New 1911

[Cleveland Steamroller]

Well, the day before yesterday I found myself the new owner of a Rock Island Armory M1911A1 Tactical. Bought it from a friend who was in need of some cash flow, and scored myself a pretty nice piece. He said he had bought it new, ran one box through it, and decided he didn't like it.

At first I wasn't too impressed at the thought of a 1911 made in the Philippines, and the fact that 'Rock Island Armory' turned no search results in the way of a website didn't make things much better. I did, however, find quite a few reviews complimenting the RIA.

I wasn't expecting much from this gun, but I just took it to the range a few hours ago and ran 100 rounds or so through it. I loaded up both of my Wilson Combat magazines, and proceeded to fire the weapon. I was heartbroken at first to see that on a few occasions, the rounds failed to feed all the way into battery. Thinking it just needed a good cleaning, I proceeded, not paying mind to the hangups.

Suddenly, I had an idea. I took two old Shooting Star magazines that my Dad had in his Colt, and are probably almost twice as old as I am, and loaded them up. These things were about as worn-in as you can get, but they performed beautifully and functioned without a single hiccup. Turns out the Wilsons just need some breaking in.

All in all, it is a very accurate gun, and once it is broken in after a few hundred rounds I imagine it will perform flawlessly. I will post some pictures later, after I give it a much-needed cleaning wink  

[uryu ishida]

Actually, there is something very neat that is what it supposed to make Wilson magazines the most reliable.

They don't use controlled feeding like other 1911 magazines, or like the 1911 was designed for. It practically "shoots" the round up and into the chamber instead of a fully controlled feed, which actually skips several points where a bad magazine would cause feeding problems. If you could actually VERY SLOWLY start letting your slide forward instead of just letting it slide home, it's entirely possible that the rounds could be nearly ejected when released by the magazine lips.  

[OberFeldwebel]

I've had no problems with the Novak mag that came with my 1911.