Colt Combat Commander Customized By Cylinder&Slide

This is a Colt series 70 Combat Commander made in 1975. It made the trip to Cylinder & Slide so Bill Laughridge could do his magic on this older 1911 45 ACP. The improvements are a trigger job at 3.75 pounds, Wilson Combat sights, frame to slide fitting, Match barrel and bushing fitted(Wilson Combat),magwell beveled,Videcki match trigger, titanium firing pin, lowered and flared ejection port, barrel feedramp polished,extractor tuned. That covers most of the mods done. Needless to say he made a good gun into a fantastic gun that is reliable and very accurate. I also added some VZ Micarta grips. When this 1911 was customized the beavertail grip safety wasn’t always used on a custom job. The only addition I made was to add a Wilson drop in beavertail. These are pretty rare guns these days and I was certainly fortunate to find it.
With all Wolff springs you can expect much more life from these springs before replacement. The series 70 Colts have a particular appeal to me and with these mods which don’t change the looks of the series 70 very much it makes a classic into an even better gun!

Note: The rear sight is an older Wilson sight that fits into the factory slide cut. Wilson no longer makes them but another company does. You’ll have to Google it to find them as I don’t have that information.

Sig Revolution 1911 & Colt Series 80

The Sig is a wonderful gun that is the most accurate out of the box 45 I have ever shot! Great quality as you would expect from Sig. Some of the earlier Sig 1911’s had problems because of parts coming from several companies. Since Sig started making the entire gun in house and renamed it the Revolution all the problems seem to have gone away and QC is where you would expect it to be with Sig. Yes, there are MIM parts but the quality is good and I’ve had no problems with them. Generally I think most MIM parts get a bad rap that’s undeserved.The Milt Sparks 55BN is also made for the railed 1911’s. In spite of a different look to the slide the 55BN works just fine with the Sig. One other thing I like that Sig uses is a ridged grip safety which depresses 100% of the time which is not always true with some 1911’s. The front of the grip has also been changed to 30LPI instead of the previous 20 or 25 LPI. It’s easier on your hand now and still provides a positive grip.
Shooting the Sig Revolution:
Most out of the box 1911’s will shoot about 2 1/2 to 3 inch groups at 25 yards from a rest. The Sig outdoes most other 1911’s by shooting 1 1/2 inch to 2 inch groups under the same conditions. I got the tightest groups shooting my carry ammo which is the Hornady 230 grn. +P. The largest group was with WalMart white box 230grn. ball. The external extractor is a feature most people have mixed feelings on. With the Sig and S&W 1911’s this should not be a concern for any shooter thinking about purchasing a Sig Revolution or S&W 1911. The extraction is 100% and tosses the empties about 4 feet right rear and puts them in a nice little group of about 2 feet around. That sure makes it easier to pick your empty cases up:-) The extractor is large and I can’t imagine it needing any tweaking at less than 5000 rounds. With 1800 rounds over the last several months it has stayed very consistent in operation and is extremely reliable. I had one failure to feed and that was with an old magazine I later found to be cracked at the rear. If you demand extreme accuracy from a 1911 and don’t want to spend $2000 on a custom gun this is the one to get.
The other gun is my lightly customized series 80 Colt Government model. I did a trigger job which came out at 4 1/2 pounds of pull as well as a Videcki match trigger and Novak rear sight. A great gun!

UPDATE: I have been told recently that none of the Sig 1911’s have MIM parts anymore. This information was on the Impact Arms website.