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This was posted by me elsewhere in February of this year, prob'ly answer Tony's questions.
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I have one of the new Guncrafter Industries .50-cal 1911's here. I don't think I get to keep it very long, but I wanted to share some highlights with you guys as I check it out. I will try to resist the urge to go into excessive detail as we will be seeing it in some of the magazines ere long, but-- on the other hand the magazines are often light in the technical areas, so, well, let's see where this goes.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am pretty good chums with Alex Zimmermann, one of the two main cogs at GI. Other than that I have nothing to gain, no financial interest in the company, no free anything. To get this gun for a little while I'm paying shipping both ways and I bought the ammo. Yes, I would like to see GI sell a boatload of these, that's about it. I hold Alex's technical skills in the highest regard, and I was confident from the moment he let me in on the big secret that it would be well done, and that if I were to review it for folks I would not have to fudge anything or pretend not to notice any shortcomings. Friend or not, I'm not going to jeopardize my own credibility by foisting a candy-coated, rose-colored picture of the GI .50 on anyone. Now that I have it, although I'm just getting started with it, I can see already that there will be no dilemma for me in reviewing it and telling you about it. And, yes, again in the
interest of being up-front about it all, if it had come to me an obvious POS, I would have quietly sent it back with my best wishes and written nothing.
The biggest question I've heard so far, is, Why? What's it for? There are so many options and calibers to be had in the 1911 already, what possible need is there for a fifty? But honestly now, if there were no other pistols and calibers beyond, say, .22 and .357, would life be so bad? Not really, but some enthusuasts want more, and ain't nothing wrong with that. Some, not all. I've said from the moment Alex told me about this, in fact these may have been my first words to him, "This won't be for everybody". I won't try to argue for its existence with any ballistic mumbo-jumbo which I am totally unqualified to put forth. Likewise, the wrong answer would be, "If you have to ask you just don't understand", but on the other hand, to use the tried-and-true high-performance vehicle analogy, who needs a bike that'll do 150+ MPH, and once they have one, why will they often as not trade it like a hot potato for one that'll do 160+?. Or perhaps even trade it for one that won't quite make 145 but handles better or stops faster or is a brighter red, or just has a badder-looking, fatter rear tire? My personal reason for being enthused about it is that it's new and different, that's always good, and it just happens to also have been done well. And as someone told me the other day, the old saying, "Why do I carry a .45? 'Cause they don't make a .46,"
might have just taken on new meaning! Whether it's really filling a gap, whether there's truly a need for it, is way secondary for me. As a 1911 nerd, it's good enough to just want it because I want it.
The other question is, why does it cost so much? If you compare it to a low-end 1911 that'll spit out 230 FMJ's most or all of the time, yes, it's pretty expensive. If you compare it to other semi-custom guns out there, it is quite the bargain, given that it's the equal of any of them (the example I have, anyway), and has, well, something very unique that the others don't (that big hole in the end and all the work and expense that went into developing it). Again, it's not for everyone, like a $3,000 guitar isn't for everyone. I'm sure most folks would get by fine with a $300 guitar, and they're not lesser people than those who feel they need, or just want, and can afford, the $3,000 job. I'd say this gun is definitely intended for the deep-into-it 1911 fan, the guy who maybe has several, including some high-end customs, and wants something different. This same guy maybe has an AR15 in .300 Whisper or .458 Socom or some other exotic stuff that has zero appeal to some- and that's cool. Neither type of gun enthusiast should be looking down upon the other or criticizing his choices-we all have different tastes and varying means. What I'm saying is, I hope everyone finds this interesting but I won't be trying to justify it and when I say I like it, that's not me saying everyone needs to run out and buy one or be left behind.
Just one more delay before I get to the gun part-here's what I know about the guys that are the company. I haven't met Vic Tibbets, although I've dealt with him just a smidge via Email and he seemed like a real gent. The fact that Alex thinks enough of him to partner up with him says a lot to me. Very few people know who Alex is, but anyone who is into 1911's to any degree has been in touch with his work. He was the cerebral cortex of research and development at Wilson Combat for about 8 years, and in my view revitalized their product line, providing new designs while also improving most of the existing products. He also covered incoming quality, in other words, he was the guy who made sure any product or service coming from outside WC met a high quality standard. He has participated in the development of two major companies' 1911 efforts, directly with one as a paid consultant, and indirectly with another by working as a
consultant to a major supplier to them. Not sure how far I can go here, but two of the biggest trends in the 1911 world right now were fine-tuned in one case and, in the other, more like designed from the ground up by Alex. And here's the weird part, to me: he never boasted of any of this to me, in fact I found out elsewhere and only reluctantly did Mr. Discreet confirm it to me.
OK, how about I actually say something about the gun here?!
It is 100% standard-sized on the outside. It has a bull barrel, that is, no bushing, and this barrel kinda gives new meaning to the word bull barrel. It's bigger on the inside so it's bigger on the outside, and this is sort of a rule that runs throughout the gun-we're going from .452 diameter to .500 here, so there's a theme of everything's bigger by .048, or .024 per side. The barrel OD is bigger, so the slide bore is too. The rounds are fatter, so the magazine's wider, so the mag chute in the frame is wider, so the trigger bow is wider. The frame
rails, where they pass over the mag chute, are milled off, since even on a .45 they are really thin there. I don't see them really being missed; slide to frame fit on this gun is great, although it has been one their later shop test mules and has 1500-2000 rounds through it.
The slide's breech face is standard .45 size, since the round features a rebated rim. Sights are Heinie night sights, some of the other bits look like Wilson, others I'm not sure and I don't really care anyway, long as they're good. The trigger is a 3-hole aluminum job with an OT screw, and the grips are dark OD-anodized Alumagrips. This is my first hands-on with these babies and they're very nice, in spite of the fact that I had already convinced myself that I wouldn't like metal as a grip material. They're very precise-looking, so they go well with the rest of the gun. This GI .50 is Parkerized; I think they all are. A couple of interesting features include a 20-LPI flat MSH (steel) with a flush lanyard attachment point. Checkering on the frontstrap is 20LPI and unique in that it only covers the middle 40% of the frontstrap. When I saw this in the pics I thought it was a little funky but getting my hands on it, it gives what I'm gonna guess is 85% of
the stiction that a full-width job would give. I talked to the guy that does the checkering and he says it's less grabby on jacket linings and such. It's very nicely done, so it's not like they couldn't do it the conventional way if they wanted to. The gun has a 1-piece FLGR with the little bent-paperclip takedown hole, a single-sided safety that is extended but not huge, and a non-extended mag release. The magwell has a neatly done, subtle chamfer around it, pretty much as has become standard on mid-to-high end factory guns.
Anybody here ever handle 9mm all day and then put a couple .45's in your hand? That's what it feels like going from .45 ACP to having a couple of .50 GI rounds in your hand. When I first handled on of these fat little fellers, I was reminded of a favorite saying of one of the old Zap Comix characters: "Blimey mate, that's a whopper!"
Alex had told me that the TMJ loads were the least accurate. The first thing I did was to group it using my usual method of load it full, fire one off target, re-top off the mag, put one on target, re-top off the mag, another on target, etc. I never really proved it but I think that ought to help with group size, keeping the weight of the gun the same for each shot, plus drag on the slide with the full mag would be the same shot-to-shot. Also, I get a little bonus reliability testing that way, since each round is feeding from a full mag, which I think is the condition most likely to show any feeding probs (none yet). I grouped it off bags at 25M/27 yards. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that I had come this close to shooting my best-ever group with a 1911. Four of the five were in an honest-Injun cloverleaf. I thought I might be on to something so fired another five-this opened things up to 2 3/4". I'll be doing some more grouping and report. I shot a Baer TRS that was in the shop as a control and got about the same- on some days I can do better, but the best group I ever shot this way was just over an inch. My "normal" best is more like 1 3/8. I'm sure the Baer can do better than this, maybe on a different day with different ammo, so maybe the GI will too.
I thought sure there would be a distinctive sound to the .50 GI, and had myself convinced that it did sound different until I shot the Baer with Black Hills 230 Gold Dots. They sound exactly the same, and the recoil impulse, switching back and forth, was also exactly the same. That's with the 300 TMJ at 700 FPS load (I have not chrono'd any as of yet). I also got a box of 300 TMJ at-yikes-875. Take that PF and back figure to a 230 grain pill-it's 1141 FPS! That ought to take the wind out of a bowling pin.... and I'm really hoping I can talk them into letting me keep this thing long enough to shoot it in the last indoor pin match of the season.
The magazine is a real piece of work. It's very significant that the body is made from heat treated stainless (you can plainly see that it's been through an inert-gas bright heat treating process) that is .006 thicker that the steel used in a .45 magazine. .006 doesn't sound like much but that's about a 25% increase. The follower is machined from Delrin and has a heat treated steel insert where it contacts the slide stop. The removable floor plate is machined from, no wait, it is machined for cryin'-out-loud from, steel, and Parkerized to
match the gun. There are two small holes per side in the body to show full and when there are at least two rounds left. One of the reasons the Wilson magazines work so well is that they hold the rounds measurably higher than others (remember a couple years back when the design was improved? Guess who?). The GI mag also holds the rounds high and angled upward. The mag will not be a weak
spot, that seems sure.
OK.... so endeth installment one, it groups decently and is reliable, in the first four mags anyway. I need to get out and shoot it some more.
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