This hankering came out of nowhere. I have never ever wanted a 9. But I am on this "get better at shooty bidness" vision quest where I am taking lots and lots of training. So I am in a weird place right now. I am capable of committing any madness, including picking up a lighter-recoil higher-capacity firearm on my self-improvement journey.
So I did. But not without problems.
See, it's kind of a custom gun... Well, it actually is. A custom gun. It could even double as a race gun. A double stack 9mm 1911. Or 2011, whatever. One of a kind. 21 round magazines.
It's not perfect feature wise, but so? It's pretty snazzy. Saying it's not perfect is like saying Wayne Manor could use just one more powder room. Maybe. But, so?
And Sam has other ideas for it, to further customize it. If I want. Red dot optic, wrapped around from the light rail. A new barrel, maybe a full five inches. .38 Super, with a compensator and I am ready for major!
Whoa, whoa, whoa, Speed Racer. Let me learn to go from a crawl to a walk, first. And for me to iron on the dent in my wallet.
"Those double stack 1911s can be a true heart breaker T-Bolt. To start with you will probably have magazine issues right out of the gate."
Maybe with a run of the mill double stack. But I know a guy. A guy that knows how to adjust magazines and good many other things for this gun. Because he made it.
Ugh. Getting into Sam's orbit has been wonderful for my shooty improvement so far. And a huge load on my bank account too. But so much fun.
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You think a regular 1911 holster that accepts the light rail will work for this? Or is there something else too fat about a doublestack that will choke in that size holster? Fack. I might need a custom. How many 2011 have that squared off trigger guard. Dang.
Recommend a light. Surefire and Streamlight seem to be the top two varieties, but you tell me.
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Ooo, that reminds me. I need to actually sell some guns. With more than one 'custom' .45 1911, why do I have regular 1911s? Or Sig 229s? That will defray the cost of the above gun.
I was just thinking about it... I now have a number of guns with truly decent triggers. The above, the two 1911s, a good aftermarket job in my AR, a good Fulton one in my M1A, the 686 was good to start but is now better, the 2 640s are good for DA snubbies. All the rest are just kinda regular triggers. Might as well unload those. Besides, those were bought whole pistols that the state of Maryland knows about. I am hoping stripped lowers and Caspian frames confuses that bunch. "Is is a gun or not? Who know at this point. Maybe... "
11 comments:
In all the holsters that I have, not one covers any part of the grip, which is really the only fat part of a double stack.
My STI2011-framed custom race gun is strictly standard 1911 dimensions from the front strap forward and from the slide rails up - that's how they come from the factory.
Not that it matters much as all my race holsters lock the gun in by the trigger guard, and some don't even have any material around the dust cover area anyway.
Just remember that the Caspian widebody frame is a separate animal from Sandy Strayer and Virgil Tripp's 2011 modular frame. The Caspian uses thinner magazines than the STI/SV family (or the Para-Ordnance widebodies). The Caspian magazine is closer in width to the large frame Tanfoglio Witness, although flush-length Witness magazines will not seat in an unmodified frame. Some open top magazine pouches for the Glock 17/22 can work in a pinch. I suspect that open-top pouches for the Beretta 8045 and S&W M&P45 might be a better fit.
Proprietary dimension parts include the trigger, magazine catch, mainspring housing, grip safety, and the off-side ambi thumb safety.
There are two concerns with those square/flat face trigger guards:
They were intended for the offhand index finger to grasp. This is confirmed by the fact that most of them have surface textures applied. Too often, this gives you enough leverage to drag the gun offline while firing, but it tends to not be consistent, so accuracy suffers.
The other, potentially hazardous, situation is when under the stress of a real world use, you grab it with your trigger finger, essentially rendering your gun non-functional. Those re-curved/dished ones would seem to be especially susceptible to this action. BTW, this has happened for real, but it is difficult to prove after the fact, even if you survive.
Good luck with it and I'm glad YOUR hands are big enough to hold that grip... :-)
It's actually less fat than a Sig with just that tape on it, NFO.
Will - As I remember it, the only Caspian widebody frames with round triggerguards were the earliest 1st generation models. These early frames reportedly had cracking issues, so Caspian tweaked the design circa 1994.
Some competitors prefer the squared guard, not because they grasp the front, but because it give them more space to wedge their support hand underneath. It also gives a tiny bit more space inside the triggerguard.
Oops, I was off by a year. A little more digging found a Caspian ad for their 2nd Gen widebody frame in the January/February 1993 edition of Front Sight magazine. Their ad in the previous issue (November/December 1992) still showed the 1st Gen frame.
How do you like the 9mm pistols then? I have a Buckmark and a Springfield M1911 GI model from some years back. A couple of friends have 9mm's that I tried, and both seem sort of "whippy", that is the recoil feels like it rotates the gun in my hand so the muzzle rises sharply. I don't get that with the Springer in .45.
(I know, I'm holding it wrong).
"The other, potentially hazardous, situation is when under the stress of a real world use, you grab it with your trigger finger, essentially rendering your gun non-functional. Those re-curved/dished ones would seem to be especially susceptible to this action."
I call BS. You would need hands like ET's to do that. That sounds like a wive's tale cooked up in the '70s by people who didn't like them new-fangled trigger guard shapes.
I just think the squared off trigger guard looks good, aesthetically. And pairs well with the squared off checkering.
I think it's a cool gun that looks all right. Dang, twenty rounds of 9 is a lot. Most of mine are still back in the box. I only got a 9mm at all because CarryGun=Shield. It's just disappears down my pants compared to the Commander. And we're limited to mag capacity in California, but at least in this part of the state I can get a CCW.
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