 17 ounces loaded. The barrel is 3 inches long, and the overall length is 5.3 inches. It’s well over an inch wide and, side by side with a P365, reveals how thick the P-12 really was.
A very rare model came with a threaded barrel and what looks to be a compensator. Outside of a Guns International listing and a terrible photo on a forum, I can’t find any other information on the gun. A magazine baseplate allowed you to mount a light to the bottom of your gun.
Beowulf and Grendel
I don’t shoot this gun much because if it breaks, it breaks. However, I can’t spend 40 bucks on an ancient mag and not give it a try. The gun uses a direct blowback operating system, but unlike most .380 blowback guns, it’s not brutal. The thick as a Snicker grip helps dissipate a lot of that recoil and makes the gun substantially easier to control.
The sights suck. They are super small and have zero contrast. They are fast to find and would limit you to close-range shooting. That, and the double action only trigger, doesn’t help a whole lot, either. The DAO trigger isn’t terrible. It’s a 12-pound trigger, and it’s fairly smooth but long. I was surprised by how well the gun shot.
Don’t get me wrong, it didn’t shoot great, but it was way better than I thought it would be. It cycled the whole 11-round magazine without a problem three times in a row. After that, I tapped out to end on a good note. The Grendel P-12 isn’t a great pistol, but it’s not a terrible one. I’ve most certainly shot worse guns.
Not bad for an 80-dollar pawn shop find.
