Great 1911's

[texcaliber]

IMHO the only thing good about a "new-retro" 1911 is the frame. Give the rest to the gunsmith and hope he knocks off some cash from the bill when he builds/converts that "newretro" into a "newcustom". And if i have any input its going to end up a bowling pin gun!

[m25operator]

Hey theres a lot of cool in retro guns, first the cost. Theres a lot of way cool in middle of the road 1911's now to, most come with all the bells and whistles, maybe not fitted as well as custom, but the price is pretty right on them. I'll tell you a story, a fellow shooter at one of our local matches asked me before the match, to look at a gun he had for sale. After the match he showed me this 1911 that was a total put together. It had an Essex SS frame, a GI barrel, GI slide, true 1911 safety, lanyard mainspring housing, plastic grips etc.. and he asked me what it was worth. I said well it's a put together out of parts gun, maybe 100.00 - 150.00 pistol. He then said, would you give a 100.00 for it. I said let me shoot it. It did go bang whenever it fully chambered a round, 60% of the time, and it hit 6"'s low, grouped about 8"'s @ 25 yards. So I bought it. I took all the extra parts I had ( accumulated over the years ) ordered a new barrel bushing, fitted it, polished the feed ramp, peened the slide rails on the frame, did a trigger job, checkered the frame, filed the the mainspring housing to flat and checkered it. Installed some fixed MGW sights. Installed some Colt factory grips left over from a previous build, a Wilson plastic under the grip magazine well, fitted a S&A beavertail grip safety ( won in a tournament) and went to shoot it, well very satisfied, not a tack driver but 3"s at 25 yard, it now shoots to point of aim, and my total investment is 176.00 and sweat equity, it's not real pretty, the frame looks good, but the GI slide shows my torch marks from soldering the front sight, I call it my econo gun, and when I shoot it in tactical matches I have a built in excuse, what do you expect from a 176.00 pistol? I've turned down 3 times my investment. Also the trigger came out very good, not just good, so i use this pistol for my Ciener .22 conversion as well. Gotta love 1911's.

[Baldy45]

+1 on the scandium SW 1911. I have owned a bunch of 1911s, and this one is by far the best out of the box 1911 i have seen.

[Walter45Auto]

I like my $300 Rock Island Armory 1911. Lots of people say it's no good cause it's cheap and write it off just cause of the low price. Well, I'll bet none of them ever owned one! It's a good 1911. My Rock Island is More Reliable than my dad's Kimber Ultra Carry. And les than half the price of it to boot!

[2HOW]

Walter45auto, I will agree I also have a RIA, great shooter and accurate as any.

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[Dharmaeye]

Also have a RIA. Only problem I had was with Wolf 45 ACP ammo - Extractor would not seat properly on the wolf case groove as it is actually more narrow that other 45 ACP ammo. Ordered a variable 18.5 lb Wolff variable recoil spring this week. Will also paint the front sight for better visibility.

Friend has a Kimber Carry Pro and is very happy with it - seems very similar to the S&W Scandium 1911 in weight, reliability.........

Have a Ruger P97. It eats everything! Grip is not quite to my liking - will be slipping an bicycle inner tube section over the grip to see if that helps.

Inner tube pieces work well on polymer grips - takes effort and trial and error but cheap. Give it a try.