WILSON COMBAT/ Clint Smith
B
his small pistol-building shop in Berryville, Ark. Since that time, Bill has taken his Wilson Combat business to where it is today — an industry icon and gold standard with scantly few peers.
In the early ’90s, when we opened
the Thunder Ranch Texas facility, Bill’s shop was gracious enough to take time from their busy schedule to build 50 Wilson/Thunder Ranch Spe- cials. The
special serial-numbered
guns were full-size 5" 1911s in .45 ACP and wore a flat finish with ambi- dextrous safeties. They also had fixed sights with night inserts and were, for the most part, pretty plain pistols. Hooking
up with Bill at the
2009 SHOT Show, we talked about building a new pistol for me … sort of a “new-age do-over” of the old Thunder Ranch pistol. Using all the
72
ill Wilson of Wilson Combat needs no intro- duction from me. I met Bill the first time in 1978 at his Dad’s jewelry store, where Bill had
The Wilson pistol, brand new out of the box, before it started to work on a daily basis.
upgraded, state-of-the-art materials and parts, the Wilson shop built me a new Close Quarter Battle full-size version. The .45-caliber pistol was built, of course, on a 1911 format 5" frame, full dust cover and no light rail. I don’t own any safe princesses — the new TR pistol had 1,500 rounds through it the first week and it functioned without fail. The pistol was fitted with fixed
sights front and rear, with two shades of night sight colors for a good contrast in low-light applications. The rear sight is the style of sight with a curved or dished-out cut at the
bottom but still has a sharp outline right to left; this is also the style of the top of the front sight. The slide has charging and systems-check cuts fore and aft, and the shop guys cut a nifty TR logo in the rear panel, which added a nice personalized touch. Wilson Combat, as is appropriate, is cut on the left side of the slide and a “Custom Built For Clint Smith” sign embellishes the right side, again adding a personal touch. Contrasting with the black slide,
the gray colored lower had all the great Wilson features beavertail grip, excellent
including a front and
rear checkering on the grip and a very well done lanyard ring. The signature Wilson stocks with the starburst-type cuts looked good and as well provide something rough, texture wise, to hang on to. As per my preference, the thumb safety is small and the Com- mander-style hammer is so stock on these custom guns now, most people don’t know that they ever came with anything else. The recoil-spring
AMERICAN HANDGUNNER • 2011 SPECIAL EDITION
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