3.75"-barrel 1911 together and tested!

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I acknowledge that 1911s are not modern handguns and I'll even go so far as to say they are obsolete as duty weapons. Good triggers, short reset, but they are low capacity, heavy and unless they are properly set up they are noticeably less reliable than newer designs. But I'm old, and learned to shoot seriously with 1911s; the handling and manual of arms are practically hardwired at this point, so while I would not recommend them to someone else they work for me.

Last couple of years I've been messing about with 1911 projects, and the latest has just come together. I used a heavily modified and lightened 3-3/4" slide and bull-barrel from safari Arms. That took a lot of work; I had to fit the barrel and fuss with it quite a bit; their bull-barrel design was frankly not very good. I also made custom sights from aircraft aluminum. The blocky rear sight is designed to double as a charging handle, so it has 40 lpi. checkering front and rear. I had to make the front sight a staked sight; there wasn't enough metal left on top to cut a dovetail.

The frame was from a TISAS Duty 2 .45, and the internals are still original, though I have done some trigger-work. I blended the flat mainspring housing to the frame, then checkered it, the front of the grip-frame and under the trigger-guard. I also increased and blended the undercut of the trigger-guard, and modified the grip safety for a higher grip.
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After a decent amount of reliability testing I'll re-coat the gun with GunKote. The gun fits tight to my hand and the checkering under the trigger-guard really locks my off-hand into the grip. The current grips, BTW, are stock TISAS units. They're plastic, but pretty solid and work well. I'll probably make some hand-checkered hardwood grips to replace them at some point, but they do quite nicely for now.

In test-firing today it sucked up 195gr. LSWCs and Speer 200gr. 'Flying Ashtray' JHPs without a bobble; not surprising as un-fired cases can be hand-cycled from the magazine. In what I can only attribute to divine intervention the sights were dead-on. Recoil is stiff, as you might guess, but the low reciprocating mass of the slide has the gun back on target so fast you don't really notice it when you are focused. This is a seriously fast-shooting gun.

This target was shot at 7-yards at a pace a bit faster than 1 shot/second.
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This was a string of double-taps at 5-yards.
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I've become a big fan of 1911s and 2011s in 9mm, but this .45 lays down the hits just as quickly, and I don't really feel worried that it packs one less round. While I am transitioning to a tricked-out CZ P-01 for carry I don't feel at all under-armed with this little beast!

Re: 3.75"-barrel 1911 together and tested!

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CDFingers wrote: Tue Aug 16, 2022 11:11 am That looks really neat. If I recall correctly, do you get 900 fps with those ashtrays? Totally needs a custom holster. I'd shoot it one handed.

CDFingers
Yep. right about that. The custom Kydex holster I got from Rain City Tactical for my Detonics Combat Master fits this pretty well, but I do want a custom holster for this one that covers the ambidextrous safety.

Re: 3.75"-barrel 1911 together and tested!

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highdesert wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 10:34 am Very nice. Tisas is a Turkish company and we've talked here about Canik and Stoeger, also quality pistols made in Turkey.
I have limited experience with Turkish pistols, but I examined a Stoeger version of one of the Berettas and it looked the business. I had a Canik TP9V2 about seven years ago and it was excellent and ridiculously inexpensive; sadly my wife's best friend fell in love with it and talked me out of it. The TISAS this was based on worked very well right out of the box, and proved an excellent base for a custom pistol.

Re: 3.75"-barrel 1911 together and tested!

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Very cool project.

I think honestly looking at the 1911 platform is good.

Yes, they have many more internal parts (that could potentially fail) and lower capacity than “modern” polymer duty pistols.

To me - where they really shine is the ability to fine tune an excellent, crisp trigger pull. To me - the single action trigger on a 1911 far exceeds any of the “out of the box” polymer pistols. I far more often carry my 1911 than my equivalent polymer .45 ACP (M&P 45). I don’t know why - could just be nostalgia. There is just no legitimate reason for my choice. The polymer “duty” pistol has the advantage & benefit of 111 years of iterative design in weight, capacity, simplicity of use, and ergonomics.

My only issue from a training stand point is the manual safety. Whenever I carry my 1911, I’m likely to forget the muscle memory of the manual safety which is an absolute necessity for carry in condition one.

Those “downsides” being stated, I think the proven track record as a combat tested, pistol design outweighs some of the cons for me. I’m good with 9 .452 diameter projectiles before I have to reload.


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Re: 3.75

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INVICTVS138 wrote: Fri Aug 19, 2022 12:07 pm Very cool project.

I think honestly looking at the 1911 platform is good.

Yes, they have many more internal parts (that could potentially fail) and lower capacity than “modern” polymer duty pistols.

To me - where they really shine is the ability to fine tune an excellent, crisp trigger pull. To me - the single action trigger on a 1911 far exceeds any of the “out of the box” polymer pistols. I far more often carry my 1911 than my equivalent polymer .45 ACP (M&P 45). I don’t know why - could just be nostalgia. There is just no legitimate reason for my choice. The polymer “duty” pistol has the advantage & benefit of 111 years of iterative design in weight, capacity, simplicity of use, and ergonomics.

My only issue from a training stand point is the manual safety. Whenever I carry my 1911, I’m likely to forget the muscle memory of the manual safety which is an absolute necessity for carry in condition one.

Those “downsides” being stated, I think the proven track record as a combat tested, pistol design outweighs some of the cons for me. I’m good with 9 .452 diameter projectiles before I have to reload.


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In this day and age I think the Glock 17 is a superior military-service sidearm and the 1911 is legitimately obsolete in that role, it remains an excellent platform for a competition pistol and civilian defensive carry. In the form of the 2011 it is still completive if not dominant in action-shooting competition, My current EDC is 1911-based; a 9mm 3.5"-barrel gun. I based the decision to carry it on capability after a series of shooting tests with the guns I had on-hand.
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Mind you this is a seriously custom gun, but I can shoot it more accurately and faster than any other gun I own, and I can reload quite quickly too so 11 rounds in the gun is, I feel, sufficient for my personal needs.

As to failing to deactivate the safety I ride the safety with my thumb; when I draw my thumb is on the safety, and it's deactivated automatically as the gun comes on line. My finger doesn't touch the trigger unless or until I decide to fire, so this is as safe as anything out there. It's a matter of practice, and I practice slow; when the adrenaline hits it speeds me up quite effectively. This does take dedicated training (there's a reason I usually refer to the 1911 as an 'expert's gun') but to me that's just due diligence.

That being said I am not training up on a CZ P-01 Omega tricked out with all the CGW trigger-bits; I am new to this gun so I am practicing to insure proper training with the manual of arms etc. but in terms of shooting I find it as fast and accurate as the custom 1911 shorty, and I'm not opposed to higher capacity...
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