years ago, a friend came up to me at church and said he was settling an estate and he had a Colt .45 for sale for $100 at which point I interrupted him and said, I would take it. Don’t you want to know anything about it? No, if it’s a Colt .45 for only $100 I will take it sight unseen. It turned out to be a Commercial Model from 1914. It is a dead ringer except for markings to a military model and it shoots right to point of aim with .45 Hardball.
Pair And A Spare In the early days of GUNS Mag-
azine, Kent Bellah taught me the idea of "a pair and a spare," that is, if you have a good gun make sure you have backups. Clint Smith says the same thing today. My pair and a spare of Colts are somewhat mis- matched consisting of a pair of Se- ries ’70 Government Models, one an everyday working blued model while the other is engraved, ivory stocked, and satin nickeled; the third member of the trio is a Series ’70 Gold Cup, which is also ivory stocked. I follow the same phi- losophy with the .45 Commander. This
trio consists of a standard
WWW.AMERICANHANDGUNNER.COM
lightweight version, a steel Combat Commander totally customized by Jimmy Clark, and the third one is actually not a Colt but rather a Bill Wilson Professional Model. Several
companies have
back to the original roots of the 1911 offering their version of
gone the
original pre-World War I 1911s. Those I shoot on a regular basis are the Auto-Ordnance 1911, Iver Johnson 1911A1, Para USA GI Ex- pert, Springfield Armory Mil-Spec and USFA 1911. Para USA’s pair and a spare consists of their sin- gle-stack 1911, high-capacity P14 and the LDA. Some may see these as too different to be considered a pair and a spare with one holding 14 rounds and another all operating with a very light double action, but I’m happy. Back around the turn of the cen-
tury, I attended the Springfield Ar- mory Seminar in Mississippi and came away with two excellent .45s, the full-sized TRP and the V10 Ul- tra Compact, the latter being much smaller than a Commander. The number one producer of .45s is Kimber; their Custom CDPII is a full-sized 1911 with an alloy frame.
It not only shoots very well, but it also packs easy. Kimber’s Compact Aluminum, like the V10, has a 3" barrel and short grip frame making it very easy to conceal. Two rela- tive newcomers to the 1911 scene are Taurus and Dan Wesson. The Taurus 24/7 really shook up the market offering a 1911 with all the custom features normally found on more expensive guns and did it with a price tag of less than $600. Dan Wesson made some of the best long-range revolvers ever offered. However, they discovered they could produce 1911s with less ma- chine time and sell them for more money. Their Patriot is an excellent 1911. Then there is the “Magnum .45,” the .460 Rowland, which only requires a conversion kit to turn any modern .45 into the equivalent of a 4" .44 Magnum. So many choices makes picking
favorites not all that easy, so I will take the easy way out and choose my Colts, especially the Gold Cup and the engraved Series ‘70. But then again there is the Kimber, and the Springfi eld Armory and the Dan Wesson and the Clark Custom Com- bat and the … *
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