Quote History Originally Posted By ALPHAGHOST:
Yes 10 round mags .Wilson makes some too
I wouldn’t trust a pro size .full size only for me. I’d be weary of any kimber …when the old vp is telling me to get a shield that says something
i own several kimbers
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I’ve heard the “commander and officer model 1911s are unreliable” line for about 40 years now. I’ve heard the same thing about 1911 9mm in general as well.
In my experience with six 9mm 1911s in officer, commander and full sizes, as well as a dozen or so .45 ACP 1911s over the years in the same range of sizes I have not found the Commander or Officer sized 1911s to be any less reliable than their full size counterparts, not found the 9mm to be les reliable than the .45 ACP in a 1911.
But…that’s dependent on the user not taking it upon himself to “upgrade” the shorter slide versions. The engineering in them is different in terms of both feed angles and slide over run.
Where the short slide 1911s get a bad rap is when the user (I hesitate to call them actual shooters) buys one and then starts “upgrading” it like an AR-15 or 10/22 before even shooting it. They’ll install an extra power recoil spring, buy third party magazines for them, often mess with the extractor, and sometimes even install a Shok buffer.
The Shok buffer is an immediate fail as it further reduces the already reduced slide over run on the Commander sized 1911 and there is no slide over run on the Officer sized 1911.
Similarly messing with the recoil spring interferes with the slide velocity and over travel time which screws up the feeding cycle.
Most shooters are totally ignorant of the effects of magazine lip design on 1911 feeding and how it interacts with the point shape and OAL of different shaped bullets during the feed cycle. Short version:
- GI style tapered lips work great with 230 gr Ball, but don’t feed anything else very well;
- semi tapered lip “commerical” magazines feed ball and most hollow points well, do a good job with longer, heavier semi wad cutters, but don’t feed shorter blunter semi wadcutters well; and
- parallel lip magazines weed semi wadcutters well but choke on the longer FMJ rounds.
As the taper decreases so does the amount of control in the feed cycle.
- Wilson 47D magazines give up any pretense of control and just throw the round up in front of the slide face to bat the cartridge into the chamber.
The extractor profile has to match the magazine lip design and bullet type as the extractor is designed to work within a specific range of feed angles, which are controlled by the magazine lips and the contact of the bullet with the feed ramp.
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Most 1911s sold today come with some minor variation on the semi tapered Colt commercial feed lip design dating back to about 1930, and they come with a standard power recoil spring that will work fine unless you are shooting really light, low recoiling “plate” loads, or unless you are shooting some sort of +P+ load or an non standard bullet well above the usual weight ranges for 9mm (115-147 gr.) or .45 ACP (185-230 gr.).
Some of the match grade Kimbers can require up to 500 rounds to break in due to tight tolerances. Most of them however will break in within about 200 rounds. That underlies much of the bad mounting that the Kimber pistols get as a shooter will put a box of 50 rounds through it, get a failure or two and call it junk. Even better is when he’s upgraded it before he ever even shot it and then gets more failures.