I believe I’ve mentioned before that I’m a 1911 fan. Maybe more than once.
I came across this used Colt in a gun store a while back. Consider this my initial impressions, not a final review. I’ll tell you why shortly.
Table of Contents
Specs
- 3″ barrel
- Single action
- It came with a single 7 round magazine, but it takes regular 1911 mags
- Trench sight
- Empty weight: 23.2 oz
- Loaded weight: 31.3 oz
- Trigger pull, average of five pulls: 3 lbs, 6 oz
It’s a carry gun.
This gun was clearly designed as a carry gun. Short barrel, allow frame rather than steel, and a 7-round flush magazine. And then there’s the sight. What does a “trench sight” look like? It looks like this.
How useful is that? Well, at the close ranges the gun was designed for, it’s OK. This target is from yesterday at about 10-12 yards. The splatter one; the silhouette behind it was other things. That was 24 rounds.
Well. Looks like a couple .45 holes are higher up than I intended. I was firing a mixture of slow and as fast as I could.
That’s likely sufficient for a carry gun.
Just for kicks, I tried a magazine from 50 yards. I could see dirt kicking up around the target (like the splatter one above, so 12″.) When I got to the target, I saw no .45 holes.
Reliability
So: I like 1911’s, it’s accurate enough for carry purposes, so I’m just a holster away from carrying it, right?
Not exactly. It has reliability issues. Failure to feed. I think the issue is on the other side: extraction/ejection. I was watching my son shoot it recently; in one eight round magazine there were four “regular” ejections, two went almost straight up, and two buzzed past his right ear. Yesterday, one hit me in the forehead.
A trip to the gunsmith to have that checked out is in my future.
I’ve discovered that using a death grip on it seems to actually solve the failures, but I think I’ll have it looked at anyway.
Conclusion
It’s not ready to carry yet. It’s great fun to shoot, though. Going from a 9mm to this is very entertaining. It’s like I’m surprised by the recoil every single time. Oh, well.
I’ll do a full review after I have it checked out and have some time to confirm it’s reliable or not.
Might be a while.
