Originally Posted by
BuzzinSATX
I have never owned any PI 1911, but at a Gunsight 250 pistol class (my first) in 2011, there was a group of older guys in my class who came as a group, and two of them were running Cimmeron 1911's. At that time, I was extremely unfamiliar with 1911's, and really didn't know much about them except they were single action, most of the staff carried them, and they were all .45 ACP (which I later learned was wrong, but it shows my knowledge level at the time).
About half my class of 22 students ran 1911's. The rest of us had Glocks, Springfield XD's, a couple Beretta 92's, and at least 1 Sig 229. By Wednesday, several of the 1911's started to go down, and I'm talking some fairly high end guns. One for sure was an Ed Brown, another was a Les Baer. I know the other that was having a lot of issues was a Springfield of some flavor. I can not tell you if these failures were ammo/mag/gun related, probably a combo, but what I KNEW was the guys from TX never had a problem with any of their guns. BTW, I don't remember a single failure from any non-1911.
Anyway, I was eating lunch on Thursday with these guys, and I asked them what their secret was, since it appeared to me that 1911's had issues with high round count and wondered why theirs ran so flawless. I asked them if their guns were expensive, "top of the line" firearms. The busted out laughing and told me their guns cost less than $400 each new and were made in the PI. But one guy told me the other guy was one of the best 1911 gunsmiths he knew, and he'd 'had a few miles behind him'. The Smithy told me his secret. He would buy new Cimmeron 1911's, which he said were made on Colt production machinery. He would take the new gun apart, replace every spring and wearable part, tweak the trigger, clean and lube it, and if it had any bugs, he would fix them. He claimed that if you knew your way around a 1911, these Cimmerons were a great base to start from.
I have no idea how much of the story I was told is true, bu I do know one thing, their guns ran great while other folks were having to go into a shooting bag and grab a spare 1911 to continue the class while the Gunsite Smithy worked on their gear.
Bookmarks