Carmoney

Yep. I installed a Dawson (Novak pattern) .100-width F/O up front and the STI (made by Champion, I believe) tactical adjustable rear unit. They went in without any major effort. As you can see, the magwell is on there as well. Those are really the only improvements the gun really needs to run in SS division--if I start hanging too many more parts on this thing, I will be defeating the whole purpose of buying the gun in the first place, right? I shot a couple mags of factory JHP ammo through it the other day, and had a couple feedway stoppages. Although the gun appears to be reasonably well throated, and it works OK with ball ammo, I thought the feed angle looked a little steep. So I re-throated the barrel and re-worked the ramp, and it looks a lot better. I can't test-fire it right now because we're in the middle of a "blizzard of epic proportions" here in central Iowa, but it seems to feed rounds manually from the mag quite a bit more smoothly.

I agree.

Yeah, I think they're gone.

Forgot to mention: There were lots of 25-2s at the USPSA Nats this year, for some reason.

I shot a 25-2 this past year. I consider a 25-2 (or a 1955) functionally equivalent to a 5" 625, pretty much. Very minor advantages and disadvantages to each choice. $700 isn't a great price, but it's not horrible either, considering what they sell for these days, and considering that you can hardly find 5" 625s around anymore, particularly not for less than $700.

I don't disagree, but in most jurisdictions a well-crafted liability release will provide some meaningful protections. The courts in my state (Iowa) do generally enforce liability waivers. However, it's never quite that simple. Here in Iowa, for example, a person can fully sign away his or her own right to sue, but cannot relinquish the rights of third parties who possess a legal interest in the action--surviving spouses and children can still sue for loss of consortium and support. The good news is that in most parts of the country, the system works pretty well to weed out the ridiculous and completely meritless cases. The news media (and the politicians and special interests who champion the cause of tort reform) always make it sound much worse than it really is. Most of the crazy cases never make it to trial. This is one reason why I think it is so important for solid citizens to never shirk jury duty. It's the one opportunity most people will ever have to personally participate in our system of civil justice, and we need people with good common sense to serve as judges of the facts. Or so it seems to me.

Yeah, good point. Cliff made it all the way to the top with an unblemished record of careful restraint and quiet dignity, and I would hate to see that suffer under the bright lights of fame and fortune.

It's never a bad idea to read your policy.

I've been watching for the Taurus 9mm 1911 myself, and will buy a stainless one as soon as they are available. They're in the catalog and are even listed in some of the distributors' sites, but nobody seems to have actually taken delivery yet. I have a nice Springfield Loaded Target 9mm that I shoot quite a bit at steel matches, but it's always nice to have a back-up. Back to the Metroarms .45--I ordered a S&A magwell and some better sights for it today. Otherwise, I'm planning to keep it essentially stock. At least for now!

That sounds like a good plan to me. Hey, maybe this explains why I sprayed frickin' bullets all over the place at Nationals this year.....I think I must have a constriction! A constriction.....yeah, that's the ticket.....

Wow, I have tons of great memories from shooting pins on the indoor range at Mass. Rifle Ass'n back in the '80s!! (I spent a few years living and working in New England after I got out of college.) Somewhere around here I have a photo of the MRA team that went to Second Chance one year--we all had matching shirts and hats!

Very cool article!! I especially like the fact that ol' Cliff gets his props from MV.

This conversation is interesting, but pretty esoteric. And perhaps somewhat academic. If the cylinder spins freely without binding, and there is no gross misalignment of the yoke or obvious defect in the throats, forcing cone, or crown, the gun is going to be plenty accurate for 99.99% of the shots USPSA/IDPA/ICORE shooters will ever need to take. For the few remaining people who are interested in shooting PPC and Bianchi with a wheelgun (sad, but true!), it may be a different story. But for the rest of us, achieving accuracy with a revolver is more a matter of load development and trigger control than taking the last micron of play out of the fit between cylinder and frame. Or so it seems to me!

Actually, all of that is dependent on which generation of S&W revolver you're talking about. Warren's detailed post only applies to the older models. On the older guns, the hand (depending on the fit) may be literally pushing on the ratchet lug as the DA trigger pull is completed and the hammer begins its fall. This is why the old-school armorers made such a big deal out of range rods, holding the trigger back while checking for "clicks," etc., etc. Most of that stuff is becoming outmoded now due to design changes in the guns. On current S&Ws (since sometime in the early '90s), the hand and ratchet engagement has been redesigned to allow the hand to disengage (it is cammed backward and up, away from the ratchet) after the cylinder is fully indexed and the cylinder stop is engaged. So as Tom E. correctly observes, at that point there is nothing holding the cylinder in place rotationally except the cylinder stop. On the newer guns, the hand is not contacting the ratchet lug as the hammer starts to fall. On the newer guns, about all you can do to align the chambers with the bore is to ensure the yoke barrel is properly aligned with the center-pin hole in the frame. Most of the time they are pretty close to perfectly aligned, and if they're not, you'll know in a hurry because the cylinder will bind rather than spin freely when the cylinder is closed and the cylinder stop disengaged (by holding the trigger back slightly).

Let me know when these hit, OK? I'm serious about buying more of these.

Yeah, a Spartan for $450 is a no-brainer, but new they're $630 or so now. I'd grab one of these in the $4-450 range and not think twice about it. R, I do like the factory sights on the Spartan better, I'll grant you that much.

I have always considered the 1911s manufactured by Armscor, including the STI Spartan, to be decent guns that offer an excellent value for the money, and in fact I own an Armscor-made 9mm 1911 pistol myself which I like enough that I built up an extra top-end in .40 caliber to give it even more versatility. However, this Metroarms product is easily superior in terms of fit and finish to any Armscor-made pistol I have handled.

John, most of us feel that way at the gut level. But in order to really understand the full issue, you have to try to imagine the worst-case scenario......You're at the range shooting a club match with somebody you really care about (let's say your child) and then some idiot (let's say the match director) does something incredibly stupid that causes grave and permanent injury to that child (let's say severe brain or spinal cord injury that puts your child in a wheelchair and ventilator for the rest of his life). Maybe it was some oddball range hazard that was known to the officers of the club, but not the competitors involved--maybe they'd even had the same safety issues crop up in the past but decided not to bother fixing the problem. (Remember, this is the worst-case scenario.) Bottom line, your kid will never be the same, and it truly was somebody else's fault that it happened. Now you're a hard-working and responsible guy who carries health insurance, but you realize that the medical costs of something so severe will quickly outstrip your family's lifetime medical coverage cap and you'll be left to fend for yourself for a lifetime worth of medical, skilled nursing, and rehab care for your child. Your entire family's financial future is in jeopardy, all for something that could have been avoided if the club officers had applied good common sense. And let's say that gun club happens to be sitting on an extra parcel of land, not yet in use, that had appreciated in value and is worth a couple million bucks. Given that terribly scenario (unlikely--thank God!--but nevertheless still possible), can you really honestly say that you would choose loyalty to a gun club over your own family's medical and financial well-being? Honestly? I'm a defense lawyer, John. The only thing I do is civil litigation and trial work, almost exclusively on behalf of clients who have been sued. I fight bullshit lawsuits every day of my professional life. But not all claims are bullshit. The civil justice system exists for a reason. And we all benefit from the fact that we live in a society that has a viable system of civil recourse to compensate those who are wronged--even though (thankfully) most of us will never have a need to personally make use of that system.

I'm worried that I came across a little too strong in my previous post. I hope everybody understands I don't mean to be critical of G-manBart or the others who chimed in. It's an excellent and important question, and it invokes a topic we all need to consider. I'm sure Bart is looking more for general thoughts on the topic rather than specific legal advice. I just want to be sure everybody understands that relying on internet legal advice is truly a "trap for the unwary" (to quote one of my professors from law school).

Once again, I can't imagine why somebody would post a legal question here on this forum and expect reliable information. It's about like walking into Wal-Mart and asking the clerk at the sporting goods counter a technical question about firearms. Some of the posts above have excellent advice--and some are pretty much nonsense. I don't mean to sound like a shill for the legal fraternity, but for everybody's sake I'll say it again--if you want good legal advice you can actually count on, you need to talk with an experienced civil litigation attorney licensed in your state. I could tell you exactly how it all works in the state where I practice law. But the information I would convey would only apply to Iowa, not Michigan or any other jurisdiction. And I do this shit for a living.

OK, I'm fortunate enough to own a lot of nice 1911/2011s, and have even built up a few nice auto-pistols for myself over the years. I just bought this American Classic 1911 on a total whim. Holy crap!--I can't believe how nice a gun it is, especially considering the street price is in the mid-$300 range! Nice blue finish and metal work (really nice, in fact!), very well fit together, and has a nice clean trigger pull right out of the box (I tweaked the sear spring a little and brought it down to well under 3 pounds). I'll go so far as to say this gun is every bit as nice as any new Springfield or Colt I have ever bought. Furthermore, I don't think I just got lucky--I saw a couple other specimens at the gun show this past weekend, and they all seemed just as well-made. I downloaded the pic below from some dude's Gunbroker ad, but mine looked just like it before I put a piece of 3M tape on the frontstrap and some black grips to match. The only other thing I have done so far is replace the bullcrap extended slide stop with a regular one. I shot a few mags through the gun, and it seems to function perfectly. I shoot quite a bit of SS division over the winter and spring months in preparation for the Single Stack Classic. Some of the guys in my group shoot very nice, and very expensive, custom 1911s in SS division. I'm sure looking forward to whooping their asses with my cheap-ass (but completely functional) Uncle Mike's molded kydex holster, maybe some Wolf ammo, and a $329 gun!! When my distributor has them back in stock, I'm going to order a stack of them for a rainy day--before the price goes up. But I'm not kidding, if you see one of these things for under $400, buy it on the spot. You'll thank me.

Fedex is expensive, but one thing that helps is to take just the gun, wrap it in bubble wrap, and ship it in the smallest Fedex box. Don't send the whole frickin' kit. The plastic hard cases and aluminum PC cases, and all that extra junk in them, add a lot of size and weight to the package....and add unnecessary expense. Better yet, if you can find a friendly FFL guy, sending handguns via insured mail is much cheaper than using the overnight carriers.

Here's a pic of the Perdue clan. As you can see, Bob's mother is a revolver gal.....

Actually, a couple folks have had the factory fit a new 10-shot cylinder, and it wasn't all that expensive of a project. I don't remember the numbers, but I remember thinking it sounded pretty reasonable. So I think the answer is, if you can get a great deal on a 6-shot 617, go for it!

christ, how desperate does a guy have to be to buy ammunition loaded in West Virginia?