Monday Gun Porn!

Oh, just for the heck of it...here's the reason it's so hard for me to get totally enthused about this week's newest, bestest, real goodest 1911...

The top gun is the Wilson Super Grade Bill built for me when I wrote his first book, The Combat .45 Auto, for him back in the day. The gun was originally comp'ed and has had more than 100,000 rounds through it. The slide finish was pretty much worn off from the holster; the slide had been stained when I cut my finger at a big match and didn't get the gun cleaned off until that night; the slide-to-frame fit could best be described as "rattling loose." The gun was fitted with a pair of "customized" plastic Rogers grips that I'd built up with epoxy and finished off with sandpaper. I felt guilty, so the gun with off to Ross Carter, who'd worked with Wilson back in the day, for a complete overhaul. A new Wilson .45 barrel was fitted, the frame & slide were reintroduced to one another; a Smight & Alexander mag well — not available whent he gun was originally built — was blended into the slide and EVERYTHING was refinished back to original standards.

The middle gun I've written about before — a full-house custom .45 Kimber Team Match from the Cylinder & Slide Shop. It's built on the Kimber Olympic Commemorative 1911 that I had some design input on, and you can read all about it here.

The third 1911 is a Tactical/Carry gun from Richard Heinie. It's built on an old Springfield Armory build-it-yourself 1911A1 kit that the company used to make in the 1980s. It is the most reliable .45 I've ever seen...it simply shoots and shoots and shoots no matter what you feed it with. It's equipped with Heinie sights (duh!) and all the usual bells and whistles. And, yes, there's holster wear on the gun...all my guns are shooters, not safe queens. I believe that Dick Heinie's guns may be the best custom 1911s ever made; that's not an original comment, BTW. I first heard it from an international gunrunner character on Miami Vice back in the mid-80s. When handed one of Dick's guns, the character said, "This is a Richard Heinie original, the finest handgun in the world." If y0u want one, put your name on the list now, then kill time for a decade or so. I did!