Yet Another Breakthrough!

Admit it — there are damn few shooting shows where you can see a $1000 SIG smashed with a baseball bat, bounced off a concrete wall and still keep on ticking! Another first for SHOOTING GALLERY! Yes indeedy...you'll see it here first in February. And YES, IT DOES VOID THE WARRANTY!!!!

To be sure, the SIGs are tough guns. You probably can't make them stop working. After a day at the factory, I was really impressed with the 1911 line...new management is committed to a complete line of 1911s...full length, Commander length, steel frame, alloy frame with and without accessory rails...as part of the Revolution series. I''ve seen a lot of whining on the SIG forum about the quality of the new guns, but the bottom line is I handled probably 100 guns in various stages of completion, as well as spending time in the deburring and QC department, and ALL I saw was top-of-the-line finishing and polishing. AND I WAS LOOKING FOR THE BAD STUFF!

We also took five 1911 Revolutions full-size guns to the range — not guns ready to ship to customers, but guns in various stages of final completion. What can I say? The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. I fed 230-grain ball through the guns as fast as I could pull the trigger. The guns "shot light" — their superior ergonomics made them feel easier against my battered hand than say, a P229 .40S&W. Still, I actively dislike the SIG grip safety...it's a "speed bump" style grip safety, but with a raised ridge in the middle of the grip safety...sort of like a little bitty shark's fin. That's all well and good, but the purpose of a speed bump grip safety is to guarantee people with small webs in their hands — like, fer'instance, moi — depress the grip safety every time. All well and good, except that to accomplish such a good, the grip safety doesn't need extra meat in the "middle" of the grip safety...it needs extra meat across the bottom of the grip safety to make sure smaller webs hit it. I was able to hit the grip safety, but I had to be careful on my grip and presentation. I complained, because I'm incapable of keeping my mouth shut.

That said, all the guns I fired SHOT DARN WELL in speed drills and group shooting. It remains fascinating to me how five guns made on the same line can exhibit such different feels in shooting. There was one 1911 Revolution I badly wanted to keep...a railless version with a blaxck nitron finish. The gun was just super, especially in the speed drills...interesting, because if I'd had to bet in advance, I'd have said that the railed versions, which weigh a little more, would be the easier-shooting guns. Wrong. I would have bought the gun on the spot, but it was already committed to someone else. Instead, I ordered an exact duplicate, which I intend to shoot in the USPSA Single Stack Nationals when we film that match in 2006. I specified Novak sights, a mag well and a gold bead front sight instead of the standard night sights. The laser-logo'ed SIG grips are really beautiful — head and shoulders above what you usually see on production guns — but for a comeptition gun especially I'll replaced them with slimline Aluma-Grips. The gun will go to Bruce Gray (GrayGuns@aol.com) for minor tuning.

I also carted my daily carry gun, the aging P225 9mm, up to New Hamster for a minor tune-up and to replace the dimming night sights. Amazingly, the pros in the SIG Custom Shop were able to slip it into the queue and tune it up while I was here. They did a beautiful job — god, I love really good custom gunsmithing! My DA trigger pull is now pretty close to the trigger pull of one of the new DAK light action double action guns, and super smooth — as it should be! They also threw in a spectacular pair of Nill walnut grips. These particular grips are exact duplicates, dimensionwise, for the SIG plastic grips. This is really important to me, because the great strength of the P225 is its flawless ergonomics. My P225 had a set of the Nills on it when I got it, but I ditched them because those aftermarket units beefed up the grip, and I reasoned that if I was going to have bigger grips, I might as well have a P228 or P229 high-cap. The new wood grips on the gun don't add anything to the width — really cool — but a lot to both the way the gun looks and the way it feels in my hand. AM VERY PLEASED. I'm sure the guys at SIG would have been much more pleased if I was carrying a currently cataloged gun, but that's the way the blaster crumbles.

THANKS FOR THE TUNE-UP, GUYS!